It’s time for the fourth chapter
Some years back, I tried very hard to learn how to use ACES, and in the process, also tried to understand ACES. Articles about different topics related to ACES can be found in the sections “Learning ACES” and “Understanding ACES“. I would not say that I understand ACES, but I gained a lot of new knowledge over time. But I mostly took the system for granted and was happy to suddenly have different output paths available (SDR and HDR, for example).
Then I started a new chapter called “Exploring (HDR) Displays“. I learned that it is really clever to start thinking from the display back to whatever working colourspace you are dealing with, because the display is the only way to actually see an image.
And this led me into the fourth chapter. Digital image files are basically just numbers, but the way they get processed and interpreted makes a huge difference when they are finally presented on a display device.
The first article in this chapter (4.1. Reading of RGB values) is about digital image files and the colours we see in them. Specifically, which color has a red car in a digital photo?
In the second article, “It’s getting RAW”, I use a camera native file (RAW) and another photo of a red car. What kind of colour information can I get out of these files?
In the third article, “4.2. 0,900 or 90% of what?“, I examine one rendering in several working colorspaces and using three display transforms.