Support the OCIO/ACES Color Management Workflow for Premiere Pro

[Eccentric Locust]

The Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) is widely considered to be one of the best ways to manage color in the color grading phase of post-production and is essentially an industry standard.

I noticed in the 2024 update for After Effects that it now implements the OCIO color management solution for supporting the ACES color workflow. So anyone working in After Effects can now use the ACES color workflow.

I would like to also see this implemented for Premiere Pro as well so that editors and colorists can now work in the ACES workflow. Even though most professional colorists aren't often using Premiere to color grade, this can still be useful for encouraging editors, content creators, freelancers, as well as independent filmmakers to be able to dive in and understand the ACES color workflow.

Other editing platforms, such as DaVinci Resolve, support ACES; so I'd love to see Premiere Pro also join the party.

I personally believe including ACES support for Premiere Pro will make the ACES color workflow more accessible as well as making color management more simple and consistent.

[R Neil Haugen]

Definitely would appreciate this myself.

I work for/with/teach pro colorists, and with some of the top teaching colorists of the planet. They're all familiar with ACES workflows, even though many don't actually use that within Resolve or Baselight due to what some perceive as the restrictive nature of ACES. Although the newer version is better.

Still, it would be so freaking useful to have that option!

[Shebbe]

I really hope they will unify AE/PR much more. Their sluggish launch of their new integrated color management in Premiere is questionable. It all started with a 'fix' for Rec.2100 encoded material like from iPhones. Now we have only a few log encodings amongst which RED, ARRILogC3/4, sRGB, AdobeRGB are still missing which is weird. It also only functions on certain files. Why is it even that hard to implement more log encodings in the first place. It's just predetermined math. But once they have a more robust system in place the main problem is still there. Dynamic Link doesn't have any management.... if you'd use colormanaged workflow in PR and dynamic link to AE for VFX there is no way to get the management back. Even with rendering it out. On top of that PR management is not available in AE and same goes the other way around. 

It's just a big mess. They need to fully unlock management in PR and transfer that system over to AE. And then do the same for OCIO in PR including communication to Dynamic Linked media.

They have a lot of work to do and I suspect it'll take a very long time if it'll ever happen.. given the results I've seen from past iterations. The state of OCIO implementation in AE is by far not even what it should be yet. And I have my doubts if they even understand what is needed for such workflows. Or their marketing team is limiting their development time on such 'irrelevant' features. But yea.. one can only guess...

[R Neil Haugen]

Great comments.

Who can understand internal corporate dynamics? I sure don't! Like the whole need to keep their expected future color setups secret, they can't even tell us what they are planning to implement, even in a broad, general direction.

Very frustrating.