Thoughts after first ACES project with new OCIO tools.

I have to say - it's the first iteration and it works really really well - congrats to the team 🙂

And my actual problems don't really have anything to do with the OCIO implementation - it's with the workflow that is a result of it.

Here are some things that need work:

- is there a reason a jpeg, with embeded sRGB color profile does not get automatically assigned a proper profile? It gets ACES 2065 😕😕

- Add Grain still doesn't work in 32bit - come on guys. You don't even have to rewrite it - pixels above white shouldn't even get noise added just like pure white. Just don't clip the original pixel values - that's all I ask

- Unsharp Mask creates negative pixel values - makes it unusable in 32bit workflows 😞

And a general problem - negative pixel values.

When we're working in 32bits per channel the pixel values are unrestricted.

That was good before, since if we were switching to 32bits it was obvious the project needed an unconventional workflow - we had to monitor our pixel values so that they made sense.

But now - with every ACES project - working in 32bits is just default - it's a normal work day.

Apparently there is a surprising number of ways to create negative pixel values: Levels, Curves, Hue/Saturation, Gaussian Blur, Unsharp Mask, the list goes on.

And these negative values actually get exported with EXRs - this is not good.

The pixels  that represent an image file cannot have negative values - it breaks other chain links in the pipeline - it even breaks AE, color corrections don't work on negative pixels!

This is a problem that needs to be solved.

First and simplest - can we please change the default value for Black clipping in the Levels Effect to "On"? Right now it is "Off for 32bit" - it's fine for white clipping but for black not so much. If we change it to "On" Levels will not create negative values by default, so I think it's a good idea.

Now, like I mentioned above, there are numerous ways that negative values get created.

So we need AE to automatically clip them in working color space or at the very least some kind of alert that will tell us that the current frame contains negative values.

Like an exclamation mark Icon than shows up in the Comp Viewer tool bar - and when we hover over it or click it it will actually highlight the pixels in the viewer - I don't know, maybe something like black/white clippnig in ACR?

Seriously, we've had around 25% returns of our shots for that reason alone - the shots had negative pixel values from time to time.

Right now we have made it a habit to put an adjustment layer above each shot with a default Levels affect, just switching clip Black to "On" - it's a hack but it works fine.

That said, I feel we need a more professional way of dealing with these negative values.