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:
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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.
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Replies
Off to a good start, nice work!
There is a lot of things still missing and also some things not working as intended.
1. Open as OpenColorIO...
Does not work when importing an EXR (or any image?) sequence. Only single files.
2. OpenColorIO panel
- Exposure slider resets on disable switch but doesn't restore it's setting on re-enable. Gamma does work with the switch.
- Visually the exposure/gamma on/off switch is confusing because it doesn't have an active color. For the layer filtering switch this doesn't matter because the related options get greyed out as visual indicator. This is not the case with the exposure/gamma switches.
- Visually it is also not clear enough that values are changed. Since this is a reference setting rather than an image manipulation setting it needs to be more clear to the user that the preview is altered. Perhaps greying out the sliders and values when not active or at unity position is the best option here.
- It could be nice/practical to add a saturation slider float from 0-2 with 1.0 unity.
3. Mismatch/Duplicate Adjustment Layers
The upgrade/addition of adjustment layers to work for 32bit/linear images is fantastic. But they are separate entities from those seen in the Adjustment Layer panel and need to be accessed via the menu or layers panel. I actually had to find out that Exposure is also one of them but the ones from Adjustment Layer panel add the 'standard' 8bit style ones instead. This is confusing. I would either give them different names and add them all to the panel for faster access. Or make the existing ones available and auto pick the 32bit version in a 32bit or OpenColorIO document.
4. Video is not compatible yet
Importing video as OpenColorIO document does present the config window to define the config file and input space but after confirming the image is wrong.
5. Clear OCIO language
This is very important. Please do not change the given names. The same was also done in After Effects and it's not practical to deviate from them. It only creates unnecessary confusion. OpenColorIO Transform is not the right name and it feels like it was done to shorten the name 'OpenColorIO Color Space Transform' but the names are actually shorter.
Here is the list you ideally inherit just like most other software does. (including the lack of spaces)
OCIOCDLTransform
OCIOColorSpace <--- that's your OpenColorIO Transform
OCIODisplay
OCIOFileTransform
OCIOLookTransform
OCIONamedTransform
6. Missing OCIO effects
In line with the above, all of the other listed OCIO effects are missing as option for Adjustment Layer. We will need them all. Even OCIODisplay counter intuitive as it may sound. It's more about flexibility and user based control over what to do within the pipeline rather than being locked in. Highest priority is OCIOLookTransform (to allow ACES Reference Gamut Compression or custom integrated looks from config) and OCIOFileTransform (to allow use of external LUTs in OCIO supported formats).
7. OCIO Entries section
It would be tidier if in the menu they have their own section once the others are added.
8. Info Panel color values
I have two issues in the context of working with 32bit and OCIO in Photoshop
- There is no auto depth option like in After Effects that will show 8int/16int/32float depending on document depth.
- The total amount of values seen is fixed to 4. So a float value of 1,9359 = 1,936 but a value of 235,94102 = 235,9
This isn't very practical for working in linear especially when needing to do some more accurate measuring work where you care about the decimals. Maybe this needs some love.
That's all I can find for now. Hope this is helpful.
This is great feedback, glad you're enjoying it so far!
1. Currently, we do not support image sequences or video sequences in OCIO documents.
2. Thanks for catching these bugs, we will look into it. Oddly, I can only reproduce the exposure bug, the gamma toggle works fine. Thanks for the ideas on improving the panels UI/UX.
6/7. When you add OCIOTransform Adjustment layer, the various OCIO conversion types are sub-menus of this, selectable with the first dropdown. We don't support every single one yet, but we do support four so far.
For the other items, we can investigate, thanks for all the feedback!
Thanks @CodyCuellar, also for adding the new operators quite quickly!
I'm not fully confident that having the OCIO operators grouped into a single OpenColorIO filter is the best idea. This causes the layer to not reflect which of these is chosen, reducing document readability. Sure we can rename the layers but it would be more practical if they are named by type by default. I also hope you will change the names of the operators at least to OCIO rather than OpenColorIO as that reads a lot faster and cleaner. But ideally change the names according to my initial feedback.
Here an example to illustrate a possible scenario.
Current layers:
Updated to separate operators with matching names:
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