Color Managing Images on Input

When importing images, you should apply color transforms to convert them to a connection space and then to your chosen working space. Different types of images require different transforms.

In general, you need to apply two transforms to input images:

1. Convert images from their source space to a connection space. Several transforms are available:
   • Use the transforms in the camera/ directory to import images from various digital cinema cameras and convert them to ACES.
   • Use the transforms in the film/ directory to import scanned film plates in ADX or another Cineon-style log encoding and convert them to ACES.
   • Use the transforms in the display/ directory to import video images in HD, SD, or DCI formats and convert them to linearized output-referred CIE XYZ.
   • Use the transforms in the interchange/ directory to import other common color spaces and convert them to linearized output-referred CIE XYZ.
2. Once images have been imported and converted to ACES or CIE XYZ, you can use the other transforms to convert them to your working space. (However, keep in mind that a tone-map transform is needed when converting between scene-linear and output-referred color spaces.)

For example, suppose that you want to work with scene-linear values using the ProPhoto primaries. First convert the inputs to ACES, then apply ACES_to_CIE-XYZ followed by CIE-XYZ_to_ProPhoto-RIMM from the primaries/ directory. If desired, you can export a custom .ctf file that applies all three transforms in order.

On the other hand, if you want to import raw digital cinema camera footage and work with it using video-encoded values, you can import the images using the appropriate transform from the camera/ directory and then apply one of the transforms in the RRT+ODT/ directory.

If you need to convert Digital Cinema Distribution Master (DCDM) values to HD video, you can apply DCI_to_CIE-XYZ from the display/DCDM/ directory followed by CIE-XYZ_to_HD-video from the display/broadcast/ directory assuming that the DCDM was mastered to the DCI calibration white point. However if this results in unequal RGB values for colors that are supposed to be neutral, then you may need to replace the first transform with one that is relative to a different white point, such as DCI-D65_to_CIE-XYZ (see White Point Conversion).