Atlas Load Plate 🎞

Most ComfyUI image loaders treat every pixel as sRGB display color and quietly throw away the float. Atlas Load Plate is the loader that doesn't. It reads EXR, DPX, TIFF, PNG and JPEG with real colour management - it knows what colours the file is in and hands you what the graph needs, without a stray tone-map in the middle. In the atlas-camera pipeline this is the front door for anything that isn't a JPEG: a render, an EXR from your DCC, a TIFF scan.

It sits in Atlas/01 · Input & Camera and outputs a plate_ref alongside the image - the reference that carries the plate's true colourspace and bit depth downstream to the exporters, so your Nuke/Maya handoff doesn't depend on someone remembering which gamma the PNG was saved in.

How it works

The node resolves a working-colourspace pair around the file. input_colorspace is what the file holds; output_colorspace is what the IMAGE output should be converted into. The defaults are the sensible pair: auto infers the input from the extension (EXR/DPX → ACEScg, 8-bit → sRGB Display), and the output lands on sRGB - Display because that's ComfyUI's display-referred working space. A file that records its own colourspace always beats the dropdown.

The critical knob is raw_data. When it's on, the node skips colour conversion entirely - Nuke's "raw data" convention. The tooltip doesn't mince words: it's required for data passes like depth, normals and mattes, because converting data as if it were colour corrupts it silently. A depth map run through a display transform looks fine and is wrong.

Inputs and outputs

• file_path (required) - path to an EXR/DPX/TIFF/PNG/JPEG plate.
• input_colorspace - what the file holds: auto, ACEScg, ACES2065-1, ACEScct, sRGB Display, Rec.1886/Rec.709 Display, or Linear Rec.709.
• output_colorspace - same menu, minus auto, for the graph-facing IMAGE.
• raw_data - skip conversion; use for data passes.

Outputs: image, alpha (as a mask), plate_ref, and report.

Installing it

Core install gets the node registered; the float EXR/DPX read path goes through OpenImageIO, so install the [oiio] extra for those formats:

cd <ComfyUI>/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/mikejamesvfx/atlas-camera.git
<ComfyUI>/venv/Scripts/python.exe -m pip install ".[oiio]"

Restart, then find it under Atlas/01 · Input & Camera. ComfyUI Manager has the pack as "atlas-camera".

Common issues

The one that bites everyone: wiring a data pass (depth, normals, a matte) through with raw_data off. It'll look plausible and silently shift your values. Flip it on for anything that isn't display imagery.

The other is the mirror image of the first - feeding a scene-linear EXR into the graph and wondering why it looks washed out. That's not a bug; the node converted it to display sRGB for you, which is what the preview wants. If you want the raw float values in the graph, set both spaces to the same scene-referred space and treat the graph's sRGB assumption as your problem, not the node's.