Color Difference Between Corona VFB and Photoshop

[Rxvel]

For years, I’ve been saving my Corona renders as TIF or JPEG files. When opening them in Photoshop, there was always a slight color shift — nothing too noticeable, and it could easily be corrected with a few adjustments.

Recently, however, while rendering with Corona 12, I noticed that the colors, lighting, exposure, and shadows look completely different from what I see in the Corona VFB. I’ve tried saving the image in every possible format and color profile, but the results are still far off.

What makes the least sense to me is that when I take a screenshot of the VFB and open it in Photoshop, the image looks exactly the same — no issues at all. But when I save the render normally and open it, the color profile doesn't match what I see in the VFB.

Below is a comparison between the image in Corona and the one opened in Photoshop.

Does anyone have a solution for this? Am I doing something differently in this version 12 without realizing it?

[zaar]

My take is that the first tiny difference is/was because Photoshop is color managed while Max and Corona VFB is not. So photoshop, if your system has a monitor profile, takes that into account and corrects for that. While Max and Corona VFB does not. And also Photoshop might have applied a color profile to put the image in a color space and that might have also changed the apperance from Max.

Now in recent versions Max has got color management (but it still doesn't take the monitor profile into account) and it's very easy to do something that screws things up. I suspect that this new difference you are seeing is something with the new OCIO color management and maybe in relation to the Corona VFB. Do you know if you are running the legacy gamma workflow in max or if you accidentally enabled something?

[ParaEagle]

It looks like a gamma issue. Try adjusting the gamma of the darker render in Photoshop. Go to Image > Adjustments > Exposure and set the Gamma Correction value to 2.2. This should help match the render to what you see in the Corona VFB.

[maru]

The image in the Corona VFB looks completely wrong. The highlights are clamped. What 3ds Max color management settings are you using? It looks like you may be applying the ACES OT twice (once by 3ds Max, once in the Corona VFB). Try disabling ACES OT in the VFB tone mapping stack.

If you are using the OCIO color management mode in 3ds Max, make sure that you have the display/view transform enabled (see screenshot).

Lastly, I would recommend updating to Corona 12 Update 1 Hotfix 1 - https://www.chaos.com/corona/download