Color Transformation Language

Sci-Tech Projects - Color Transformation Language

Color Transformation Language for Digital Motion Picture Pipelines

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Science and Technology Council has released a new software technology designed to enable color transforms and other pixel-based operations in motion picture imaging pipelines. The Color Transformation Language, or “CTL,” a portable and platform-independent scripting language and interpreter, is intended to be used as a building block for color management systems as well as for sharing transforms in a common format.

CTL addresses an industry need to precisely and unambiguously describe and share color transforms that are routinely used in motion picture mastering. For example, transformations between various color spaces and film density encodings can be defined in a CTL program that can be delivered along with image data, thus ensuring the image is properly rendered for display or other processing steps.

CTL is available from the Academy under an open source license, and is a Registered Disclosure Document (RDD 15 -2007) published by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE). To access the CTL Software Developers Kit, please read and accept the following:

Color Transformation Language (CTL) Software License Agreement

Copyright © 2007 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (A.M.P.A.S.). Portions contributed by others as indicated. All rights reserved.

A worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive right to distribute, copy, modify, create derivatives, and use, in source and binary forms, is hereby granted, subject to acceptance of this license. Performance of any of the aforementioned acts indicates acceptance to be bound by the following terms and conditions:

  • Redistributions of source code, in whole or in part, must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the Disclaimer of Warranty.
  • Redistributions in binary form must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the Disclaimer of Warranty in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
  • Nothing in this license shall be deemed to grant any rights to trademarks, copyrights, patents, trade secrets or any other intellectual property of A.M.P.A.S. or any contributors, except as expressly stated herein. Neither the name “A.M.P.A.S.” nor the name of any other contributors to this software may be used to endorse or promote products derivative of or based on this software without express prior written permission of A.M.P.A.S. or the contributors, as appropriate.
  • This license shall be construed pursuant to the laws of the State of California, and any disputes related thereto shall be subject to the jurisdiction of the courts therein.

Disclaimer of Warranty: THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY A.M.P.A.S. AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL A.M.P.A.S., OR ANY CONTRIBUTORS OR DISTRIBUTORS, BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, RESITUTIONARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

NOTICE

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some elements of CTL, or certain applications of CTL, may be the subject of intellectual property rights other than those identified above. Neither A.M.P.A.S. nor the contributors shall be held responsible for identifying any or all such rights. Recipients of CTL are invited to submit notification to A.M.P.A.S. of any such intellectual property of which they are aware.

 

To download the CTL Software Developer Kit and required libraries, please follow these links:

The source code for the reference implementation of the CTL interpreter can be downloaded from:
 
The CTL interpreter depends on a set of low-level utility libraries, called IlmBase, which can be downloaded from: