Whats the point of worrying about color spaces?

#1

Hey everyone.

So i understand the math and the theories behind color space management. and while I do understand the accuracy to your color choices and whether colors will be within gamut of your color space, i still hold resevation in implementing.

Namely, if I am rendering shots in 32bit EXR files and have all kinds of access to color in linear, what benefit do i have at all for worrying about switch Nuke to Rec709 versus sRGB if im just going to pass off a movie file for a color correction artist to handle?

and even within my DCC, ( maya in this case ) do i actually benefit at any level to have team members ensure a pure linear or ACES workflow if we are all eyeballing things to look correct anyways?
the render out of maya looks accurate to the nuke read image and when it gets output to send to CC, both parties receive a file that look the same.

Then the CC artist outputs to the space required for the final delivery. ie TV or web or projection, etc.

Is there a benefit of stop range, or something else that one doesnt get from a 32 bit exr? or have i missed a crucial part to this discussion?

is this whole discussion ONLY centered around 8 bit files?

#2

Of course you should utilize the format containing the uppermost fidelity. But then they will be converted to more lossy formats, hence the hassle I reckon.

#3

If you want to reap the benefits of PBR / GI then it does matter a lot : you want to make sure values in textures are as close as possible to actual material albedo and are translated correctly into energy-linear space by the renderer. Robust color-space hygiene should save you a lot of work “eye-balling” stuff into place - YMMV. This is particularly critical for interactive/games computing GI in real time (not that there are a lot out there yet…)

#4

These two articles might shed some insight into why it’s always good to compute light and color linearly.