The Visual Effects Society Technology Committee has released a new white paper document titled “Cinematic Color: From Your Monitor to the Big Screen.” The white paper, intended for computer graphic artists and software developers interested in color management, introduces techniques currently in use at major production facilities.
The 54-page document draws attention to challenges that are not covered in traditional color-management textbooks or online resources, and often passed along only by word of mouth, user forums or scripts copied between facilities. Among the issue addressed: Technical issues that can arise in handling texture painting, lighting, rendering, compositing and image display in the theater; color science, color encoding and scene-referred and display-referred colorimetry; extending these concepts to their use in modern motion picture color management; recent efforts on digital color standardization in the motion picture industry (CES and CDL), and how to experiment with these concepts for free using open-source software (OpenColorIO).
Jeffrey A. Okun, Chair of the Visual Effects Society, comments, “The VES is proud to be publishing this paper on the science and workflow of color. Given how important this is to the industry at large, it’s a giant step forward in bringing all parties together on a unified understanding. The VFX Technology Committee has been working diligently on this white paper, and it’s exactly the kind of effort that artists can expect from the VES Technology Committee now and in the future – doing hard work to make a difference.”
The white paper was written by Jeremy Selan and reviewed by members of the VES Technology Committee, including Rob Bredow, Dan Candela, Nick Cannon, Ray Feeney, Andy Hendrickson, Gautham Krishnamurti, Sam Richards, Jordan Soles and Sebastian Sylwan.
The white paper can be downloaded here: www.visualeffectssociety.com/system/files/15/files/cinematiccolorveslo.pdf.
You can visit www.cinematiccolor.com for additional resources related to motion picture color management.
