With the newer OCIO-based color management, you now have the ability to save your output files in a variety of color spaces. This is a big change from the old days when you were mostly limited to gamma-corrected floats.
While it’s great to have more options, that doesn’t mean you should use them all at render time. In fact, it’s best practice to save your renders in the same color space as your rendering space, and handle any color conversions later during post-processing.
3dsMax 2024
In 3ds Max 2024, the Render Output Defaults were set to “No Conversion,” and users could only select one color space for all automatic render outputs. 
This setup worked well for studios primarily outputting EXR files. However, it wasn’t ideal for users who also needed to export legacy gamma-encoded formats like PNG or JPG.
3dsMax 2025
The developer received user feedback and updated the default settings to align the Render Output Defaults with the Display and Views defaults.
This change affects only gamma-encoded formats; linear formats like EXR or HDR will continue to use “No Conversion.”
It seemed like a good compromise at first, but it introduced a new issue. Some studios were using ACEScg as their rendering space, yet they required linear sRGB output for their post-processing workflows.
I should note that using different color spaces for rendering and output can lead to issues—for example, data render elements may contain incorrect information. However, the user needed to use this workflow regardless.
3dsMax 2026
In 3ds Max 2026, two sets of defaults are available—one for gamma-encoded formats and another for linear formats—giving you control over each scenario. These settings are also exposed in MaxScript (MXS) accordingly, by adding a fileType argument to the GetDefaultOutputConversion() and SetDefaultOutputConversion() methods.
That said, I still strongly recommend not using different color spaces for rendering and output.
Other Color Management Update for 3dsMzx 2026
- Finally, network rendering (slave mode) is now fully supported for both Backburner and Deadline.
- IFL support is also included.
- setclipboardBitmap global function, Image button, Angle UI, ImgTag UI, and createDialog now has doDisplayTransform:<boolean> parameter For Bitmap UI, the keyword arg is doDisplayTransformBitmap.
- colorContext keyword argument for ColorPicker UI has been added.
OK, that’s it!