Revisiting RCM, ACES & CST Workflow

Day 21: 24 Insights In 24 Days – 2020 New Year Marathon!

From The MailBag Episode 80

Color Management (Using The CST OFX) Within A Color Managed Project?

Depending on who you talk to, the topic of color management can be as divisive as politics – some colorists swear by color management approaches, praising them for the mathematical precision, deliverable management abilities and overall flexibility.

While other colorists loath color management – they have deep ceded feelings about color management including its restrictive nature, math with no human touch, and complexity that is often not needed.

No matter the camp you fall in, color management systems, tools and techniques are a reality for the modern colorist on some level. Indeed, not a week goes by that we don’t get a few emails asking about LUTs, RCM, ACES and the Color Transform OFX.

Color management to certain extent comes in different flavors from simple approaches like using LUTs to project wide approaches like ACES & RCM.  There are hybrid approaches using the CST effect and lots of potential combinations of tool sets & techniques.

However, one thing rings true no matter the approach –  you have to do some thinking about the processing pipeline and have a decent understanding of all the math that’s potentially taking place – if you don’t, you’re opening the door to problems that can be hard to figure out.

Recently, we got a member from a Mixing Light member Charles that put a twist on the typical questions we get on color management.  In his email, Charles asks about using the CST effect on the clip level but within a Resolve Color Management (RCM) project.  He’s curious how the two interact and how a output space choice in the CST interacts with the output choice in his RCM settings.

As you can imagine this lead to a fun, in-depth discussion on color management and Charles – we’re not sure we actually answered your question but hopefully the discussion in this installment of From The Mailbag helps!

Have A Question For Team Mixing Light?

Remember, if you have questions that you’d like to get an opinion on please use the contact form

Your questions can be aesthetic, technical or even client related. We’d love to hear from you, and your question might make future episodes of From The MailBag.

Enjoy the MailBag!

-Robbie