32bit per channel HDR & OpenEXR Support?

[Herbert123]

I work quite a bit in 3d apps and in visual effects, and OpenEXR is one of the default image containers that supports multiple passes.
(http://www.openexr.com/)

I tried installing the ProEXR plugin (http://www.fnordware.com/ProEXR/) in Photoline to open OpenEXR files I generated in Blender, but Photoline immediately crashes when I do so. Obviously due to the fact that OpenEXR files are 32bit layered files that Photoline cannot interpret. However, in 3d animation, film, and visual effects 32bit support is sort-of mandatory these days - too many reasons to get into for now: please just accept this as a fact. It is holding me back to use Photoline as a complete replacement for PS - I don't care about the rough edges here and there. I just want to be released from the chains of Adobe, and Photoline looks like a perfect alternative IF ONLY IT SUPPORTED FULL HDR IMAGES.

So, my first question to the developers: would you be so kind and have a look at this format, and see if you can (at least) offer support for the plugin I mentioned above? I noticed layers *can* be converted to 32bit, so in theory nothing should stand in the way of extending Photoline for this type of work. If you do start supporting this workflow, I feel a lot of other people might be convinced to have a second look at Photoline. Blender is freely available as one tool that generates OpenEXR HDR layered images. Or if you like, I can send you an example file with all the passes and z-buffer.

Second question: even if I do convert a layer to 32bit per channel colour, Photoline does not seem to offer a format (except for its native format) to export to? No *.hdr, or openEXR (as mentioned above). What can I use to export the full 32bit image for use in other applications?

By the way, if you (the developers) would introduce a fully 32bit supported workflow into Photoline, I expect that this would generate quite a lot of interest in the 3d/visual effects community. I am not the only one tired of Adobe's hegemony.

Thank you for reading.

[Juan]

Hello,

This was requested before and the only good think was the answer (for real) if the demand is high enough the developers can dig in.

This is the original post:
http://www.pl32.com/forum3/viewtopic.ph ... hdr#p13744

So you can get my vote on this, I do archviz and this should be a must for me as well.

Cheers
Juan

[Gerhard Huber]

beside some other programs, PhotoLine version 17, has full 32 Bit support.
For import and export, you can use TIFF format. PSD and PLD have 32 Bit support, too.
According the mentioned plugin. I installed it and the plugin crashes - not PhotoLine.

Gerhard

[Herbert123]

Right, I found a couple of solutions as a workaround.

One would be to use a hdri version of ImageMagick, but I could not find a download for Windows, and I am not about to build a version myself (no time). Blender does import 32bit float images quite well, though , so that is at least workable for me. However, it does not export 32bit tiffs, only up to 16bit. It does save 32bit float in openexr. So what to do?

Answer(s):
Luminance http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/
Picturenaut http://www.hdrlabs.com/picturenaut/ (german version also available

Use Luminance or Picturenaut to open the openexr images, and import those, and save as 32bit float tiff - done! Then import into Photoline. Or tonemap and save to 8bit or 16bit tiff.

I have to say, I am very impressed by Photoline's ability to work with 32bit float images, and even being able to apply all the filters and operations. Photoshop's 32bit mode is quite broken, and does not work well at all. Even the OpenEXR plugin I mentioned before sort-of makes it workable, but great it is not.

Questions to Mr. Gerhard Huber (or others who know):
-how is the colour space mapping of 32bit float images done in Photoline? Do you use linear color space for all the operations, and then map a non-linear colour space to view the image?

- What is the best approach in Photoline in regards to tonemapping?

- Are all the effects/filters/tools/drawing tools true 32bit float in operation?

beside some other programs, PhotoLine version 17, has full 32 Bit support.
For import and export, you can use TIFF format. PSD and PLD have 32 Bit support, too.
According the mentioned plugin. I installed it and the plugin crashes - not PhotoLine.

Gerhard

[bkh]

-how is the colour space mapping of 32bit float images done in Photoline? Do you use linear color space for all the operations, and then map a non-linear colour space to view the image?

Afaik, PL uses just the same colour spaces as in the other modes. The only difference is that computations are carried out with 32 bit floating point numbers instead of integers. Of course, you can use a linear colour space, just by assigning a colour profile with a linear gamma curve.

- Are all the effects/filters/tools/drawing tools true 32bit float in operation?

So far, I believed that everything is computed in 32 bit float, but then decided to set up a little experiment. But even the setup for my experiment failed to be 32 bit: two gradient adjustment layers each scaling everything by 1/255, followed by two adjustemt layers scaling everything by 255 should leave a 32 bit image unchanged. But the results show that the computations are carried out in 16 bit (if you use just one layer each, then you still get the original picture). See the attached test file. Doesn't make any difference if you place all adjustments into a single adjustment layer. Same story for Histogram Correction.

Otoh, it seems that the saturation adjustment layer works in full 32 bit.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[Hoogo]

That's a pity, and they're clipping outside of 0/1, too.

[Herbert123]

Too bad - that might mean that the drawing tools and most filters are probably based on 16bit operations as well.

[borgo1971]

Second question: even if I do convert a layer to 32bit per channel colour, Photoline does not seem to offer a format (except for its native format) to export to? No *.hdr, or openEXR (as mentioned above). What can I use to export the full 32bit image for use in other applications?

I'm looking for the same too... to make custom backgrounds to use with Artlantis Render 4.1... hope it will come soon

[Juan]

Too bad - that might mean that the drawing tools and most filters are probably based on 16bit operations as well.

Would be great to know (from the developers) what are the adjustment layers which work in full 32 bits.

I'm looking for the same too... to make custom backgrounds to use with Artlantis Render 4.1... hope it will come soon

I work with Maxwellrender and somehow I´m in the same boat (knowing that Artlantis supports Maxwellrender now), would be great to paint in 32bits, Maxwellrender is very sensitive with the quality of the IBl in 32 bits.
I guess Artlantis generate a MXI file when use Maxwellrender as render engine, if this is the case they (Maxwellrender) has developed a plugin to open this files directly into PS but this plugin fails if it used on PL, would you mind to try if possible? Maybe we could add it as a wish here

Cheers
Juan

[jdcooke2012]

Hello,

I came across a Win32 binary of Imagemagick 6.7.3 that supports HDRI. Found it here: http://opensourcepack.blogspot.ca/2012/ ... -pack.html . I've been using it for a while and it works well for converting EXR into 32bit Tiff and back again.

To convert from EXR to 32bit Tiff you would use the following command:

imconvert filename.exr -depth 32 -define quantum:format=floating-point -format tiff -compress LZW newfile.tiff

(of course, replace "filename" and "newfile" with your image file and it's directory path)

To convert back to EXR

imconvert filename.tiff -format exr -compress PIZ newfile.exr

[Herbert123]

Thanks - I looked for a Windows IM hdri build, and had trouble finding one.

[bkh]

Too bad - that might mean that the drawing tools and most filters are probably based on 16bit operations as well.

Actually, here's some good news: layer modes and painting seem to work in 32 bit mode. See the attached sample file and try painting on the (almost) transparent layer using 1 % green with 1 % opacity and a soft brush with 1 % brush intensity, and you'll see something in 32 bit mode but not in 16 bit mode.

By placing another 32 bit layer on top of the almost transparent layer, you can test which layer modes work in 32 bit mode, and in fact, as far as I can see, all of them work fine.

With this test setup, you can also try which adjustment layers work in 32 bit mode: place them above the (almost) transparent layer. The following adjustment layers seem to work in 32 bit mode:

• Hue/Saturation (except for Brightness which seems to clip to white when set too high)
• Selective Color Correction
• Channel Mixer
• USM
• Sharpen
• Gaussian Blur
• Adaptive Soften
• Soften
• Motion Blur
• Minimum
• Maximum
• Sponge
• Grain
• Remove Dirt
• Perturbation
• Color Correction
• White Point

@Hoogo: I haven't checked how these adjustment layers react to colours outside the [0, 1] range.

These seem not to work (yet ) in 32 bit mode (which means that they truncate their results to 16 bits but further processing is 32 bits again).

• Curves
• Histogram Correction
• Color Balance
• Gray Mixer
• Adaptive Sharpen
• Median
• High Pass
• Maximum Round
• Horizontal Edge
• Vertical Edge
• Outline
• Relief
• Roughen
• Custom
• Clouds
• Light/Shadow
• Color Temperature
• Correct Highlights
• Denoise

So, after all, the situation isn't as bad as it may have seemed. Fixing Histogram Correction and Curves would seem the most urgent things to do.

Cheers

Burkhard.

P.S. I've checked the above with the latest beta (17.50b9) of PL, maybe PL 17.10 is different because of work in progress.

[Herbert123]

Thanks, that is awesome news - thanks for figuring that out.

I also have good news: Photoline's 32bit Tiffs can be opened directly in Blender, and used in the compositor. It also means we can convert PL's 32bit files to OpenEXR and HDR Radiance formats this way. I have noticed a lot of apps do not know how to deal with 32bit floating point tiffs.

[jdcooke2012]

Hey Herbert123

If you can, you might want to test to make sure Blender isn't down sampling the 32bit tiff to 16bit or even 8bit. The open source TIFF libraries handle all the various bit depths, so loading a tiff usually doesn't give much trouble, however, I've found in past versions of Blender 16bit images were down sampled to 8bit without any warnings.

I'm not certain if the current version of blender still down samples tiff images, but it might be worth your while to confirm before you commit.

take care

[Juan]

Hi all,

Is OpenEXR plugin supported by PL or just the ProEXR plugin?

Cheers
Juan