DRT (display rendering transform)

A DRT (display rendering transform) is the transform that turns a scene-referred image — unbounded scene light — into a picture a specific display can show. It does two jobs at once: tone mapping (fit the brightness range) and gamut mapping (fit the colors). It goes by many names: a “display transform,” the “RRT + ODT” in ACES, “T-CAM” in Baselight. There is no single correct DRT — FilmLight’s T-CAM, ACES’s RRT, RED IPP2, ARRI’s Rec.709 rendering and Sony’s s709 each have a different opinion on contrast, saturation and hue stability. Choosing (or matching) a DRT is a real technical and creative decision, and reasoning in DRT terms is how you debug an image that looks right in the suite but wrong on delivery.

First used in: 3.2 · Tone & gamut mapping, DRTs