OpenColorIO and tools with 32-bit mode

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 within a single project.

Native OCIO implementation in Photoshop allows for interoperability across professional OCIO workflows and help establish custom color pipelines. It also provides built-in support for the ACES color management system inside Photoshop.

How to set up OCIO

OCIO configurations

Photoshop will locate OCIO configurations from the following locations:

• Environment (using the OCIO environment variable)

• One of the available built-in ACES configurations

• Presets folder

• MacOS: /Applications/Adobe Photoshop2024/Presets/OCIO/Configurations

• Windows: C:\Users\some-user\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop2024\Presets

These configurations are displayed in the Configuration pop-up controls in the OpenColorIO Settings dialog and in the OpenColorIO panel.

View the OpenColorIO Settings dialog to set the default configuration and working space. View the OpenColorIO panel 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 placing 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 at any time by opening the OCIO Input Color Space pop-up menu found 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. These spaces determine what colors are assigned to the placed file’s pixels when converting them to the document’s working space.

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 fall back to using any embedded color management that might be found 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): When this item is selected, no color conversion is applied at all. The exact pixel values found in the placed file are simply copied unchanged into the document’s working space. This would also be equivalent to what would happen if the placed layer’s color space happens to be 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

Go to Edit > Duplicate to Profile to create an ICC-based document when your active document uses OCIO.
The new document is flattened and contains one layer. 

Specify the display/view transform to use on the source document and specify the bit depth and ICC profile of the created document.

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

If the chosen display is a virtual display, then the OCIO transformation will create pixels matching the selected target profile. You'll get an accurate result regardless of the selected target profile.

Log files

OCIO-related log entries are written to the general Photoshop log file: 

• MacOS: /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”, for 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: /Users/some-user/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop (Beta) Settings 

• Windows: 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” .

Tools with 32-bit functionality

There is now increased tool support in 32-bit. These tools can now work with 32-bit documents allowing for higher fidelity image editing and compositing.

More like this

• HDR support in Photoshop
• More about OpenColorIO
• More about ACES