fnord software blog

j2k 2.6

2011-11-14T10:20:00.000-08:00

The last release of j2k added support for Digital Cinema files, but I've since received some user feedback asking for more control over DCI bit rate. Ask and ye shall receive:

The controls are modeled after those found in OpenDCP. It defaults to a megabits per second model, but you can also specify a per-frame size in kilobytes if you prefer. The slider tops out at the DCI spec maximum, but you can enter a higher number in the text field if you wish.

As usual, j2k is free. Enjoy!

ProEXR 1.6 released

2011-10-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

A modest 0.1 version increase for a pretty significant update to ProEXR. It includes, of course, any number of minor bug fixes, but also a few pretty significant features. The update is free, as usual.

1. Nuke Comp Builder script
Since the beginning, files saved with ProEXR in Photoshop have contained a little blurb of data detailing the layer arrangement, transfer modes, and other things beyond the scope of the EXR format. ProEXR for Photoshop and After Effects could use this data to rebuild their project exactly as it was saved, but for Nuke you were forced to do it manually. Well, no longer—ProEXR includes a Python script that will read the data (requires Nuke 6.3) and build a comp for you. Linux users, download it here.

2. AE plug-in optimizations
A significant amount of work was put into the After Effects plug-ins to try to eke more speed out of them, particularly when reading layers using EXtractoR. I won't bore you with the details, but in some tests I've seen a 40% improvement. Feel free to swap these in for the ones that ship with AE. Don't worry, they're 100% project compatible with the previous versions you've already been using.

3. Memory Mapping
A new option has been added when reading files: "Memory Mapping." What this means is that the entire raw EXR file is loaded into a memory buffer before it is decompressed. Some users have found that performing one big read can speed things up tremendously on certain networks. Access this option from the input options dialog in Photoshop, or it can be set by editing the Preferences file in AE. More details in the manual.

4. Render layered EXR files from After Effects
This feature merits its own blog post, don't you think?

ProEXR AE

2011-10-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

New in version 1.6 of ProEXR is a new plug-in for After Effects: ProEXR AE. On one hand, this is the old ProEXR Comp Creator plug-in with a new name. But installing this plug-in also will add an extra option to your list of output formats.

Funny how sometimes one tiny little UI widget can indicate a whole world of possibilities. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, choosing "ProEXR Layers Sequence" will render all the layers of your After Effects comp into a multi-channel OpenEXR sequence. And of course each file will include our blob of layer data so it can be reconstructed in Nuke, Photoshop, or even back in AE.

Needless to say, this is somewhat beyond the scope of a typical After Effects file module, so perhaps it should be considered experimental for now. If it behaves oddly, please send email telling me so. And do remember that it follows the same layer naming conventions followed by the Photoshop plug-in (more on that in the manual).

To take advantage of this functionality, you'll need a ProEXR serial number. (It will run in trial mode for 15 days, like the Photoshop plug-ins.) You do not need a serial number to use the comp building functionality however.

Enjoy!

OpenEXR command line tools

2011-10-14T02:41:00.000-07:00

Eagle-eyed visitors to the fnord OpenEXR page may have noticed that there's been links to the OpenEXR utilities for a while. These are programs that are included with OpenEXR in source code form, but unless you're a programmer you probably haven't been able to use them. Heck, even if you are a programmer you may not have bothered to build them, as doing so involves building FLTK, downloading the nVidia Cg Toolkit, and other chores. So I've done the work for you and posted the result.

There are some useful tools in here. For the reference implementation to see how an EXR should look, use exrdisplay. Or playexr can playback an EXR sequence in real time and let you adjust exposure on the fly. Another favorite is exrmaketiled for converting a regular scanline EXR into a tiled, mipmapped image for the benefit of a 3D program that can take advantage.

As I said, these were written by Florian Kainz and his team at ILM, not me. I'm just posting the binaries to give more people access to them. They are all run from a command shell, so time to get comfortable with it if you haven't already. I've just got Mac and Windows versions here—I figure you Linux hackers can handle building them on your own. Enjoy!

Download
Mac | Win

Export ICC

2011-10-11T11:19:00.000-07:00

Here's a simple Photoshop plug-in for exporting the ICC profile from your document. Sometimes an ICC profile is embedded in a file you've received and you'd like to save it out and install it on your system. This plug-in will let you do that.

This code was originally part of a little collection called xMeta, now retired from the fnord web site. But here's the useful part, with a Windows version appearing for the first time. Free, of course. Enjoy!

Download
Mac | Win

SuperPNG 2.0 released

2011-10-10T17:06:00.000-07:00

SuperPNG is the first plug-in I ever wrote. Back in 2002, Photoshop and After Effects had 16-bit color modes, but couldn't read or write a 16-bit PNG. So I set out to fill the void, learning a lot in the process.

Within a few years, Adobe filled the holes and I figured SuperPNG was destined for retirement. Working in visual effects, I also found myself no longer using a 16-bit integer format in production, preferring 16-bit float via OpenEXR. SuperPNG was all but forgotten—I didn't even have it installed myself.

But then the other day I went to save a PNG in Photoshop and noticed a glaring omission: no ICC profile support. I found it astounding that Adobe, one of the founding members of the ICC, had overlooked it in PNG. Time to dust off SuperPNG.

And then I have also gotten so accustomed to being able to control alpha channels in ProEXR EZ, I decided I had to add that feature to SuperPNG. So now the options dialog lets you choose between using transparency or the channels palette as the source for your alpha. Hold down shift when opening a PNG, and you get an import options dialog as well, letting you direct that alpha however you wish.

For more information, see the PDF manual, also new in this version. Quite an update for a free plug-in!

Enjoy!

j2k 2.5 released

2011-10-04T23:45:00.000-07:00

Have just posted an update to our j2k plug-in for Photoshop and After Effects. The main change is the addition of a "Digital Cinema" option when saving files. This will make JPEG 2000 files compatible with the DCI specification. From there you can use a tool like OpenDCP to finish the process of creating an MXF file ready for digital projection.

Also new is a real PDF manual. Of course, the plug-in is still free. Enjoy!

NaNny

2011-04-06T13:47:00.000-07:00

If you're unlucky enough, you may have sampled a pixel like the one shown above in After Effects. While 32-bit floating point mode has brought us linear color space and overbrights, it does have a hidden dark side. Negative pixel values can be perplexing, but seeing a NaN (Not a Number) or inf (infinity) floating point value can really make your head spin.

These things can cause all kinds of problems if they find their way into a comp. After Effects has safeguards to prevent them from being created, but they can slip in if your renderer burned them into a floating point format such as OpenEXR.

If you see one of these things, the first thing you should do is write an ~~angry~~ email to the developer of your rendering software, because they have a bug to fix. The second thing is apply our free plug-in, NaNny, which will replace the NaNs and infs with the floating point value of your choosing. Also included in the download is an EXR file chock full of these nasties if you'd like to experiment with them a bit.

Download
Mac | Win

ProEXR 1.5 released

2010-05-18T23:23:00.000-07:00

Now that Adobe has shipped Photoshop and After Effects CS5, it's time for ProEXR to join the party. Available now is version 1.5, complete with 64-bit versions for Mac and Windows. In fact, the Photoshop plug-in has been rewritten from the ground up to take full advantage of all the memory you can throw at it and load those giant EXRs as fast as I know how. As usual, this update is free.

After Effects CS5 ships with 1.5 pre-installed (shout out to my Adobe pals!) and CS3/4 users can update their plug-ins with 32-bit versions, also included.

But wait, there's more. Also included is ProEXR EZ for those Photoshop users who wanted extra alpha control but less multi-layer confusion. Not to mention countless small improvements and optimizations.

Enjoy!

log2lin and lin2log in Photoshop

2010-02-12T11:38:00.000-08:00

Some time ago I wrote a couple blog posts about working with Log images in Photoshop and how you can convert them to 32-bit linear for saving out as OpenEXR. It involves a little bit of Photoshop trickery unfortunately, but it works and you can set up actions and scripts to do it in one step, which I'd recommend.

One oversight on my part, however, was not describing how to go from 32-bit linear back to 16-bit Log. It's similar to doing the log2lin steps in reverse, but not quite. So, starting with a good looking 32-bit linear image...

1) Use the Cineon Converter to apply a lin2log operation to each layer. Typically you'll use the default settings, but switch the conversion to lin2log. After you do this, your image will look bright and washed out because it's been converted to Log space but is still getting the gamma correction Photoshop does to all 32-bit images. Don't worry.

2) Here's the tricky part. We have to convert back to 16-bit without Photoshop changing any pixels. During this mode switch, Photoshop converts your linear 32-bit image into whatever color space is set as your default RGB working space. So you have to go into the Color Settings dialog and temporarily change that to the linear color profile you've previously created.

3) Now change the image mode from 32-bit to 16-bit. Thanks to the previous steps, your pixels will now be in 16-bit Log space. When asked about Exposure and Gamma, leave those values untouched (0.0 exposure and 1.0 gamma). The image will not look any different (which is always the preferred behavior for switching image modes) and the pixels will not change values because of that linear profile.

3.5) You probably don't want a linear profile as the default working space, so change your Color Settings back to their original values, usually with sRGB as the default RGB working space. You probably notice this is kind of a pain - all the more reason to script it via JavaScript and Actions.

4) Open the Assign Profile dialog and assign a better profile to this image. If you apply sRGB (or tell Photoshop not the manage the document), you will see the image in Log space. You may also choose another profile to do some sort of film preview, such as the Theater Preview profiles that ship with After Effects.

And that's it. You should be able to start with a 16-bit Log file, use the various steps to convert it to 32-bit linear, use these steps to convert it back to 16-bit log and arrive at exactly the same image you started with, which is always an important test for any color pipeline.

For the record, you're not crazy if your have a 32-bit linear workflow but want to paint in log space. For one thing, many of Photoshop's tools aren't available in 32-bit (hello, Curves?!?). And some of the tools that are in 32-bit have not been appropriately tweaked for linear (I'm looking at you, Levels). Finally, if you have some film preview profiles, Photoshop can't use them in 32-bit mode like After Effects can.

So by painting in Log, you 1) reclaim some of your favorite tools, 2) can use film preview profiles, and 3) can still paint overbrights because 100% white in log space maps to 13.52 in linear. But be careful! Realize that layers will composite in Log space differently than in linear space, especially if you have soft feathered edges or use transfer modes such as Screen. If you flatten your layers before converting to 32-bit this won't be a problem, but if you need the layers to be separate, make sure you test everything first.

ProEXR 1.5 Beta

2009-12-31T13:35:00.000-08:00

Well, 2009 was quite a year. Just before it's over, we have a public beta of ProEXR for Photoshop to try out here.

It's been completely re-written to read and write EXRs as fast as possible, taking advantage of all the memory you've got on your system (including you 64-bit Windows users).

There's also a new "ProEXR EZ" plug-in for people who find the whole multi-layer EXR thing a little overwhelming but want the extra control ProEXR gives you over alpha channels. ProEXR EZ even lets you put the Alpha in the Channels palette, if that floats your boat.

Most users will want to have either regular ProEXR or ProEXR EZ installed, not both. But if you do install both and open a file, ProEXR will be used unless you force EZ in Photoshop's Open dialog. When saving, you can easily pick one or the other.

Please send in bug reports and comments so we can make this the most solid release yet!

Cineon Converter for Photoshop

2008-11-18T00:13:00.001-08:00

This free plug-in fills a missing link in the Photoshop film production pipeline. It applies Kodak's standard log2lin transfer function to a log Photoshop layer, such as one you might get from opening a Cineon file. This is the same operation found in Nuke, Shake, Fusion, and the After Effects Cineon Converter.

In order to convert a log Photoshop document to a linear one:

1) Convert the document to 32-bit floating point, without altering pixel values.

2) Apply the Cineon Converter to each layer.

The Cineon Converter can be scripted using Photoshop Actions. A sample JavaScript is included showing how to automatically apply an Action to each layer in the file.

Once linearized, your Photoshop document is ready to be saved into a linear floating point file format (can anybody think of one?) and brought into your favorite compositor in the proper color space.

Enjoy!

Download

Mac | Win

ProEXR ships with After Effects CS4

2008-10-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

OK people, this is big, real big.

It's been officially announced: the free OpenEXR plug-ins I've been shipping for over a year are now going to be appearing in the next version of After Effects! So no longer will you have to replace Adobe's plug-in with the fnord one, because they will be the same! EXtractoR and IDentifier will also be included. You can read more about it here, here, here, and here.

And since you asked, yes, they will be remaining open source, and yes, I will continue to update them on the fnord web site as necessary.

Not included in After Effects will be the Comp Creator, which you can still download. And of course, the ProEXR Photoshop plug-in is separate.

This is really a big honor, and I want to thank the AE team for making it happen. I have had a love affair with After Effects for many years and it's hard to believe my plug-ins are now a part of it. Pinch me!

Update: See my credit in the AE secret about box (hold down option/alt while doing About After Effects). Whee!

exrdisplay for After Effects

2008-09-30T12:22:00.000-07:00

When you work with linear floating point images in virtually any program, the standard conversion from the linear color space to your screen is usually some sort of gamma curve, a standard image operation. But a trained eye may notice that in some cases, OpenEXR files appear slightly different. One example is the thumbnail previews shown by Mac OS X. In this case, the curve used is from ILM's exrdisplay program. In the sample below, standard gamma is on the left and exrdisplay is on the right:

Notice how in the exrdisplay version, the sky is not completely blown out. Overbright pixels have been brought into range and do not clip as harshly as they would with a standard gamma curve. ILM is using a modified gamma function and added an adjustable "knee" to make this happen. Because exrdisplay comes from the source, it is sometimes assumed to be the proper way to view EXR files, but in reality it's just another tone mapping algorithm.

Ordinarily this different curve was only of passing interest to me, but then I was helping some friends put together a pipeline for an Inferno and found that it also uses this curve, which made it necessary to replicate the same color operation in After Effects, which made me write this plug-in:

It has all the same controls as the exrdisplay command-line program, in addition to a few extras. For one thing, the dithering that exrdisplay always uses is optional in the plug-in.

But more interestingly, I've included a checkbox to apply the inverse function. This means you can take a regular image such as a JPEG and convert it to linear space with control over the knee which will push some brighter pixels into overbrights. And then when you use the plug-in on the other end with the same settings, all values will round trip.

Anyway, I needed this for my personal use, so thought I'd share. Enjoy!

Download

Mac | Win

ProEXR 1.3 released

2008-09-12T00:15:00.000-07:00

A new version of ProEXR is available, adding a key feature that has been requested by users. Whereas the Photoshop plug-in already had a mechanism for effecting the way alpha channels were handled, we've now bumped the feature out of Easter Egg land and into legitimacy via a shiny new dialog.

The dialog does not appear by default. As before, you access the feature by holding down the option (Mac) or alt (Win) key. But now the settings are made clear as day and you can change the defaults to whatever you like. You can even make the dialog appear every time if you crave more modal UI interaction than you're currently getting.

ProEXR 1.3 also includes a variety of other small fixes. Needless to say, we recommend everyone switch to it (without any upgrade fee, of course). Enjoy!

Converting to 32bpc in Photoshop Without Altering Pixels

2008-05-06T10:18:00.000-07:00

Many people have a problem with color management. They think that when they open a JPEG in Photoshop, the pixels in the file should be the pixels that are shown on screen, but this is often not the case! If you have an sRGB image being viewed on your Mac monitor, Photoshop will darken the display pixels to show what the file would look like on a true sRGB monitor. Even if you think there's no ICC profile for the image, Photoshop will use the working space designated in Color Settings (usually sRGB). In general, this is probably what you actually want, but some people find it unsettling.

In another attempt to force users to do the right thing, Photoshop insists that all 32 Bits/Channel (floating point) images use a linear profile. When you convert your 8-bit sRGB image to 32-bit, Photoshop will linearize the pixels while simultaneously assigning a linear profile. The net result is that the image looks the same, even though the pixel values have changed. Again, this is usually what you want.

Except what if you don't want the pixels to to change, other than get converted to a higher bit depth? It is possible to do this, but it involves tricking Photoshop a little. I'll explain below.

To start, we'll take the famous Marcie image. This is a 10-bit Cineon file in Log space. Photoshop will open it as a 16-bit file without a profile (which means it uses your RGB working space). Marcie is a useful example for us because many film users still paint on Log images.

If you set the Photoshop Info Palette eyedropper to 32-bit mode and sample the grey LAD patch, you'll see values of 0.435 for that area. Now convert this file to 32-bit mode and sample again. Even though the image does not appear to have changed, the LAD patch is now reading 0.159. As mentioned above, the pixels have been darkened while the profile was linearized.

To convert from 16- to 32-bit mode without the change, revert to the original file and follow these steps:

1) Assign a linear profile (Edit > Assign Profile…) that you've previously created. When you do this, the image will appear much brighter, but using the info palette you can verify that the LAD patch is still 0.435. The Assign Profile function doesn't alter pixel values, only how they are displayed.

2) Now convert to 32-bit mode. The image will appear unchanged, which is to say too bright. But when you sample the LAD patch, you'll see that it has retained its value of 0.435. Photoshop usually converts from whatever profile you're using to a linear profile, but because we told it we already had a linear profile, no change takes place.

3) Your pixels are now in floating point Log space. If you save this image to an OpenEXR file, most file readers will assume linear space and brighten the image as Photoshop is doing. It will be up to you to make sure the Log pixels are treated properly in whatever program you're sending them to.

While Photoshop always defaults to using color management, there is a way to turn it off. By going to View > Proof Setup > Monitor RGB (make sure View > Proof Colors is also on), Photoshop will treat the file like is has the same profile as your monitor, so no transform will take place. In the above example, this would show pixels in Log space. You can also use View > 32-bit Preview Options to view a file with Gain and Gamma in 32-bit mode.

This workflow is currently being used in production by film studios who want to paint in Log, but export an OpenEXR file using ProEXR.
The part of the equation that is really missing is a way to convert from Log to floating point linear in Photoshop so that the EXR can have its proper linear values. Hopefully one day there will be a way to do this.

Update: Now there's a way!

Making a Linear ICC Profile

2008-05-05T17:44:00.000-07:00

ICC Profiles usually describe devices, and real devices are never linear. In other words, they generally have a gamma other than 1.0, and usually some sort of custom curve you might measure with a spectrophotometer.

But sometimes you want a linear ICC profile. Perhaps you want to set up a linear color space to use in After Effects 7. Or maybe you rendered a 16-bit file into a linear color space using a 3D program and need to tag it that way. Here I'll show you how to use Photoshop to create a linear color profile.

1) Go to the Color Settings dialog (Edit > Color Settings…)

2) If necessary, click on the "More Options" button.

3) Check the profile you have set for your RGB working space. It defaults to sRGB (in Adobe parlance "sRGB IEC61966-2.1"). Whatever profile you set here is the profile that we will be making a linear version of.

4) With your profile set, go to "Custom RGB…" in the same menu. A dialog will pop up.

5) The Custom RGB dialog will be filled in with settings from the profile you previously selected. In many cases the Gamma field will be an approximation, but it doesn't matter because you want to set it to 1.0, making this profile linear.

6) Make sure you edit the Name field. Call the new profile something like "Linear sRGB".

7) You can leave the rest of the fields as they are. Click OK.

8) Your custom profile is now selected in the menu, but it still lives only in Photoshop. We want to save it out by going to "Save RGB…" in the same menu. This will give you a Save As… dialog. You should drop the profile someplace it will be seen by other applications, such as:

Mac: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Color/Profiles/

Win: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Color\Profiles\

Give the profile a reasonable file name, although the name you used previously in #6 is what will appear in menus. You probably want to name the file the same.

9) With the profile saved, you probably would prefer to Cancel out of this dialog box, assuming you don't want to set a linear profile to your Photoshop working space.

And with that you've created a linear profile to be used in any profile menu. ICC profiles in general consist of a combination of color primaries and response curves. The color primaries describe the actual wavelength of light that comes out of a display when it is showing pure red, green, blue, or white. The response curves (which could be a simple gamma curve) describes the transition from red/green/blue to black.

In the process described above, we adopt the color primaries from a profile and set the response curves to linear. If we convert an image from the original profile to the linearized profile, the result is a simple Gamma-style transformation that doesn't involve channel cross-talk and can easily be reversed.

HDR Tone Mapping Using Film Profiles

2007-11-16T18:28:00.000-08:00

By definition, an HDR image contains more latitude in pixel brightness than can be displayed on a monitor. When you take a standard digital photo of something bright like the sky at sunrise, a short exposure may capture the sky properly, but the ground will be black. Re-expose to capture the ground and now the sky is blown out.

The really maddening thing about digital cameras if that you get to see the photo right after you take it. So you see your black ground on the screen but then look up to find that the ground isn't black at all. In fact, it may look about as bright to you as the much lighter exposure where the sky is completely gone. There you stand with your eyes easily able to see everything, a little annoyed with your camera's poor showing.

In a nutshell, the problem is dynamic range. You eyes can capture a wide dynamic range, but the camera is capturing a narrow one. HDR photography lets you combine different exposures to create a floating point image that represents the real world scene being photographed, sans your camera's limitations. But then when you want to show these scene-referred pixels on your monitor, you have to do some tone mapping.

Here are examples of tone mapping available in Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. The first four are the standard ones that ship with Photoshop, while the last two are made using a technique I'll show you.

Legend:

1. sRGB / Gamma 2.2 curve

2. Highlight Compression

3. Equalize Histogram

4. Local Adaptation

5. Film Profile Tone Mapping

6. Film Profiles + color correction and film grain

The sRGB curve in #1 is what is typically displayed by default. A gamma curve is applied to the 0.0-1.0 range and the rest is clipped. This is what you'd get from just taking a regular photo.

Options 2-4 try to bring bright values down into visible range without crunching the other pixels too badly. You can see in each example that more detail has been brought out around the sun and the coarse clipping has been reduced. However, each technique has trade-offs. You'll notice that detail is lost in areas where a bright object comes close to a darker one such as the disappearance of a clear horizon line near the sun. Local Adaptation can sometimes produce halos in these circumstances as it fights to maintain contrast while bringing pixel values together. Sometimes the image comes out looking more like a painting than a photo.

Don't get me wrong, each image is different and these algorithms can produce some good results. But a tone mapping technique I have grown to like involves simulating the way film would capture that same scene. For one reason or another, people have always had a fondness for the look of film, and many movies are still shot on film for this reason. But what is it about the look of film that people like so much?

One explanation is that film is the original high dynamic range capture format. Even under long exposures a film negative is never absolutely 100% exposed, so the bright areas of highlights can retain detail that would be lost by a CCD.

After Effects CS3 ships with a series of ICC profiles that describe the response of different film stocks to light. Since an HDR image describes the actual light in a scene, converting from the linear HDR color space profile to a film stock profile using the Color Profile Converter creates a simulated negative in Log space (make sure you use the Absolute Colorimetric intent). From there, you can apply a Theatre Preview Profile, which simulates that negative getting printed on a film positive and the projected. So if you trust the color science involved, you're looking at your scene as if you had shot it for a Hollywood movie.

Looking at example #5, you can see that the results are pretty impressive. There is a good tradeoff between detail around the sun and detail in the rest of the scene. And the sun has a very nice film-style glow around it with no hard clipping at all. Since the film profile response is a simple curve, you don't get any of the artifacts of the other tone mapping methods. Finally, there is probably something about the simulated printed film that will remind you of all the movies you ever saw before the dawn of the digital age.

In this case I'm doing everything manually—I've disabled all color management by using no working space profile and checking "Preserve RGB" in the HDR files. The same process can be set up as a display LUT so that your project lives in linear, but gets viewed through the film preview. To do so, set a linear project working space, turn on Display Color Management in the View menu, and then turn use View > Simulate Output > Kodak 5218 to Kodak 2383, which uses the same settings I am. However, to actually output an 8-bit JPEG or TIFF with the film look, you'll have to set up the Color Profile Converter as I have.

In example #6, I have done a little more processing. By applying a Levels call to the original linear HDR pixels, I can do a realistic color correction where light is brought down in the scene as it would in nature, making it cooler in this case.

Then I add a little film grain while the pixels are in simulated Log space, in between the two Color Profile Converter applications. Add grain is a 16-bit effect, but this matters little because log space does not need floating point values over 1.0. In fact, Log is usually stored in 10-bit Cineon files, so you have more bits than a typical film scan would.

By switching the simulated film stocks, you can also see how your same scene—accurately stored as an HDR image—would appear using different stocks. Much cheaper than experimenting with the real thing.

Power Picker 1.1

2007-11-13T15:37:00.000-08:00

At long last Power Picker has been updated to work with modern operating systems and the latest version of After Effects. That means Universal Binary for you Mac users.

BTW, does anyone else dig the Power Picker logo?

Thank you PP users (especially Ruth Dial) for your patience!

ProEXR is a CS3 Essential

2007-11-12T19:06:00.000-08:00

In the November issue of DV, Ned Soltz lists ProEXR as one of the "Ten Essential Photoshop CS3 Plug-Ins." Got that right…I mean…thanks!

Writing in the Instant Expert column, he calls it an "important acquisition for those who regularly go between PS and AE." How nice of him! If you're not a DV subscriber, you can currently view a PDF version of the article here.

ProEXR 1.2 released

2007-11-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

I've posted an update to ProEXR. There are a number of small improvements in this version, mostly based on user requests and bug reports.

One feature I'll mention is that ProEXR is now saving more of the standard EXR metadata in files it creates. Information such as the user and computer name is being stored, which can be particularly useful for people with render farms trying to track down the source of a bad frame. In After Effects, the project and comp used to create the file are stored too, along with anything written in the seldom-seen Render Queue Comments field.

To see all the attributes being stored, open an EXR in Photoshop and view the File Description.

Free Übercolor

2007-10-25T11:23:00.000-07:00

When After Effects 7 was released a few years ago, the new color management features made our Übercolor plug-in obsolete, so it was quietly discontinued. (In fact, one might say that Adobe's Color Profile Converter bares a remarkable resemblance to Übercolor.) No big deal—this is all part of life as a plug-in developer.

But today I got an email from an AE 6.5 holdout looking to use it. So I thought what the heck, and uploaded a free version to the old product page.

Huge JPEG 2000 images

2007-10-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment at the University of Arizona is hosting some gigantic images snapped (or rather scanned) by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The full version of the image shown below is 31,850 x 77,994 pixels! Each pixel represents 30 cm on the Martian surface.

It wasn't until Photoshop CS (8.0) that the program could even accept images bigger than 32,767 on a side, and few available file format modules can import such images, but j2k 2.01 can. Granted, doing so can take quite a while between the decompression process and all the virtual memory swapping Photoshop needs to do to.

A more efficient way to browse their JPEG 2000 images is by clicking on a link that brings up the Java-based IAS Viewer, which dynamically loads just the part of the image you're viewing at just the resolution you need, taking advantage of one of the key features in JPEG 2000. They also have a sweet Flash-based app to do the same. This reminds me of a personal feature wish for j2k to allow the user to reduce resolution when importing big files into Photoshop.

The idea behind the project is that members of the public will scan the images for features and report the interesting bits back to scientists.

MatchMover Pal

2007-09-19T15:19:00.001-07:00

I decided to revive an unofficial fnord product, MatchMover Pal. This is a free plug-in for After Effects that lets you import tracker data from Realviz MatchMover, which has in my mind the best 2D tracker money can buy.

The Realviz tracking algorithm seems good enough, but what really makes MatchMover great is that it provides a timeline interface for creating multiple tracker keyframes and then tracking forward, backwards, or even bidirectionally. While tracking, the point is shown in a big magnified window so you can see if it wanders and the track accuracy is color coded. Finally, MatchMover loads image sequences very fast as it tracks. It really is the best tool for beating a tough tracking job into submission.

Of course, MatchMover's real mission is to re-create a 3D camera move—a much more complicated task, for which they charge accordingly. I doubt anyone would be interested in paying all that money for the 2D tracker alone, but if you already have it, MatchMover Pal will help you use it with After Effects. The plug-in will also create a 3D scene in After Effects from a Realviz .rz3 file.

Download

Mac | Win

PS - I realize this functionality could have probably been added through AE scripting instead of a plug-in, but AE scripting wasn't able to do everything I needed when I originally wrote it for AE6.

ProEXR 1.1 released

2007-09-17T13:05:00.001-07:00

We've released an update to ProEXR that contains performance improvements, minor bug fixes, and enhancements to the After Effects Comp Creator. Everyone should go get it.

Probably my favorite feature, however, is a new report that you'll find in Photoshop's File Info dialog. Look in the Description field and you'll see a complete breakdown of all the channels and custom attributes included in the EXR. For those of us that can get files from a variety of places, it can be very interesting/useful to see exactly what's in a file. For example, some of the ILM Sample Files contain information like aperture, altitude, latitude, and longitude.

Since this report can get a little long, I've made a Custom File Info Panel that fills up the whole dialog with it. Download it here and drop it into the Custom File Info Panels folder:

Mac:

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/XMP/Custom File Info Panels/

Win:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\XMP\Custom File Info Panels\

Currently there is no way to save your own custom attributes in an EXR, but options for doing so could be explored if there is interest from users.

Incidentally, we've done some benchmarking recently and our tests have shown the After Effects plug-ins to be somewhat faster than Adobe's included OpenEXR plug-in. This can mostly be attributed to ProEXR providing a native AE plug-in, while the Adobe plug-in is actually made for Photoshop. So yet another reason to switch to ProEXR.

Controlling Alphas with ProEXR

2007-09-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

One of the more unique features of ProEXR is that it lets you choose how alpha channels are treated. Usually Photoshop takes an alpha channel and makes a layer with transparency, but some people would prefer to have the alpha channel kept seperate, particularly if they plan to use it for something unrelated to transparency like a bump map.

In ProEXR, holding down the option (Mac) or alt (Win) keys as the file loads causes any alpha channel(s) to show up on separate layers.

Update: In ProEXR 1.3, holding down shift now brings up a dialog with these import options and more.

Under ProEXR naming conventions (see the manual), a layer named "RGBA" will save layers "R", "G", "B", and "A" in the file, but a layer "RGB" will skip the alpha. Then if you have a separate layer called "*A", the red channel in that layer will become "A".

Or to put it simply, if you separate the alpha by holding down option/alt, save the file without changing the layer names and you'll get the RGBA file you expect.

Another Update: ProEXR now includes ProEXR EZ, a simpler EXR plug-in that lets you send direct the alpha to the channels palette when you hold down the shift key.

ProEXR in CS2?

2007-08-22T08:14:00.000-07:00

People have been asking if they really need to get Photoshop CS3 Extended to use ProEXR.

The answer is: not necessarily. But only CS3 Extended does layers in floating point (32 Bits/Channel mode), so other versions won't have access to what I consider to be the biggest feature in ProEXR.

If you're OK with that and still interested in a variety of compression options and retention of color information, go ahead and try it in regular CS3 or in CS2 (the first version that had floating point). While not officially supported, I will admit that a little testing was done in those versions and some code was added to make ProEXR work in them. And heck, it runs in trial mode for 15 days, so try it.

On the After Effects end, I would have loved to get the OpenEXR plug-ins working back in AE7, but it shipped with a bug that prevented floating point images from having 3D Channels. So you really do need CS3 to run those.

HD Photo: Not Too Shabby

2007-08-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

You know that we here at fnord have a thing for file formats. Don't ask why, we just do.

Well, there's a new format coming down the pipe, and it's HD Photo. It looks like the format to rule them all, so of course it must come from Microsoft. And that's why it pains me to say this: HD Photo actually looks really great. You can try it right now by getting their free Photoshop plug-in.

There are very few other formats that you really need to keep around if HD Photo can do all it says it can. It has all the important features of JPEG 2000 (see our j2k plug-in), but without the high CPU overhead that's preventing JP2 from appearing inside a camera or a whole lot of of other places. And yet the compression appears just as good as JPEG 2000, all while adding one very important feature—floating point pixel support. In very un-Microsoft fashion, they're providing free source code so it can be implemented on non-Windows platforms and even trying to make it an official JPEG standard called JPEG XR. (I'm sure the name's similarity to "OpenEXR" is purely coincidental.)

HD Photo also has one other benefit JPEG 2000 never had: the world's most pushy software company pushing on its behalf. HD Photo will be in your computer at some point (it already is if you're running Vista), the only question is: will you use it? Eventually, you probably will.

Not that HD Photo does everything. The product manager (interviewed here) sees HD Photo as replacing RAW, but that's one format I don't see it usurping. The whole point of RAW is to let users make decisions themselves that are normally made by the camera, and for that you need the raw CCD data. But he's right that HD Photo will replace Raw for people who are using it only because they don't want to lose bits when their camera converts to TIFF or JPEG, and are otherwise just sticking with the camera's decisions. If a camera saves floating point HD Photo files, clipping, color gamut, and bit depth issues will be of no concern (although using up space on the memory card will). That's all assuming Microsoft convinces camera makers to adopt it, of course.

OpenEXR is somewhat safe from HD Photo, although one big feature that HD Photo includes is variable lossy compression in floating point that you can tune with a slider. Compare to B44 compression in EXR, which is also lossy, but not adjustable. I really wish OpenEXR had this.

OpenEXR will probably stay the preferred format of high-end production because it supports a few key features that HD Photo left out, such as unlimited image channels of varying data types. (For some reason HD Photo will only support 8 channels, which would only amount to 2 layers in an EXR.) Also, having ILM behind OpenEXR and a community of industry professionals contributing ensures that the format will continue to keep pace with real production needs, which MS could never promise. But like DPX before it, OpenEXR may one day be familiar only to the pros and just a funny name to casual HDR users.

Incidentally, with all that free source code from Microsoft, you might think that OpenEXR could just add HD Photo as a new compression type. Wrong! Microsoft has cleverly worded their license to say that the public HD Photo code can't be used to do anything except support the HD Photo format. While what you do in the privacy of your own home is up to you, ILM could never get away with copying those (patented) algorithms into the OpenEXR code base. (BTW, ILM does not have this restriction on the OpenEXR code—they let you use it for anything you want.)

So HD Photo sounds really great. It's nice to finally see something coming out of Microsoft Research besides Siggraph papers. And yet there's the rub—do you really want to switch over to a format based on Microsoft-controlled patents? They say they won't be enforced, but do you trust them? I know Bob Cringely never would.

ProEXR Ships

2007-08-21T19:34:00.000-07:00

We've shipped our first new plug-in in quite some time: ProEXR. Check it out.

This is one of those plug-ins that I was just dying to have for myself. I've been into the whole HDR thing for a while, and OpenEXR is definitely the format de rigueur. But there were so many things it could do that Adobe (and many other companies) weren't supporting, I had to intervene.

You may have seen that the After Effects plug-ins are open source—that's a first for us. Of course they're free too…although you get them in the commercial download. Hope that's not too confusing.

And you may be interested to know that file format plug-ins creating layers in Photoshop isn't exactly a supported thing and at several times during development I thought this plug-in would never make it. It was an exciting night when everything actually appeared to be working.

Enjoy!

YAB

2007-08-21T19:05:00.000-07:00

Yet Another Blog. First I caved in and got a cell phone…now this.

But at least this blog isn't about me (Brendan) but about fnord software. And if you got this far, that's probably something you're at least a little interested in.

I'll post answers to common questions I'm getting asked, maybe add a blurb about something too esoteric to include in a product page. And I'll probably talk about some more general graphics topics too, but I promise not to post pictures of my cat (which I don't have), or my car (which I don't drive), or what I had for dinner (which I don't eat…oh wait, it was pizza).

All graphics and software all the time, folks. Enjoy!