PNG vs JPEG in textures

[Guest dialog]

Just a curious question and discussion; what are the advantages/disadvantages of using a PNG vs a JPEG as a texture map?

[Corey Beaulieu]

PNG stores an alpha so if you ever render things that have an opacity map, the one PNG map can do double duty. Not necessarily better just easier material management.

[Guest dialog]

How about artifacts with JPEG? I have heard that they cause this but have never seen it...or maybe just can't pick it out when it is happening

[RyderSK]

It's lossless format with higher bitrate. Hence, in diffuse/reflectance you can get tad bit higher quality in sharpness, and for maps where smooth gradients are preferable such as displacement you can use them in 24bit mode. I store all my displacement maps in .png, but don't bother with rest. Arroway sells all their textures in png format, but once you go that hi-res (4k+ ) it's just get annoying to me personally working with, they load longer in Max, tumbnails get generated slower etc.

 

As for the mentioned alpha channel, this is only useful for saving out renders but even then I would opt for tiffs as png has premultiplied option only by default. None of that is issue with .exr. In Max, the alpha channel doesn't get read from diffuse anyway so for textures, this isn't really advantage.

[Guest dialog]

It's lossless format with higher bitrate. Hence, in diffuse/reflectance you can get tad bit higher quality in sharpness, and for maps where smooth gradients are preferable such as displacement you can use them in 24bit mode. I store all my displacement maps in .png, but don't bother with rest. Arroway sells all their textures in png format, but once you go that hi-res (4k+ ) it's just get annoying to me personally working with, they load longer in Max, tumbnails get generated slower etc.

 

Oh ya... the higher res stuff does get annoying for sure to work with.

[Clanger]

If having too many high res textures causes problems have 2 version 1 high 1 low with the same file name in different folders, work with the low res version but on final render swap the 2 folder contents.

[elainegroth]

PNG is good format for non-lossy, smaller files. JPG is the king for photographs on the internet, but be careful, as your file can degrade with every save.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PDF to DWG Converter

[M V]

If having too many high res textures causes problems have 2 version 1 high 1 low with the same file name in different folders, work with the low res version but on final render swap the 2 folder contents.

I've made a Photoshop batch action just to handle this very thing.