Hello guys.
I thought I figured it out how to get OCIO renders (multi channel exr) into Photoshop CC the colors and gamma are the same in PS. This changed since vray 7.3 update of vray and I have no idea how. Btw I’m on Max 2026. I googled my fingers bloody to find any new info about this. All “howto’s” seem to be way outdated. Is there any info about how to open and convert an OCIO render (= a multichannel EXR), using the Exr-IO plugin, so the sRGB version looks the same as in the vray frame buffer? The only way I figured out is:
a) save the current image as a tiff with no color conversion from the buffer
b) open the exr in PS and copy the necessary layers from the EXR into the tiff for corrections.
any other conversion by the PS “open as OCIO” procedure screwed up the gamma and colors. So I guess, I messed up here. Hence I’d be very very grateful, if somebody could point me to a proper solution.
Have you read this article? There’s a point about how to match .exrs in PS. If you’ve already applied some corrections in the VFB, it’s best to bake them in a LUT(RMB on VFB layers → bake to LUT) to reapply in PS.
Thank you very very much. I’ll check the LUT method. That is definitely new to me. The rest (as in the article) is I’ve been doing the whole time actually. It worked with the PS “open as OCIO”… quite good, until it didn’t.
Thx again.
I’ll check the LUT option.
One thing I forgot to mention - before “saving saving CCs to LUT”, set the Display Correction to “None”, otherwise, the display correction will also get baked into the LUT.
Ok. I figured one thing: If you “copy current channel to clipboard” for a reference, there is always a slight difference in gamma and red channel compared to the properly exported and converted exr in photoshop. Especially if you compare the “effects result” with a background image. There sill must be some “checkbox” I’m missing.
The “copy current channel” is probably the worst reference to compare to - an 8-bit, gamma 2.2 baked image vs 32-bit Raw .exr… It’s the exr, which should be the reference. Doesn’t the method I suggested previously work for you? I get identical images between VFB and PS with it.
after converting the applying the LUT I don’t see much of an effect at all. I set - as mentioned - the display correction to NONE before creating the lut.
At first glance, your PS working space is set to sRGB, whereas it should be ACEScg. Also, I notice that the background’s “save in image” option is active; for multichannel images, you probably have the “Save CCs to RGB” option active (which includes the color corrections) - if so, this way you don’t need to apply the LUT, since the corrections will already be baked.
Well, yesterday there was a live AMA session with Mr. Koylazov, and one question was specific about this OCIO workflow, actually used the same term “mess” as I did. Mr. Koylazov seemed to be surprised ppl feel this being a mess and answered (I’m paraphrasing) "Well, just go to the forum and our “suggestions” platform and tell us, what we could do better. Where shall we start?
Ok. I know. This problem is not really rooted in vray and/or max. It’s more the behemoth of PS and its super ignorant sRGB and nothing else than sRGB, and if something else, than make it super complex. So to make my “rant” short: It would be absolute a charm, to produce 2, actually 3 “how to” videos incl. audio narrative:
a) VFB into PS especially if there was any postproduction made in the buffer (basically the same you did for me)
b) the same for Blackmagic Fusion
c) Nuke
And it would be an absolute gem having an in depth tutorial about the whole display corrections, usage of light mix and “convert to composite” and preparing the render for further postproduction in an another software like PS, Fusion or Nuke. It should be more not about what it does, but why in respect to the other software packages. Yep, this is me dreaming.
I can’t promise a video tutorial with a narrative, but I can certainly make a separate article on how to match VFB to OCIO in PS, since people seem to struggle with it most.
This is sorcery! Jeeez… right. There’s one thing though. If I reset the system settings to max standard values in the color management settings and add a pure white color in the background, its greyish. If I turn this to “untonemapped”, the background is white, as it should be. My monitor is actually calibrated, so white should be white and not visibly “greyish”. Duh…
