How to Use ACES in After Effects - Full Overview (2023)

Grab the tutorial files: inlightvfx.gumroad.com/l/AcesAE
Mechanical Creature Kit by @Polyfjord: blendermarket.com/products/me...
My Patreon Page: / inlightvfx
Guess what?! After Effects finally supports ACES as a proper workflow option. So in this tutorial, I'll walk you through this new ACES workflow in After Effects. We'll go through all the menus, settings, and key concepts you should know to successfully adopt this workflow for your own projects. Enjoy!
OTHER LINKS FROM THE VIDEO:
To better understand why we sometimes set the input transform to 'Output - sRGB', read through this post on the ACES central forum. It's not the most concise, but it's the best I have for now (unless someone would like to explain it in the comments)
community.acescentral.com/t/s...
InLightVFX ►
Instagram: / inlightvfx​
Twitter: / inlightvfx
#aftereffects #ACES #workflow #vfx

[@nickjito]

It is just crazy to me how convoluted this process is.

[@PeterJansen]

Yet, if you do it properly, your images will look gorgeous. This is standard practice for VFX work. Source: Comp lead at a VFX studio who sets up a lot of this colour workflow for new projects.

[@nickjito]

@@PeterJansen I’ll take your word for it.

[@kickheavy8982]

I completely agree with you. I've been watching youtube videos literally ALL day for this stupid process lol. Can't even finish my project because I'm having trouble applying all these settings between redshift and AE. It's incredibly irritating.

[@lightning4201]

Same thing I thought. Don't think they had the end user in mind for this process. I appreciate the video though.

[@mpbMKE]

If you think *this* is convoluted, wait until you get to actual color science. 😵‍💫

[@Polyfjord]

Nice!! Cute creature AND valuable workflow!!! Thanks so much for making these videos, this is awesome!!

[@sightedits]

damn thats fast

[@InLightVFX]

Hey, thanks so much, Asbjørn! It was super fun to use the kit and thanks for letting me play with it!

[@BurzowySzczurek]

When I saw the robot I was like - isn't this a Polyfjord creating? Looks familiar, I check the comments and here you are.

[@BlenderSecrets]

Find someone to love you, the way InLightVFX loves ACES ;-) Very well made tutorial as usual.

[@PouletMasaky]

Finally a proper ACES workflow in After Effects ! That's a relief

[@rano12321]

Only took them like 6 years

[@HomAxz]

finally, i was using the opencolorio plugin before but this is so much nicer.

[@DanceManAlex]

So glad your making videos again! All super high quality. Color space with vfx has always been something I’ve struggled conceptualizing.

[@marchomotion]

These color space videos are so crucial. Thanks!

[@pro.tharan]

Yeeeeees this is what we like to see! Short and too the point, and finally ACES in After Effects, great round up as always!

[@adproproductions2038]

Great video and explanation! Thanks

[@tonytsaoproduction]

Thank you so much for the clear explanation of the workflow. Literally saved my day!

[@hellaocd]

You are goated! Thank you for covering this so quickly. Mad hype to not have to jump through hoops just to achieve an accurately color matched image

[@LeonSanginiti]

Excellent tutorial! For a very complicated workflow, you've done a great job explaining it!

[@Jeroen_Ech]

Thank you, this finaly got my head around it.

[@agudal8503]

I was searching for this info and this video is great! You did a great Job! Much appreciated, suscribed. Thanks!

[@geoffreybassett6741]

Thank you for the great and precise overview. I'm a colorist and have been sending this to VFX artists and it's been very helpful in explaining ACES.

[@InLightVFX]

That's high praise from a colorist, thanks for sharing it!

[@RoccoCanvas]

I'm very happy to have found this video today. It's very impressive！！🐿

[@emmettfeldman7103]

Amazing description, can't thank you enough!

[@JacobCuevasVFX]

Easily the best tutorial online. Great job explaining everything!

[@tateio7593]

This overview is absolutely pure gold for more reasons than one!

[@weyzhen]

Nice video, it is useful for my work, Thank you.

[@TheMrLeoniasty]

Great video ! I've been waiting for AE to implement ACES into their software for too long now

[@randmcnally.]

amazing video! very straightforward! very well done!

[@Ignash]

Hehe, it's nice you made a video about it!!! I really like it so far, I hope they will release non beta version soon :)

[@kushagrarajpatel5058]

Thank you very much

[@AlfieVaughan]

Another banger! Great video Jacob

[@InLightVFX]

Hey Alfie, I appreciate it!

[@AeBlues]

Very nice! thanks for the explanation

[@NirmalVfxArtist]

Perfect work ! Keep it up

[@Tugoose]

I've been learning about color managed workflows and messing around with AE old horrible system. Perfect timing for this to come out

[@zeeyannosse]

wonderful!!! bravo !!! melting brain awesomeness good vibes in the clarity of giving the information !

[@InLightVFX]

Thank you, and thanks for your support on Gumroad :)

[@bebo.motion]

Thanks for that video - helped me a LOT!!

[@Pewi73]

Fantastic. Really nice explanation. Thank you very much for bringing more clarity to me.

[@InLightVFX]

You're welcome!

[@krissosful]

Fantastic work!!

[@rowanwhile]

This is SUCH a helpful video. I have come back to this multiple times now for reference. Thank you so much for making this. You're a really talented educator!

[@csabamolnar4416]

THX!!!

[@miladfoolad3229]

mate you're a star thank you

[@yunyunyun790]

Finally！Now I can sleep well tonight

[@VizVinAnimation]

You are awesome man thanks for your effort

[@johntnguyen1976]

Omg I needed this so bad... literally just saw this as I was opening an AE project I have to deliver next week that can use this (instead of the janky hack I've been doing). Thank you sir!!!

[@InLightVFX]

Perfect timing!

[@johntnguyen1976]

@@InLightVFX none of my Patreons are as useful as yours. You da man! 🙌🏽

[@InLightVFX]

@@johntnguyen1976 I'm glad to hear that, thanks for your support!

[@Alphain]

Just a small suggestion with exporting the final thing for a colorist, You can export in pro res as well, it's lossless and preserves all the details and the file sizes arent huge like EXR

[@collider4378]

ProRes is not lossless, it is "visually" lossless. Tiff, EXR, DPX etc are lossless formats. Definitely check with the post house to see what they would like to receive.

[@filipebezerra]

incredible, thank you!

[@guntherstromberger2935]

Thank you, i am always messing up my color transforms hahah

[@ryanansen]

This is a great video with tons of useful information! Thank you so much. On a current VFX project I'm working on I've been utilizing exclusively a 32 bit ACES workflow within AE, and this helped me get a grasp of setting things up. That being said, I have been runing into some issues lately that I'm not 100% sure about the best approach to remedy it. I've had several shots where I'm wanting to overexpose parts of my image (for example, an interior scene with a window that I want blown out to be more realistic). The issue I've been running into on these shots is that upon making the final render, those bright areas end up being clamped down to a grayish-tone that looks very bad and incorrect. I'm assuming it has something to do with the high dynamic range of a 32 bit project, but I'm not entirely sure on the best way to approach this. So far, the only fix was to reduce the exposure of those bright areas until the clipping went away, but then I no longer had the overexposed effect I was intially going for. I want those areas to be over exposed, but I don't want them being clamped down to a slightly grey value, I want them to appear white or darn near close to it. Any ideas on a proper workflow for something like this? Or do you have any videos/courses that go over that? No worries if not, and thanks in advance!

[@InLightVFX]

So it sounds like what you're looking for is some sort of highlight rolloff. This is often done by tone mapping the shot at the end, maybe by applying a lut of some sort. For example Blender has tone mapping built in with the "filmic" color profile. There are ways to use that filmic profile in after effects. Overall, this is all a bit out of my wheelhouse but hopefully some of the stuff above provides some keywords/concepts that might get you started with some research.

[@ryanansen]

@@InLightVFX Thank you for the reply! And what you said sounds like a good lead to look into, thank you so much!

[@KernitTheFont]

Helpful, thanks!

[@pommedapi3847]

What a headache with this ACES workflow really! It was way easier earlier with full sRGB. Thanks for the tutorial.

[@CreepyGuy995]

Damn all those transforms are making me crazy

[@InLightVFX]

Welcome to color management :) It's a mess haha

[@benmyrick]

Thanks for this clear and concise tutorial! Question: are you viewing in ACES/sRGB because that's what your monitors are set up for? Are there any issues with this workflow and Mac monitors setup for "Display P3"?

[@inuyasha561]

LOVE this video YES!

[@ameerbabu9348]

This might be the best video I got on 2024

[@InLightVFX]

Thank you, I appreciate it :)

[@patrickl9930]

You're in resolve, you're only one step away from dumping musty old After Effects for Fusion :). Great tutorial, sending it to my AE friends!

[@InLightVFX]

Oh trust me, I've been tempted to dump it many a time :)

[@kendal3163]

This video is awesome!!! I will like to adress a small issue just in case. I found this problem with my cg and workflow and is that you have to convert the interpretation of the cg footage to 32 bit if you are working with EXR because if no the color appear compresed

[@esnoox8616]

Great Video, thanks a lot. What I noticed when working with ACES: there are no real whites, for example when creating new solids. Plus, all the grading steps behave completely different to the the usual srgb workflow. Maybe you can cover your typical grading steps in a future video? :)

[@nethstar]

For anyone that doesn't have an explicit "Output" in the render view. After clicking show all on the colour profiles, the only sRGB that matched was "sRGB-Display/Un-Toned Map"

[@sadness212]

💚Great job as always 💚 In a professional work environment what is the format that the videos are exported to be shown as a movie or series?

[@xanzuls]

Please make a Fusion video about ACES as well.

[@wyanga7770]

Color management in AE was always alien to me, Untill now, thankyou!

[@molo256]

Finally i used to put aces as a .cube luts on Photoshop limited to a 5 luts only which i could only play with opacity and rendering took forever with a lot of crashing

[@Rubel2k]

After Effects now has the OCIO Look Transform and OCIO CDL Transform as effects under the Color Correction category that use OpenColorIO to process color. You don't need to enable OpenColorIO color management in the project to use these effects. plz. make a video with this topic

[@rano12321]

So much more convoluted than Nuke

[@constantinosschinas4503]

Referring to footage as input confuses the audience. We don't have to "discuss another time". Color management is a "filter" that has Input and Output. We need to set a correct Input (color space of our footage), and a correct Output (desired colorspace of our footage).

[@ArisMelachroinos]

YOU ARE A HERO, IT WAS JUST WHAT I NEEDED! T H A N K Y O U S I R

[@AbdelhamidSerghini]

why the color picker changes to grey instead of pure white, when we change to aces workflow. thank you and well done for the tutorial

[@josipcgi]

Say I want to use ACES workflow, but I need to key green screen footage as well. How do I do that? I heard keylight doesn't work well in linear compositions. (Also, the footage can be shot in slog or cinetone, which one is better?)

[@zoneiiprod2567]

Great content man ! like and subscribe. thank you. just last question with which encoding format should we export from blender before compositing ?

[@InLightVFX]

OpenEXR is great - and if you're including different render passes OpenEXR Multilayer is the one for you!

[@zoneiiprod2567]

Many thanks 🙏

[@vitorassan]

What media color space/input transform should I use to work with braw footage (shot with a bmpcc4k) in this workflow?

[@InLightVFX]

Raw footage needs to be "debayered" by a software that can debayer raw footage. I'm not quite sure if After Effects can do that. What I would do is first take your footage into Davinci Resolve (since it definitely can debayer blackmagic raw), set resolve to use ACES in the color management, and make sure your ODT is set to none. Your footage should automatically convert into aces without needing to select any IDT for it. It will look wrong in the viewport (too contrasty probably) but that's ok. Just export an exr sequence of the footage. This EXR sequence is now in the ACES color space, so you can bring it into After Effects and set the IDT for the exr sequence to ACEScg. ... I know that's a lot. But it will work! Good luck!

[@hemantdoke9831]

great thank you for this tutorial, I have a 4444 XQ MOV file, but when I export it as a JPG from After Effects or Nuke and import it as an image plane in Maya with the camera, the color changes when I render it in Arnold. I'm working in ACES in Maya 2022, and I've set the camera color space to sRGB, but the color still changes. I was wondering if I might be exporting it incorrectly as a MOV file. How can I correct this issue? need your guidance on it thank you

[@bodobanali]

Where do i find this Color Output Setting when using Media Encoder?

[@gabriel1812]

My outputs appear a little dull when viewed in macOS's Finder. I've tried every combination possible, from OCIO 1.2, 1.3, and even custom OCIO profiles. They look fine when I bring the image back into the OCIO-managed AE project, but If I bring it into an Adobe Color Managed AE project, they look dull just like it does in Finder. Does anyone else have this issue??

[@yonlaycabrera4431]

Maybe I missed it, but I think you forgot to mention that you have to linearize the Working space from the project definition. Otherwise, the import will apply the internal Afx transformation color to all the imported footage.

[@InLightVFX]

This is at 1:37, no? Or are you describing something different?

[@yonlaycabrera4431]

​@@InLightVFX Yes, that is the one. But the issue is this: you explain very nicely what a linear workflow is and then jump into Afx and say: do this. You never mention that the previous explanation points to selecting that specific configuration in Working Color Space at that point of the video (I will explain this later you said) ;). As you can see, I missed it the first time I saw the video. Anyway, thank you so much for giving some light on all this mess.

[@Oldyellowbrick]

I was super excited about this but I think I prefer the old workflow where I stacked OCIO adjustment layers I could just copy/paste. Maybe I’m just being stubborn!?

[@InLightVFX]

You still can! It's right there at 4:00 and 6:48!

[@funkiEst]

Part of the income of my new VFX job is being earned by you right now, actually

[@_CDDVD_]

so did u rendered aces in blender beta? thanks for video!

[@InLightVFX]

I set up a custom ACES configuration for Blender. You can see how to do this here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eGipiIGEeb11opI

[@andreasalame7728]

Where can i get the OCIO Color Space Transform? i downloaded ocio for after effects 2022, but it doesnt show me that effect neither de especific name ACES-ACEScg

[@JohanLarssonDevilUfo]

Is it better to do adjustments like color correction after or before the ACES View Transform/Output transform?

[@InLightVFX]

You should be doing color correction in a large color space (a color space with a large gamut). The ACES color spaces are all quite large and good for color grading in. Once you apply an output transform, you color space will be squeezed down and made smaller. So you don't want to do color grading after the output transform. You could convert from ACES to another large color space for color grading (for example, you could convert from ACES to Davinci Wide Gamut, which is a common color space that many colorists use). Overall, the output transform should always be the very last thing in the sequence.

[@JohanLarssonDevilUfo]

Thank you for your answer!

[@InLightVFX]

No problem!@@JohanLarssonDevilUfo

[@kyleheilig255]

Thanks Jacob. What's the advantage of using ACES? I recently did some freelance and ran into trouble using ACES. I asked my colorist friend about it and he basically said to never use ACES unless I it was specified.

[@InLightVFX]

Hey Kyle, I would definitely give this guide a read as the author, Chris Brejon, can explain things better than I can. It's gets into a lot of detail so be prepared! But it's good information: chrisbrejon.com/cg-cinematography/chapter-1-5-academy-color-encoding-system-aces/

[@freeze102]

Honestly, in the VFX world... ACES is your lord an savior. Especially if you have to work with other shops/crews/vendors. With all the camera gammas/gamuts going around, managing a viable workflow between camera footage, cg elements, compositing and grading... you go mad. Enter: ACES - something everyone can agree on. It's like an universal law on how to treat color and everything. Import footage from a RED, from an Alexa and some stuff out of Maya/Blender/Whatver and without giving it much thought... it all lives in the same gamma and gamut. You dont have to think about LUTs and matching. It just works. And be careful when listening to colorists that were born before 1985ish. The only know their LOGs and are super confused when they have to start grading on something thats close to a Rec709 LUT... i know a lot of colorists that kind of are stuck in their craft/art. They are artists and they have an excellent eye for composition, color and tone. But a lot of the time they are stuck in time at the point where they had their breakthrough. They dont bother with ACES.

[@Aptass]

So how do you output aces from blender? or does filmic log have an input profile you can use in AE?

[@InLightVFX]

You will have to configure Blender for ACES and then you would be able to render in the ACEScg color space out of Blender. Here's a tutorial about the setup process: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eGipiIGEeb11opI

[@Aptass]

@@InLightVFX Thanks a lot for this video and enlightening reply

[@jmart714]

One issue I'm having with this workflow is when I work with a plugin like Maxon Universe. I think the plugin, and many others, are not designed to work in OCIO so they don't look right. Is there a workaround for this that anyone knows of? After Effects built in effects work fine.

[@mbarupa]

Why Aces 1.2? I'm new to colour management but I hear 1.3 has fixes like correcting out of gamut errors

[@i20010]

1:10 Why haven't you chosen aces 1.3? Thanks!

I duplicated output sRGB and rec709 to input for the artists ;)

[@digernesarne]

The big problem with ACES in AE is that the "Display Color Space" doesn't preserve RGB in native graphical elements like text, shapes, solids in AE.... Thankfully this method of making adjustment layers does work around that... (In my understanding the adjustment layer with Color Space Transform only applies itself to layers with an interperated input source. Which solids / text / shapes does not have.) But Adobe needs to fix this "display color space" or ACES in AE won't work intuitively with the majority use-case for AE which is motion graphics(!). It could be called ACES hybrid.

[@XmontyVFXx]

Does bitdepth play a role?

[@freeze102]

If you choose a non-linear Output-Transform (Like V-Log, LogC, S-Log etc), DON'T export to Half-Float/16bit EXR as OpenEXR was only ever meant to store LINEAR color values. Colorvalues are stored as floats and those are being "cropped" by 16bit EXRs... but Log footage needs the full float precision to keep the color details. So by exporting to a Half-Float EXR you are basicly losing a lot of color info, especialliy in the highlights. Its similar to exporting in 8 Bits. Forr iinear data, this doesn't matter as you just lose an inpercievable amount of colorprecision... in log, this tiny bit of precision multiplies exponentially. It's a very math heavy topic and hard to wrap your head around if you haven't dealt with colorspaces for a long time ;) If you want to export Log footage, go with DPX, ProRes4444 or an Avid equivalent.

[@InLightVFX]

Good to know! I had alway assumed linear needed more precision. Indeed, it is a math-heavy topic and I'm happy you said something!

[@freeze102]

@@InLightVFX thing is, linear values can be above 1.0, so a brigntess of 12 is no problem for EXRs whereas log values are compressed to the space between 0 and 1 and therefore there's a big difference if the value is 0.985 or 0.985734

[@InLightVFX]

@@freeze102 Ok, so since the log values are using a much smaller range of all possible encoding values (0 to 1) there needs to be more precision. Am I understanding that correctly?

[@freeze102]

@@InLightVFX Yes!

[@studiodevis]

"If you want to export Log footage, go with DPX, ProRes4444 or an Avid equivalent" All major camera brands, Sony, Canon, Panasonic etc encodes as standard LOG video footage in 10 bit 4:2:2 h265 files (or h264), some in 4:2:0. So no need for ProRes 4444. If the original is RAW video 12 or 14 bit, maybe. If not what's the point?

[@dcruz742]

CAN YOU PLZ PROVID LINK OF ALL PROJECT FILES ASAP...

[@EzraaaDave]

Please do a davinci resolve workflow and aftereffects using exr. Pleaseeeee

[@dossantos_films]

For some reason I don't have the V-Log output on my render options, even after pressing show all.

[@InLightVFX]

Hmm, that's odd. I'm not sure what else to try but I hope you figure it out.

[@dossantos_films]

@@InLightVFX i did! It’s input that I should use not output

[@InLightVFX]

@@dossantos_films Ahh yes, good!

[@MrYUMProductions]

Anyone else have many, many less options for color spaces in all the twirl down menus?

[@hohhan1978]

When we will se your videos uploaded in HDR???

[@jkartz92]

why not 1.3?

[@sergiolon7375]

scientist. :)

[@WallyMahar]

I would have not thrown you some money not thinking I was getting some kind blender file. def feel tricked. while I'm criticizing.. going why and what settings in blender would have been helpful. :/ anyway thanks for the vid. it did help me getting hdr up to youtube. I think . cant tell for sure.

[@xalener]

it took till 2023?

[@ThePokeManiac]

alot of information which is good but for some reason confusing to new user for understanding color management like its not a step by step understanding. .why the normal user should understand the color management workflow? .Who is it useful for? .Why we even work with Aces? .The difference between a normal guy using default color profiles YOLOing projects and this workflow? i feel like this topic needs a very in depth guide to which every user can use the workflow according to their footages and problem solving

[@InLightVFX]

Hi there, I really appreciate your feedback and thank you for taking the time to outline those concerns. Sometimes I do lose perspective on some of those more foundational concepts. For this video, I wanted to keep it shorter. Yes, it probably leaves some questions for people who are unfamiliar with color management basics. I do have a few other videos about ACES like this one which go into more detail: kzbin.info/www/bejne/l3upY6Z3n7emr5I

[@manolomaru]

✨💪😎🙂😎👍✨

[@tracecarrasco3872]

If it's one thing I've realized from my climbing videos - it's that the number one most important thing is the color. Now I only go as far as shooting in slog since I'm just filming for fun 😆. But all of this is to say that it's really cool to see this process done at a professional level!

[@InLightVFX]

Haha it's true, Trace. It's definitely a less glamorous topic but truly a game changer once you start to understand how to properly manage color and luminance. It happens to me all the time where I see some great CG/VFX work and then I discover that usually the artist is a bit of a color nerd. And hey, slog is great. You could use that with Aces, too, if you ever wanted to dip your toe in.

[@jean-philippegrignom6479]

:)

[@pierdylll]

Is it just me, ACES in AE is very slow?

[@demonhogo]

title should be how to set color space, not compositing lol

[@handdrawnbink]

People... After Effects hasn't worked in years. It's not that it's just buggy, it's not that it's slow and unpredictable, it's not that it crashes at random and uses archaic methodology to achieve sub-standard results that always take more time to fix than any other compositing and animation software on the market since 2015... It's that it's ALL OF THESE THINGS. Instead of calling out Adobe on years of negligence we make videos about how AE got a colour system that should have been introduced at least two years ago, and everyone just ignores the fact that the program is going to crash at least twice before you even get into the workflow. PLEASE stop posting videos about how great After Effects is and start posting about the issues that Adobe has ignored for years while they happily take our money and increase the fees as to no proactive result.

[@WalterSamuels]

Great, they finally added it with the worst UI & UX implementation ever and it's still a nightmare to use. That's Adobe for you. Always doing the absolute bare minimum to stay relevant.

[@mrAndrewNameless]

Great explanation, very helpful! Thanks!

[@InLightVFX]

No problem!