Scene Referred or Display Referred Grading?

[Virgil Edward]

Good day to all, I'm wondering if what most of you use as your workflow. Whenever I use ACES, it's quicker for me to primary balance shots, but my problem is that I can't have the blacks that I want from DaVinci YRGB. The blacks clips to the S-Curve of ACES same with the whites. 

 

My problem with DaVinci YRGB is that ACES' color is more natural and 'correct' when balancing, skin tones looks nice as well. I'm torn apart by the pros and cons of each color science. 

Edited September 30, 2019 by Virgil Edward

[Margus Voll]

Have you tried after balancing with log tools make another node and use primary tools to see how that behaves for shadow and whites?

IN a way that is ACES feature to be softer on those areas and not clip insanely but do it more organically. At lest this is how it seems to me.

[Virgil Edward]

With log tools, does it normally saturate the highlights/shadows? Yes, I like how it does it organically, but sometimes I just want to drop blacks or increase highlights without affecting most of the image.

[Margus Voll]

Log tools affect mainly mid tones and a bit high and low depending how you have set tolerances.

Try Primary in last node or after log and see what it does.
Seems to me that it is less gentle and affects images more harsh which also seems to be the thing you are after.

Just try it out as it is my subjective feel to do that like this. It might not be "correct" but usually works in situations where i use it.

[Luca Leocádio Soares]

I had the same "problem", and the way I found was to work in YRGB and use the ACES Transform OFX to get the best of both worlds. However this might not be ideal if you have multiple deliveries, especially in HDR, in that case I also believe that log tools can give you the blacks you want.

As for the workflow with the ACES Transform OFX, you could try this:

Node 1 - IDT to ACEScct

Node 2 -  Primary balance

Node 3 - ODT to Rec709

Node 4 - Adjust the blacks

 

[Virgil Edward]

2 hours ago, Luca Leocádio Soares said:

I had the same "problem", and the way I found was to work in YRGB and use the ACES Transform OFX to get the best of both worlds. However this might not be ideal if you have multiple deliveries, especially in HDR, in that case I also believe that log tools can give you the blacks you want.

As for the workflow with the ACES Transform OFX, you could try this:

Node 1 - IDT to ACEScct

Node 2 -  Primary balance

Node 3 - ODT to Rec709

Node 4 - Adjust the blacks

 

Thanks for this one, Luca. I will give this one a try, it also works for the highlights right? It's okay since we don't do HDRs yet here in the Philippines.

[Luca Leocádio Soares]

Yeah, for highlights and midtones.

[Matthew Tapson]

I was watching one of Dado Valentic's Youtube seminars a few months ago and he dropped an offhand comment about how to achieve Rec709 grading 'feel' in Aces. The screengrabs show the setup he recommended. I saved it out as a powergrade but haven't actually tried it out yet. Might work for you..

[Hartmut Nörenberg]

Why not really work in ACES?

The controls are not that hard to understand, they just feel different.

[Margus Voll]

This rec feel in aces i somehow always fail to relate to. Just find ACES controls much better (log tools) and gives much cleaner results to me faster.

[Anton Meleshkevich]

On 10/4/2019 at 2:59 PM, Matthew Tapson said:

 to achieve Rec709 grading 'feel' in Aces.

When (or 'if') blackmagic finally fix a bug with node colorspace and node gamma in ACES, this will be possible to do just using one node and node colorspace/gamma settings.