CS4 aaaaaaaarrrgghhh!

[Tommy L]

CS4 is, Im sure, a wonderful program for most. I have hit on an issue that has really hit a nerve, so Im going to post a rant right here, right now. Not like me, but Ive been driven to it by Adobe.

 

I bought CS4 Extended for one reason. I thought I'd join the front edge of the curve and start rendering passes from Vray as .exr files and do the comping myself instead of letting the Vray render engine have all the fun.

 

So, $1800 and about 5 days later, I have everything installed and ready to go. Foolishly, I had assumed that CS4 handles 32bit .exr's in a fairly advanced way. So, I try to open stuff and nothing happens how I assumed so I do some more reading.

 

I do my homework and buy ProEXR ($95), the wonderful plugin that lets Photoshop CS3 open 32bit .exr's with multiple arbitrary channels. Thats right, just CS3. Not CS4.

 

There is no way. I repeat no f**king way to get a .exr into photoshop how I want it.

 

Why? Because Adobe (most notably Chris Cox {****} on their support forum) says its is 'really, really wrong' to do that and that I am using the wrong tool for the job.

 

Then why does Aftereffects CS4 have the ProEXR plugin bundled with it? Its to allow Ae TO OPEN .EXR WITH MULTIPLE CHANNELS!!!!

Unbelievable. Wrong for Photoshop and right for Aftereffects? Please.

 

Chris Cox is very, very rude and I seriously hope he gets fired. If I meet him, I will punch him in the face.

 

I a now returning CS4 and hopefully getting myself CS3.

[Stephen Thomas]

I feel your pain Tom! There's nothing worse than feeling as though you're fighting against software that's supposed to be speeding up your workflow.

 

Before you go rushing back to the shop, have you tried Shimakaze's Render Element Importer? I haven't personally but it might be worth a look. http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=41740

[Tommy L]

Awesome! Thanks, I am trying it now. Do you use this?

[Stephen Thomas]

No, haven't tried it out myself yet. Let me know how you get on with it though. Looks like it should save a lot of time by setting the blending modes for you etc.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I have read a lot of complaints about Chris Cox on various forums. He will not except that a EXR alpha channel should be anything other than applied to the image when imported. In other words, all of the artists are wrong, and don't know what they are doing. He is unwilling to listen, or even really look at how we are using it.

[Ernest Burden III]

I have read a lot of complaints about Chris Cox on various forums...In other words, all of the artists are wrong, and don't know what they are doing.

 

That has been my experience with him, as well. In truth I think he's a good enough fellow. He spends time on Photoshop forums trying to help users out. That's worth praising. I've had an extended back and forth with him a time or two in threads about color management and especially output.

 

But he is fairly arrogant and doesn't listen to artists, as you say. The best you could do would be to carefully describe the workflow you need and why the missing feature is important to your professional product. Then buy After Effects and get back to work while Adobe spends the next release or two realizing that you were 100% right all along. That's what happened to me back when I bumped heads with Chris Cox over why Photoshop should have 16bit layers.

[Ernest Burden III]

I bought CS4 Extended for one reason. I thought I'd join the front edge of the curve and start rendering passes from Vray as .exr files and do the comping myself instead of letting the Vray render engine have all the fun.

 

By the way--what is the difference between .exr files and a regular 32bit TIF?

[Stephen Thomas]

Size mainly. A 32-bit uncompressed TIFF file at 25Mb would be reduced to 6Mb as an HDR and 3.3Mb as an OpenEXR file. Also by using the ProEXR format you can store all your layers in a single EXR file, using TIFF you can see how the file size would become less manageable quite quickly if you had lots of render elements included in the file. ProEXR also has some powerful compression features to further reduce file size.

[William Alexander]

.exr is a linear 32bit-16bit color space, per how ProEXR uses it for sure. Possibly a bit more important up front before size of file considerations

[Ernest Burden III]

.exr is a linear 32bit-16bit color space, per how ProEXR uses it for sure. Possibly a bit more important up front before size of file considerations

 

Hard-drives are cheap. If the .exr isn't working for you, use 32bit TIF, even if the files are huge. TIFs can be compressed losslessly, or lossily. (How's that for two fake words). If you use LZW (lossless) there can be significant compression. Does .exr have a better lossless compression, or is it actually lossy?

 

I have tested rendering to 16bit TIF with colormapping in vray vs. a linear 32bit and then attacking in Photoshop. The result was that I could get the same results with the cost of a longer process. However, the 32bit way is flexible in post, where the 16bit way bakes in the colormapping. As I recall, vray was able to output a layered 32bit file via multipass.

 

Obviously my point is to note your annoyance with Adobe and use TIF to do what you want to do.

[Tommy L]

Thanks Ernest. I actually didnt know that a TIFF could carry multiple passes. Ill try it out. I dont have first hand experience of the benefits of .exr as a muliple channel medium (see above;)) but the ProEXR website made a compelling case.

Im guessing that the TIFFS will be HUGE. I need 10 channels RGBa (32bit float) @4800 x 3600

[Ernest Burden III]

Im guessing that the TIFFS will be HUGE. I need 10 channels RGBa (32bit float) @4800 x 3600

 

Probably better to write out seperate TIF files, as some programs (Photoshop!) might choke on a too-big file, making it useless and making you start over.

[Tommy L]

Ok, but that kind of puts me back where I started. I can render out seperate passes till the cows come home. Nice thing about ProEXR is that all the 32bit passes are opened as a Photoshop file. Badabing! Then I just use an action to rearrange the layers and blend modes and Im ready to start tweaking.

 

The scripts that Stef Thomas pionted me to are quite helpful. They collate a bunch of passes into a Photoshop file and attempt to order and rename the passes/blend modes. However, I am not using the same passes as the author. So mine come in incorrectly named and ordered, so I have to go through and figure out what is what. If I do it procedurally, I can write a script that 'autocorrects' the compiler. This is what Im going to do for now.

 

Its weird though, the way Im checking if Im doing everything correctly is to look at the Vray composited pass and check it's the same. So it feels like Im doing all this for nothing! However, I know that in the long run, understanding this process and involving it in my workflow will pay off.

 

Thanks for all the help guys. If you think of anything new, let me have it. If not, you have all been very helpful.

[Ernest Burden III]

Ok, but that kind of puts me back where I started. I can render out seperate passes till the cows come home. Nice thing about ProEXR is that all the 32bit passes are opened as a Photoshop file. Badabing! Then I just use an action to rearrange the layers and blend modes and Im ready to start tweaking.

 

You can get the vray passes to render out as layers with their proper layer modes in place (mostly). But the issue is file size. If .exr can get the same stuff into a much smaller file size I suspect its by lossy compression (though I don't know that).

 

I have seen people complain about multipass files not quite looking like the regular render (I've been one of them) and the response has been that a multipass file is an approximation of the final output. The engine adds some pixie dust internally that you don't get in the layered output.

 

Finally--do you really need 32bit files for the layers? Perhaps you could render the image to regular 32bit, then do the main levels-type work and go down to 16bit. Copy that into a 16bit layered multipass as the base and go from there.

[smokedogg]

So I do extract all my layers from my rendered out .exr file(s). I tried the Extractor and Identifier plugins, but dont know what im doing with those. And also, I thought I could just right-click on the layer and Create a ProEXR layer Comp., but I see nothing. Sorry if this is a noobish question, but im lost.

[Dave Buchhofer]

Ok, but that kind of puts me back where I started. I can render out seperate passes till the cows come home. Nice thing about ProEXR is that all the 32bit passes are opened as a Photoshop file. Badabing!

 

there is a built in script in photoshop under Files -> Scripts -> Load images into stack. this will place all of the files into 1 document for you, i use it regularly and couldn't live without it.

 

Good tip on the script in photoshop to rearrange, i haven't looked into that yet, seems an obvious step to automate!