New feature: OpenColorIO and 32-bit Editing now available in Photoshop Beta

[nikunj.m]

Photoshop Beta now natively supports OpenColorIO (OCIO). In addition to OCIO support, we have expanded the tools available for editing in 32-bit mode.

Tools with new 32-bit functionality:

• Dodge Tool 
  
• Burn Tool 
• History Brush 
• Flood Fill/Solid Fill (Paint Bucket)
• Sponge Tool
• Magic Wand 
• Magnetic Lasso 
• Healing Brush 
• Spot Healing

• Brush Tool 
• Remove Tool 
• Black and White Adjustment Layer 
• Color Balance Adjustment Layer 
• Content-Aware Move Tool 
• HDR Histogram 
• Patch Tool 
• Red-Eye Tool

About OCIO:

OCIO is an open-source color management system that allows teams and productions to define a single set of color spaces and Color transforms for consistency across vendors and artists for a single project. Native OCIO implementation in Photoshop has been a long-time request from our customers in the VFX and Film industries. It is essential to their workflows and allows easy interoperability with their OCIO workflows. OCIO also provides built-in support for the ACES color management system.

Learn more about OCIO here: https://opencolorio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Learn more about ACES here: Academy Color Encoding System (ACES)

Setting up OCIO:

Note: OCIO must be explicitly enabled in the Photoshop Beta preferences under “Technology Previews.” The GPU should also be enabled in the “Performance” preferences.

❶ Ensure Preferences > Technology Previews > Precise Color Management for HDR Display and OpenColorIO Color Management are checked. If you have an HDR display, it is enabled in the OS, and you will use HDR output with OCIO.

❷ Select “Ok” to exit out of preferences and then restart Photoshop Beta

❸ Upon relaunch, you can now edit your OCIO settings in Edit > OpenColorIO Settings.

❹ In the File menu, documents can now be opened as an OCIO document, or created as New documents:

❺ When OCIO is enabled, you will see the following new UI items:

• "Open Color IO Settings” menu item in the Edit menu.
• “Duplicate to Profile” in the Edit menu. This is available when working on an OCIO document.
• "Open Color IO” panel in the Windows menu.
• “Convert To Open Color IO” in the Edit menu
• Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Open Color IO Transform

❻ When you create a new document, you are presented with the legacy “New document” dialog. This dialog has a checkbox for enabling OCIO on the new document.

❼ Color transforms for files placed into an OCIO document can be set via the Properties panel when the placed layer is selected.

Configuration

Photoshop will locate OCIO configuration from the following locations:

• Environment (using the OCIO environment variable)
• One of the available built-in ACES configurations.
• Presets folder

MacOS location: /Applications/Adobe Photoshop (Beta)/Presets/OCIO/Configurations

Windows location: C:\Users\some-user\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop (Beta) \Presets

These configurations are displayed in the “Configuration” popup controls in the Open Color IO Settings dialog and the “Open Color IO panel.

The Open Color IO Settings dialog sets the default configuration and working space.

The Open Color IO panel is used to manage the settings for the current document.

Placed Layer Content

Files placed into smart object layers can have their own OCIO source color space individually assigned to them.

Upon placement a file into an OCIO color-managed document, the layer will initially be assigned a color space based on the file rules found in the document’s OCIO configuration. If a suitable rule is not found, the default source space will be chosen based on any embedded color management the placed file may have (such as an embedded ICC color profile).

The source color space for a placed layer can be changed anytime by opening the OCIO Input Color Space popup menu in the Properties panel.

There are three standard items at the top of the menu, followed by a list of common roles-based color spaces. Following that, at the bottom of the menu are additional submenus with more color spaces grouped by category. When converting them to the document's working space, these spaces determine what colors are assigned to the placed file’s pixels.

The first three standard items have specific functionality.

• Use Embedded Color Space: This is the default color conversion method used when there is no known OCIO color space to assign to the placed layer. This method will use any embedded color management in the placed file. This will typically be an ICC profile, but it could be an OCIO color space if the placed file is an OCIO-based Photoshop document (PSD or PSB).
• Pass-through (Do Not Convert): No color conversion is applied at all when this item is selected. The exact pixel values in the placed file are copied unchanged into the document’s working space. This would also be equivalent to what would happen if the placed layer’s color space is the same as the document’s working space.
• Auto Select: Selecting this item causes the placed file’s name and path to be examined for a matching color space using the file rules found in the document’s OCIO configuration. Any matching color space is then assigned to the layer. This is the same selection process that occurs when the file is initially placed, but with one exception: The color space associated with the default file rule is honored in this case, whereas the “Use Embedded Color Space” option is the default upon initial placement.

Duplicate To Profile

This command is available from the Edit menu when the active document uses OCIO.

This command creates an ICC-based document from the current OCIO document. The new document is flattened and contains one layer.

The command allows the user to specify the display/view transform to use on the source document and determine the created document's bit depth and ICC profile.

If the chosen source display is a non-virtual display, the display/view transform result is used directly as the pixel data in the target document. These pixels are tagged with the selected profile, which should match the selected display to ensure an accurate result.

If the chosen display is a virtual display, the OCIO transformation will create pixels matching the selected target profile. Regardless of the selected target profile, you will get an accurate result.

Log files

OCIO-related log entries are written in the general Photoshop log file.

• MacOS location: /Users/some-user/Library/Logs/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop (Beta)

• Windows: C:\Users\some-user\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\ Adobe Photoshop (Beta)\Logs

You can search for entries beginning with “OCIO:”

Example:

• 2024/01/22_12:06:22.342(+00.000)[...] OCIO: OCIO is available
• 2024/01/22_12:06:23.560(+01.218)[...] OCIO: No root folder.

The OCIO log level can be set in the following way:

Create a text file called PSUserConfig.txt and place it into the Photoshop settings folder:

• MacOS location: /Users/some-user/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop (Beta) Settings
• Windows location: C:\Users\some-user\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop (Beta)\Adobe Photoshop (Beta) Settings

Add this line of text to the file:

OCIOLogLevel "warning"

The following options are supported “debug,” “info,” “warning.”

Known issues

• Windows with “Advanced Color” turned on does not correctly display OCIO data (virtual display recommended)
• The Navigator is OCIO-managed but currently does not show over-range pixel values.

[ChuckyBoilo]

Hello, 

Just posted to an ACEScentral thread on the subject. Re-posting here:

johns26780395 Brushed upon this below.

What ODT is it using by default? We have an OCIOLookTransform (client_look in our case) in our OCIO that we'd like to use but I can't seem to be able to choose which ODT I want to view the shot through. It's just applying a "random ODT" from what I'm seeing. Certainly matches a display referred output in Nuke but it's not the one I'd like to use.

Also, would we be able to circle back to our working space (ACEScg) once we are done in PS? Was not able to do this  either.

Don't get me wrong. It's awesome that you finally want to support this! But the workflow needs to get our of the traditional "display referred" state that PS has always lived in. 

Keep it up!

[CodyCuellar]

The ODT used is based on the OCIO V2 spec, which is broken into two parts, the view, and the display. These two can be chosen via the OCIO panel found in 'Window > OCIO'. By default, we select the first item, which in the built-in config is sRGB with the ACES SDR tone mapping view. For most Apple displays the correct display to use is "Display P3 - Display", and for Windows "sRGB - Display", but you can chose any of the available combinations as defined in the loaded config.

As for round tripping ACEScg, make sure to open your documen as a 32b OCIO document with the working space you want to roundtrip (ACEScg). When using 'File > Save a Copy', you can save an OpenEXR and it will use the document's colorspace, ignoring the display/view. If you want to customize the colorspace for the saved file different than the working space, you can use an adjustment layer to convert from the working space to any other colorspace defined in the config. Hope this helps!

[Shebbe]

I'm trying to test various OCIO configs but I keep getting errors on opening or converting to OCIO documents. I added the PSUserConfig OCIOLogLevel "debug" and "warning" but they don't really differ from eachother and barely show any usable info in the logs. What is the Root Folder exactly used for in OCIO Settings? Setting it doesn't seem to do anything. And what are the differences in debug, info, warning for the log levels? Which one shows the most info?

Blender config

Why is Photoshop trying to 'add' a color space named XYZ?
After removing the role it does connect to it but you get an error when creating or converting to OCIO document.

TCAM config & ACES 1.2 (OCIOv1 configs)

Loads but gives the same error as Blender on opening or converting to OCIO document.

[ChuckyBoilo]

Hello again,

Under what version is this suppoed to be enabled? I just installed 25.13.0 on mac and can't see the options in the technology previews panel. It was the only I had access to under beta in CC. 

Thanks!

[CodyCuellar]

Hi, it's been moved to 'Edit > OpenColorIO Settings'. From that dialog you can enable/disable the OCIO features.

[ChuckyBoilo]

Cool thank you!

[Shebbe]

Some more feedback:

I think it's against the nature of OCIO that the software integration is limiting the choices available for working space in the ACES configurations despite expected ACES based workflows. If someone wants to pick a camera space as working space they should be able to without editing the config, changing some of the roles.

After Effects 'solved' this by adding a Show All checkbox. Nuke simply lists the roles and then the color spaces.

What will Photoshop do?

[jackdaw_1066]

I originally posted on this forum as a several years ago asking for OCIO and ACES to be implemented as well as 32bit improvements, I’m happy you’re looking into it but at the moment the implementation causes more problems than it solves.

I have few suggestions and questions for 32bit docs mainly workflow related

• Why do 32bit files take soooooo long to save still, especially on files larger than 10,000px which is pretty standard these days, 20,000px is not uncommon
• Why does Photoshop still not support multichannel EXRs without a plugin
• Dodge and burn tools are useless for a non-destructive workflow, please add all the missing blending modes such as overlay and soft light to 32bit documents
• Why do we not have decent tone mapping tools yet as an adjustment layer such as Reinhard or Filmic Tone mapping with shoulder, linear section and toe, (they do go deeper in BMD Fusion and Nuke)
• Further to my previous point why are curves so compressed in the working area, its almost impossible to make fine adjustments, can we have a secondary mode that remaps the curve to a more usable state

A lot of these VFX programs allow people to make their own tools to create missing toolsets, surely at this stage with programs being far less locked down and the subscription model you’ve implemented you don’t need new features to drive in revenue the way you did before. Can you not allow people to make their own adjustment layers that can be distributed and installed in an open source manner similar to these VFX programs available.

These next few point are more related to the OpenColorIO implementation

• Why does it have to be an entirely different document type, Affinity doesn’t have to do this
• Why when we open a 32bit exr document as an OpenColorIO document does every layer appear as a smart layer, this really messes up a lot of our workflow
• Please include Adobe 98 and ProPhoto as display profiles working spaces and output options. For people that still work with print this is important

Thanks

[MATT_STEPHENS8800]

i couldnt agree more with the above!

[CodyCuellar]

Thanks for the valuable feeback, I'll do my beest to answer what I can here, as there's a lot.

• 32b save times. This is mainly due to the way PSD have always worked, and we did not make any changes to it. I do hope we can revisit this area soon to be able to largely optimize floating point PSD documents one way or another to help on the very large file sizes and slower save/load times.
• Multilayer EXR. As mentioned in previous responses in this thread, this is a longstanding issue with the way Photoshop originally implemented openEXR, but it is on our radar to update and we will hopefully have the ability to work with multi-layer EXR in the near future.
• 32b Blend modes. This is a rather hot topic of debate, but it is something I imagine we will address soon at least in the OCIO space since the blending can be done in technically any tone curve encoding. That does mean that linear blending with many of the blend modes might produce garbage results and we need to address that one way or another. But this isn't forgetten about.
• Tone Mapping tools. Unfortunately, this type of feature did not align with the goals of OCIO, but hopefully can be looked at in the future.
• Curves interpolation space.  This is tricky in OCIO without adding a dropdown for allowing the user to manually select an interpolation space. Reason being if we just assume the working space as the curves input - we might get it wrong if the user places a colorspace transform just before the curves and the input is not actually in the working space. I do agree it would ideally be user friendly in any circumstance, but is not something we looked heavily into just yet.
• Why is OCIO a different document type. One big reason is due to how much of the pipeline changes when working in OCIO, we chose to make OCIO documents their own dedicated model so we can fire up/activate necessary features and UI elements when and only when OCIO is being used by the user/document.
• Why are inputs smart layers? This is by design, it is the only way in the Photoshop document model to bring in more than one input image from different color spaces and non-destructively modify their input colorspace transform dynamically. Traditional layers force the user to bake the transform from the input space to the working space, which defeats the purpose of OCIO in many cases. You can, however easily rasterize the layer to a standard layer if you're certain the IDT is correctly assigned to the smart layer.
• Adobe 98/ProPhoto. This is something that has come up in a few places, but as of right now there are two issues. One is, we are simply using the OCIO built-in configs which are the ACES configs. We do not add/remove colorspaces to these configs we just expose them as-is for the most part (minus a few display features). ProPhoto in particular is difficult as OCIO does not actually have a transform that is able to mathematically handle the exact curve of ProPhoto encoding, so unfortunately, we could not add it even if we wanted to at this time.

We appreciate all the feedback, and hope to continue making improvments over time to make these OCIO workflows better for everyone!

[Lars Gerstenmaier]

Hi Cody, is the multi-layer exr future already near? That would be definitely a big help. And will this also bring us support for Cryptomattes? 

Nice day,

Lars

[ChuckyBoilo]

Progressing in my tests and I'm getting to something interesting. Thats being said the latest version crashed when trying to load a OCIO layer. I'm using our own config. Earlier version was not an issue. 

Upon restarting PS my OCIO settings are all gone. 

Anyone else is having this also? 

Thanks!

[ChuckyBoilo]

Just tried with the PS standard config. Crashing also.

[ChuckyBoilo]

Also adding that I'm windows 11. @CodyCuellar any issues denoted on your end? 

[ChuckyBoilo]

One more: crashing also on 14.1.1 (23B81)

[ChuckyBoilo]

macOS

[CodyCuellar]

I believe this crasher has been addressed, check either the latest Beta build or one of the near future builds should adddress these issues. If not, please let us know.

[dotproduct_7980]

This is very exciting! First off, thank you for adding this long-awaited feature set!

Looking ahead on how we could make use of this in our pipeline I was curious about a few things:

• OCIO Document Format: You mentioned in a few recent responses that for a variety of engineering reasons you had to introduce a dedicated OCIO document type. Would you mind detailing in how exactly they differ to regular .psd or .psb files? Even greater would be an update to the official, published Photoshop file specification.
• Plugin API Integration: Are there any plans to add support for this feature set in the Photoshop UXP API? For eventual pipeline integration it would be super helpful to have at least support for querrying whether a given document is of type OCIO and access corresponding user/document color settings.
• Half Floats: This is only tangentially related, but I am curious if it was ever considered to add support for 16bit floats (i.e. half floats) as a data format? The addition of better or more complete support for tools/workflows in 32bit is awesome and long-await. From an engineering standpoint I would assume that a certain amount of refactoring or generalization is necessary to add that support and so I'm wondering if in the course of that the addition of half floats has ever come up. File sizes tend to get very big when working with 32bit so it would be nice to have a format that had a similar ability to represent/edit overrange values like 32bit but with half the data foot print. 

Thank you so much!

[Ondrej35784250mhrk]

I need to import .EXR image from Blender 4.2  with its OCIO config, but I can't find a folder or root in PS to copy .ocio file frome Blender color management.  

Someone can help me? Thanks 

[Lars Gerstenmaier]

You can define a config file here -> https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/opencolorio-transform.html