Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Cineon Converter for Photoshop


This free plug-in fills a missing link in the Photoshop film production pipeline. It applies Kodak's standard log2lin transfer function to a log Photoshop layer, such as one you might get from opening a Cineon file. This is the same operation found in Nuke, Shake, Fusion, and the After Effects Cineon Converter.

In order to convert a log Photoshop document to a linear one:

1) Convert the document to 32-bit floating point, without altering pixel values.

2) Apply the Cineon Converter to each layer.


The Cineon Converter can be scripted using Photoshop Actions. A sample JavaScript is included showing how to automatically apply an Action to each layer in the file.

Once linearized, your Photoshop document is ready to be saved into a linear floating point file format (can anybody think of one?) and brought into your favorite compositor in the proper color space.

Enjoy!

Download

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This really is facinating. We are dealing with this very problem right now at my studio. I do have a question though, is this the only way to work with Log cineons in Photoshop? I know compositing work in general should not be done in Log space, so that means no blurring a Log image cause the results will be incorrect after someone else down the line does the cineon conversion. I read the color management PDF on Adobe.com, and what I am gathering here is that that is just a viewing method, but does not allow true linear compositing within photoshop because the file is still Log in under the hood? So what has everyone been doing in lieu of this the rest of the time? At our place we try to convert stuff to Lin in After effects then take it through photoshop as needed then render back to log back in After effects. Occasionally we have painted in Log in Photoshop, but generally we stick to the previous way. Does this also mean that the color management in After effects is not exactly reliable as well? Should we forgo the color management in there too, and just use the cineon converter effects? I would love to hear your thoughts, I have read stu maschwitz's page extensively on this subject and it seems this rabbit hole never ends.

Anonymous said...

I would love to discuss this further if you could contact me at atorres(at)in-three.com

Unknown said...

ahhhhh very interesting
very good
but doesn't seem to work in photoshop cs4 64 bits :(

Just wondering when putting the image in 32 bits floating with the log2lin, if the process is transparent when going back with lin2log? :)

Very nice plug

Trading News said...

Hello, great work,

Do you think possible make capture HD video codec in cineon or openExr format, in adobe premier or after effects?

nitant said...

Hello,

I'm trying to implement the cineon converter in the Photoshop CC 2017 and whenever I run it I get the following error:

"Could not complete the Cineon Converter command because of a program error."

Is there an updated version of the code that supports 2017 by chance?