Academy’s ACES Color Standard Embraces Open Source Future with Academy Software Foundation

Academy’s ACES Color Standard Embraces Open Source Future with Academy Software Foundation

The transition to the ASWF is designed to ensure ACES continues to evolve in an open and collaborative environment, benefiting filmmakers and content creators worldwide.

RMN News Entertainment Desk
August 7, 2025

LOS ANGELES, CA – The Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), the globally recognized industry standard for color management in film and television production, is officially joining the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF). This strategic move, announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the ASWF, is set to usher in a new era of open source collaboration and development for the critical color management framework.

Developed and maintained by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for over a decade, ACES has become the foundational part of modern motion picture workflows, ensuring a consistent color experience and preserving creative vision across the entire production life cycle. This includes everything from on-set acquisition to visual effects, post-production, mastering, and archiving.

The standard has been utilized on major films such as Captain America: Brave New World, The Wild Robot, and Wicked. Notably, the recent ACES 2.0 release introduced significant enhancements, including improved color rendering, more consistent display across various dynamic ranges, better transform invertibility, and expanded support for custom output devices.

The transition to the ASWF is designed to ensure ACES continues to evolve in an open and collaborative environment, benefiting filmmakers and content creators worldwide. As an ASWF project, ACES will leverage the Foundation’s established open governance model, legal framework, and community infrastructure. This is expected to significantly increase the quality and quantity of open source contributions to ACES.

“ACES has become a foundational part of modern motion picture workflows, shaped through cross-industry collaboration across hundreds of filmmakers, technologists, and color scientists,” stated Annie Chang, VP of Creative Technologies at NBCUniversal and an ACES Project Co-chair. “Joining the Academy Software Foundation will ensure that ACES continues to evolve in an open and collaborative environment, benefiting filmmakers and content creators around the world”.

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This move is also poised to drive greater collaboration and integration between ACES and other key open source projects vital to the industry, such as OpenColorIO, OpenEXR, and MaterialX. Rob Bredow, SVP of Creative Innovation at Lucasfilm and Chair of the ASWF Governing Board, emphasized the significance: “Open source is the invisible backbone of modern film production… Entrusting ACES to the Foundation is a fulfillment of that vision, ensuring this critical standard for color will continue to evolve and thrive with the direct support of the community it serves”.

David Morin, Executive Director of the Academy Software Foundation, highlighted the Foundation’s role in fostering a healthy open source ecosystem. “The Academy Software Foundation was created to ensure that we have a healthy, vibrant open source community that can maintain and grow the projects that the motion picture industry relies on,” Morin said. He added that ACES is a critical project, and the ASWF is “honored to provide a home where it will continue to thrive and grow”.

Under the ASWF, ACES development will be guided by a Technical Steering Committee comprising long-standing members of the ACES leadership and development community, ensuring continuity of vision while welcoming expanded participation. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will also maintain its active involvement in ACES development within the ASWF.

Further details about ACES and its transition to the Academy Software Foundation will be shared during Open Source Days on August 10 and 11. Hosted by the Academy Software Foundation, this leading event dedicated to open source software development for the visual effects, animation, and digital content creation industries will feature dedicated ACES sessions, including a presentation on “ACES: Open Source Innovation for Modern Production Workflows”.