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

By the end of this Insight you should understand:

• Why transforming into Rec709 prior to your LUT may be a significant compromise for your image
• What is the actual color space expected by the Resolve Film Looks LUTs and other legacy film LUTs?
• The history and intended use of the ACES ADX standard

Related Mixing Light Insights

• Fight Path: What is ACES and how do you use it? – In this Flight Path, you learn what ACES is and how the post-production pipeline is executed. ACES-related acronyms are broken down and you learn how to set up ACES on several different, common software platforms.
• Grading with Resolve’s default film LUTs – Insight Library search results for color grading with Resolve’s default Film LUTs