The new browser add-on optimizes color calibration for consistency across monitors, improving remote collaboration among creatives.
Mozilla has just shared in their blog dist://ed that Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Firefox teamed up during the pandemic to create the Extended Color Management add-on. The browser extension was developed to help vendors manage remote work and the challenges it presents.
Together, the companies addressed the challenges of color calibration, the process of adjusting colors to display images consistently in color and brightness across monitors. With VFX studios and their vendors transitioning to remote work due to the coronavirus pandemic, the process that was easy to manage in-office became difficult to achieve.
Firefox uses color management from the operating system to optimize and render colors and images to enhance the browsing experience of its users. With the Extended Color Management extension, the color management feature can be disabled; then by restarting the browser the colors of graphics or videos are consistent, even across different operating units. This allows media engineers to make consistent assumptions about the color pipeline between the content shown in a browser and the actual pixel values sent to the computer’s display.
The add-on offers creators a solution to simply turn off in-browser color management when sharing content between color-calibrated and matched displays so that both studios and remote partners can see the intended colors and view ‘dailies’ more easily. The result is Firefox’s contribution to the movie-making process, that improves remote collaboration amongst studios, as well as independent creatives.
“Mozilla has an advantage as a smaller, collaborative technology leader and open-source project to have the flexibility to make necessary changes to meet unique customer needs,” shared Mike Kaply, Lead, Enterprise and Partner Distributions at Mozilla. “We wanted to create a simple and easy way to disable color management for both Lucasfilm and their vendor partners.”
Check out the Extended Color Management add-on here.
Source: Mozilla
Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.
