Dan’s Month In ACES

My Time Getting To Know ACES

Well, it’s the 1st of June and I’ve (almost) stuck to my guns for my month in ACES.

I can honestly say that I’ll be happily using ACES as part of my regular workflow from now on.

In a happy coincidence, an Amazon Fire Stick commercial came in last week and thanks to my deep dive into ACES the HDR grade was as simple as swapping my Output Transform and doing a trim pass.

Let’s jump to my video below where I explain some of my jobs this month.

I’ve included links below to videos of each job if you’d like to check them out full screen while I speak about them in the video.

Some Of My ACES Jobs

Topman Suits

Topman suits was a the perfect introduction into the world of ACES.

It was an unattended grade with supplied stills to match.

The grade took a single node and about an hour to dial in and made me extremely happy on day one!

Renault Family Life

This job was a kick back to earth.

Well shot Red Helium was a breeze to grade but how about some dash cam and cheap drone footage!

This was a much bigger struggle but by the end of it I was quite happy grading away as normal.

Audemars Piguet Royal Oak

This job job was a precision macro grade where every possible area was masked off and refined.

The surprising issue I ran into on this job was making it look more video.

The client requested that I crush the black to zero and highlights right up to the top.

Due to the curve in ACES it was impossible to get a true white with the output display transform rolling off the highlights nicely each time.

Our work around on this job was to push the image post grade in the Flame!

MØ – Nights With You

This is the job where I abandoned ACES entirely and went with a regular grade.

Around 2:36 in the video lots of neon colors arrived into the image and started causing posterization effects.

I made a call there and then to swap out of ACES for the job and investigate further when I had more down time!

Conclusion

I’m sure you have many questions to ask so please do and I’ll do my best to answer them all.

ACES has been a great fun experience for me and I’d love everyone to be happy working in color managed color spaces.

If you’ve got any questions, be sure to leave a comment!

-Dan