Color Management and ACES
Linear light, color spaces and view transforms
Also known as: ACES · OCIO · Filmic · AgX · View transform · Color space
Definition
Color management is the system that keeps colors consistent from creation to the screen. Renders are calculated in linear light, textures are converted from sRGB, and a view transform maps the high range of a render to a display. ACES is a standard color pipeline from the film industry with a wide gamut and a built-in look. Blender offers Filmic and AgX view transforms, with AgX the default since version 4.0, and engines apply their own tonemappers.
In production
Keep to one pipeline per project and be careful with color textures, which are sRGB, against data textures, which are linear. When a render looks washed out or has hue shifts in bright areas, the view transform is a likely cause. For stills and portfolios, choose a view transform that holds highlights well, and be aware that the same render looks different in another tool. Color management is also handled with OpenColorIO, or OCIO.
Tools that use Color Management and ACES
See also
Tonemapping
HDR → display-range remapping
sRGB vs Linear
Colour-space encoding for textures
Color Grading
Final color and contrast look of the image
Bit Depth
8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit textures
Compositing
Combining render layers into the final image
Washed-Out Colors in Unity
Scene looks too bright, flat or too dark