Color Profile and 16bit VS 32bit

[Guest dialog]

Curious as to what the standard color profile is in Photoshop with 3DS Max files. Output to EXR in 32 bit or Tiff in 16 bit? I see the added benefit of 32bit, but so many adjustments are grayed out in photoshop. What does everyone else work in?

[RyderSK]

The benefit of 32bit .exr is not really in 32bit color depth (full float), which is far greater than anyone can notice, and you can save to much faster&disk friendly 16bit (half floating point) but in ability to edit in linear space (internal gamma 1), which is not possible in Photoshop (and very slightly in Photoshop Extended) outside of basic color grading and linear exposure control.

 

I still save as .exr because I use MagicBullet inside Ps and AE, and that makes editing in linear space possible, so I can extract things like glows from highlights, diffusions, complete control over shadows/midtones/highlights, so everything can be tone-mapped if necessary.

 

It's ok to save as 16bit tiff/png if you want to do only basic color grading (like move directly into PS or Lightroom or do nothing at all), and no tonemapping/compositing, both of which require linear space to work correctly.

 

So the benefit is post-production flexibility

[Guest dialog]

Ahhhh ok. So I have magic bullet as well... do you keep your entire post prodcution in Magic Bullet...or wil lyou at some point bring it to a 16 bit mode and make touches there? What is the difference between editing in AE Magic Bullet and PS Muagic Bullet? Your work is unreal...so I need to figure out the small details that gets mine to your level.

[RyderSK]

You are correct, once I am finished with magicbullet I bring the color space from 32bit to 16bit in PS options (btw, this is funny and not many people know it, but even though you loose linearity, if you go back to 32, it's back, if you haven't touched anything in HDR tonemap), do what I need and save as 8bit jpeg for web :- ).

 

There is no difference in the MB plugin, but it's much easier to use in AE because it doesn't bake to layer (in PS it also doesnt need to bake, but then you need to use smart objects and that's kind of annoying). I know people use AE even for still images but I find I like to stick with PS as much as I can.

[Guest dialog]

Sweet! Good to know. I will need to try it with my 10 interiors I have coming up. I like Magic Bullet...just need to figure out how I can get the looks I want in photos as I do in video with it. Thanks for the help!

 

I have some footage I shot and used Magic Bullet for it...