Sony Pictures Imageworks has made the color management tool OpenColorIOwhich was used to create the recent hit animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verseavailable to the open source community. The tool has now become the second software project of the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), a Linux Foundation-owned open source association.

In addition to Into the Spider-Verse, OpenColorIO has been used in the production of such other films as Hotel Transylvania 3, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Alice and Wonderland.

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"We want to contribute OpenColorIO back to the community that relies on it, and the Academy Software Foundation is a natural fit," Sony Pictures Imageworks vice president and head of software development Michael Ford said. "The developers and companies that use it every day will guide the project roadmap, starting with the features and release cadence for a new 2.0 version."

For some time now, Sony has given the industry free and open access to OpenColorIO under a modified BSD license. However, as Ford alluded to in his comment, by contributing the tool to the ASWF, the studio hopes that it is the community who will helps see this advanced tool used to its fullest potential.

That being said, of course, this doesn't mean that just anyone who uses OpenColorIO will be able to make a film that looks exactly like Into the Spider-Verse, as the program was only one of several that were used to create the unique visual style seen in Sony's animated Marvel film.

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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse comes to home release on Blu-Ray, UltraHD, 4K and DVD on March 19 and a digital HD release on February 26.

(via Variety)