Substituting ACES ADX for Cineon Film Log When Using Resolve’s Film LUTs

Working with greater accuracy while using Resolve’s default Film LUTs

As a colorist, film enthusiast, and color scientist, I’ve spent a LOT of time thinking up better ways to model the behavior of film in a dynamic and scene-referred way. I’ve come up with some great solutions, but sometimes all this head-scratching complexity isn’t necessary — what if we just want to use the Resolve’s native Film Looks LUTs to get a nice SDR reproduction of our camera log material?

The conventional wisdom is that it’s as simple as transforming our source into Rec709/Cineon, and then applying the LUT.

Moving beyond the Cineon

And while this works, it’s not ideal, and there’s actually a better way to get our image into the approximate color space of a film negative. This can be accomplished with the ACES ADX standard, which was devised to provide a method of color managing scanned film, as well as preparing an ACES grade for a film-out.

Learning goals for this Insight