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ACES AP1: Meaning & Definition in Film

ACES AP1 is the primary working color space within the ACES pipeline, designed for colorists and VFX artists to perform their creative work.

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The Creative Workspace of ACES

ACES AP1, officially designated as ACEScg, is the color space where the bulk of the creative magic happens in an ACES workflow. While the master ACES AP0 space is designed for archival and interchange, it is too large and computationally intensive for practical, real-time use. ACEScg was created as the solution to this problem.

A Purpose-Built Gamut

ACES AP1 is a smaller, more manageable color space than AP0, but it is still significantly larger than other professional standards like DCI-P3 or Rec. 709. Its design offers several key advantages for artists:

  • Wide Creative Palette: It provides a vast range of colors, giving colorists and VFX artists ample ‘room’ to push and pull colors, adjust exposure, and create complex visual effects without the risk of ‘breaking’ the image or encountering color banding.
  • Optimized for CGI: The ‘cg’ in ACEScg stands for computer graphics. The specific color primaries of this space were chosen to be particularly well-suited for CGI rendering and compositing, making it an ideal environment for blending live-action footage with visual effects.

In a typical workflow, the master footage (in ACES AP0) is converted into ACEScg (AP1) for the creative post-production phase. Artists perform all color grading and VFX work in this space. Once the creative work is complete, the final result is then transformed from ACEScg into the various delivery formats needed, such as DCI-P3 for cinemas or Rec. 709 for television.

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