Tool overview

OCIO is comprised of many parts. At the lowest level there is the C++ API. This API can be used in applications and plugins

Noet that all these plugins use the same config file to define colour spaces, roles and so on. For information on setting up configurations, see Configuration

The API

Most users will never directly interact with the C++ API. However the API is used by all the supplied applications (e.g ocio2icc) and plugins (e.g the Nuke plugins)

To get started with the API, see the Developer guide

ociocheck

This is a command line tool to validate an OCIO config file.

It performs various sanity checks, such as that the config does not refer to an undefined colour space.

It cannot verify the defined color transforms are “correct”, only that the config file can be loaded by OCIO without error.

As with all the OCIO command line tools, you can use the –help argument to read a description and see the other arguments accepted:

$ ociocheck --help
ociocheck -- validate an OpenColorIO configuration

usage:  ociocheck [options]

    --help        Print help message
    --iconfig %s  Input .ocio configuration file (default: $OCIO)
    --oconfig %s  Output .ocio file

ociobakelut

A command line tool which bakes a color transform into a lookup table.

ocio2icc

A command line tool to generate an ICC “proofing” profile from a color space transform, which can be used in applications such as Photoshop.

A common workflow is for matte-painters to work on sRGB files in Photoshop. An ICC profile is used to view the work with the same film emulation transform as used in other departments.

ocioconvert

Loads an image, applies a color transform, and saves it to a new file.

OpenImageIO is used to open and save the file, so a wide range of formats are supported.

ociodisplay

A basic image viewer. Uses OpenImageIO to load images, and displays them using OCIO and typical viewer controls (scene-linear exposure control and a post-display gamma control)

May be useful to users to quickly check colorspace configuration, but primarily a demonstration of the OCIO API

Nuke plugins

A set of OCIO nodes for The Foundry’s Nuke, including:

  • OCIOColorSpace, transforms between two color spaces (similar to the built-in “ColorSpace” node, but the colorspaces are described in the OCIO config file)
  • OCIODisplay to be used as viewer processes
  • OCIOFileTransform loads a transform from a file (e.g a 1D or 3D LUT), and applies it
  • OCIOCDLTransform applies CDL-compliant grades, and includes utilities to create/load ASC CDL files

TODO - Link to more elaborate description