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Hi, i just wanted to update the last discussion about Exr and Photoshop compositing of 3d renderings. The new Version of Exr-IO comes now with Cryptomatte support and this should both redefine the workflow as well as speed it up. I hope it can help you in your everyday creative work and job Exr-IO 2.00 https://www.exr-io.com/exr-io-2-00/ 3d-io has released the Exr-IO 2.00, the free OpenEXR plug-in for Adobe Photoshop. The new version of the popular Exr-IO file format plug-in includes support for additional features like cryptomatte decoding, support for mipmaps and ripmaps, reduced memory consumption and numerous quality, compatibility and stability improvements with better error handling. Exr-IO 2.00 aims to be as feature complete as possible to allow users to read and write the full scope of EXR image data wherever possible. https://www.exr-io.com/exr-io-2-00/ enjoy!

Full disclosure, I suck at figuring out linear/non-linear workflows. God knows I've tried, but I'm a concept artist so 95% of the time I just need pixels from 3d to mash into 2d workflows. But I'm working on a heavy 3d scene which is sent to a render farm and outputs EXR files. In the Vray Frame Buffer I have sRGB off and I get a my desired gamma/contrast in the frame buffer. When I save out as EXR it's like the sRGB is turned on i.e. really pale and bright. All I want to know is, in Photoshop, how to I get it from 32 bits to 16 and get that exact same gamma as in the frame buffer. Currently, non of the option in the HDR toning dialogue are a good fit. They alter the image too much.

Hello everyone, hope all is well! So here is my problem... I'm save an "OpenExr" from within the Vray Frame Buffer (Vray raw image file) so that all of my Vray render elements like Ambient Occlusion, Specular, etc save right into the OpenExr file. I'm using the "ProExr" plugin for Photoshop (http://www.fnordware.com/ProEXR/) and everything comes in perfect into the layers in one file so I don't have to render separate passes. I can even bring the exr files into after effects, etc. BUT, for some reason the OpenExr always comes into Photoshop with a Transparent background right away rather than the color background I have in 3ds Max. Why is this?

I'd like to share my hdri maps with CGarchitect community. There are more than 25 free hdri maps 5.000 x 2.500 px in equirectangular format. You can use all hdri maps found in Freebies section of my website for free even in commercial projects, but you can't redistribute them. To download you need to register as customer (please use an valid email, I don't require all data to be real untill you're going to spend some money). I would be very happy if I could see some exampels of your works using those.

This stems from a post I had several months ago… Maybe others have already solved this, but I had not. http://forums.cgarchitect.com/62536-exr-burned-gamma.html About a 6 months ago we started rendering to a gamma of 1.8 more often than not. We were previously working more or less in linear color space with a gamma of 2.2. When we switched to 1.8, we were saving our images as 16bit TIFF files instead of 16bit EXR files. As you know EXR’s are vastly superior in terms of file size compared to TIFF’s coming out of 3dsMax. Often it can be 40% of the size of the TIF, which is huge in terms of data storage, and the amount of network traffic when retrieving those frames the server. It is a given that EXR’s are floating point color that are typically written out at 1.0, and then are displayed in Photoshop correctly with a gamma of 2.2. When working with at a gamma of 1.8 in Max, and saving at a gamma of 1.0, the image becomes overcorrected and washed out when opened in Photoshop. This was very predictable. Which is the reason we went back to TIF’s, work at 1.8, output set to 1.8, perfect color match between Photoshop and Max. So maybe, you know where I am going with this… It just dawned on me today that I could set a ratio up between the output gamma in Max, and the correct display of floating point color in Photoshop. What this means that if I set the output gamma in Max’s preferences to be 0.818, and then save as an EXR, my image displays perfectly when opened in Photoshop. This works because the ratio of correction is the same. So, …a couple of tests on which compression is best when working with EXR’s. EXR w ZIP Compression stored as scanline is the clear winner on this test. I don’t visually notice any difference between the compression types, and I don’t know the ins and outs of each compression type, or why there are so many. Maybe someone else can chime in? The EXR saved in this format for my test case is 2.3 times as efficient with disk storage as the TIF file is. As far as I know only the last 3 in the list were lossy compressors. This leaves me to believe that the others are lossless compressors. Disclaimers: 1) I don’t use tiled EXR’s but I do know they have a benefit in some instances, but I think it is geared more to pulling high res textures for efficient use. 2) I don’t store render channels in my EXR’s. If you are doing this, you may find different results. 3) I use the Max frame buffer, and not the Vray frame buffer because we write out several Render Elements when putting together an image.