Installation

The first step, is, to Download the Plugin from fnord OpenColorIO for After Effects for your System.

Install OCIO for After Effects

If you have a Mac you will get a .dmg which you can just install like every other program.

If you have a Windows machine, you can unpack either with a Software like 7Zip or WinRaR. Windows 11 Users can just make a right click on the file and click on extract all.

After that, you should have a folder which contains the OpenColorIO AE Manual.pdf and the OpenColorIO.aex.

Copy the OpenColorIO.aex to this path:

C:Program FilesAdobeAdobe After Effects 2022Support FilesPlug-insEffects

After that, you can delete what you’ve downloaded.

If you can’t find the path, Just make a right click on After Effects in your start menu and click on open file location. This should lead you to a file called Adobe After Effects 2022, but that is just a link, so you have to right-click and click on open file location again, which brings you into the Folder of After Effects. There you need to open the Folder Plug-Ins. And then copy the file into the Effects Folder.

Installing Plug-Ins in After Effects was never simple , but we are not done yet.

The Problem

OpenColorIO is now available in After Effects. The only problem is, that if you apply it to a Layer and click on Configurate it will show you, that you don’t have any configurations available.

Download ACES configuration

Theoretically, everyone can create their own configuration file.

But the most popular configuration file project is ACES by Sony.
To download that, go to the GitHub page OpenColorIO-Configs GitHub and click on Code > Download ZIP.

This will get you a huge file, so I already prepared a way smaller file without all the unnecessary things, which you can Download here.

Place the Configuration folder.

If you downloaded the files from GitHub you will have a .zip file which after you extract contains multiple files and folders, one of them is called aces_1.2 which you need to copy and put it in C:ProgramData (not programfiles) in the folder OpenColorIO which you still need, to create.

Now, you can select aces_1.2 within the OpenColorIO Plug-In in After Effects.

Using OpenColorIO

Using the Plug-In is fairly simple.

It Converts the Layer on which the effect is placed or, if it is placed on an adjustment layer, it converts all the visible layers below from the color space which is chosen as Input Space into the Output Space.
The Invert Button swaps Input Space and Output Space.
And Use GPU makes the Plug-In use the GPU instead of the CPU, which in my experience works pretty well so.

Practical Use cases

Combine video clips with different color spaces.

Combine Footage with CGI

Transform Color space.

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12 Comments

  1. chris May 12, 2022 at 8:07 pm - Reply

    “This will get you a huge file” is an understatement….. “so I already prepared a way smaller file without all the unnecessary things”.. where?

  2. Fake Pilot May 30, 2022 at 8:02 pm - Reply

    Did what you wrote, but getting this error : “Config failed validation. The role ‘compositing_log’ refers to a color space, ‘Input – ADX – ADX10’, which is not defined.

  3. Fake Pilot May 30, 2022 at 8:04 pm - Reply

    Did what you wrote, but getting this error : “Config failed validation. The role ‘compositing_log’ refers to a color space, ‘Input – ADX – ADX10’, which is not defined.

  4. Magic Mark June 5, 2022 at 8:01 pm - Reply

    Where do you get the Error Message?

  5. Ekene June 11, 2022 at 8:00 pm - Reply

    I downloaded and set up everything and all ok. But when I apply the plugin and want to choose the config file, I got the same error with FAKE PILOT. The role ‘compositing_log’ refers to a color space, ‘Input – ADX – ADX10’, which is not defined.

  6. Bertitude June 14, 2022 at 7:59 pm - Reply

    Same issue here. Weird.

  7. Greg July 2, 2022 at 7:59 pm - Reply

    I used this OCIO config and it fixed the problem for me.

  8. Mickey July 30, 2022 at 7:56 pm - Reply

    hi, I got the same error as others got with the “Input – ADX – ADX10’, which is not defined”
    [btw, i’m using AE 2022 – not sure if it’s related] but the files from the github got that working

  9. Randall Balsmeyer November 10, 2023 at 11:07 am - Reply

    You specified where to put the config files for Windows users, but left us Mac folks in the dark…

    • Magic Mark November 13, 2023 at 3:26 pm - Reply

      When I wrote this Article I did not had a Mac. If you can provide Information I can add it.

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