DWA compression in OpenEXR 2.2

OpenEXR 2.2 was just released, and it features a new lossy codec created by Karl Rasche of DreamWorks Animation. Simply called DWA, it applies techniques common in lossy image compression like the discrete cosine transform and Huffman coding, but it uses them to great effect. If you can accept a little loss in your HDR images, DWA can shrink them to a fraction of their lossless size.

SuperPNG 2.5

I just posted a new version of SuperPNG for your downloading pleasure. The big new feature is the Quantize checkbox, which will convert your 32-bit RGBA image into an 8-bit indexed color image with transparency. And I'm not talking about GIF-style 1-bit transparency here, but full 8-bit transparency values in the PNG color palette.

That 75% reduction in bits can really crush PNGs even more than was previously possible. Lower the quality slider to use fewer colors, which means even fewer bits and an even smaller file. This feature is powered by Kornel Lesiński's pngquant library, and Kornel has agreed to join me as SuperPNG's co-author.

Another new feature in this version is the Clean Transparent checkbox. It turns out that your transparent pixels may have unseen colors in them that are making PNGs harder to compress, but this feature will wipe them out for you. See the manual for more details.

SuperPNG has always been free, but now it's open source as well. Check out the GitHub repository and see exactly what we're doing.

Enjoy!

ProEXR 1.9

Today Adobe released a major update to After Effects and the rest of the Creative Cloud suite. This new AE ships with version 1.9 of the ProEXR plug-ins, which have been available here in beta form. Well, if the plug-ins are good enough for Adobe to ship them, I guess they're good enough for me. Consider version 1.9 released.

The biggest change in 1.9 is that the After Effects plug-in now handles displayWindow natively. Most users will not be affected by this, but the beta notice has more information for those interested.

The other subtle change is that all the ProEXR plug-ins are now built using OpenEXR 2.1, which supports multi-part files and deep image buffers. ProEXR can now read files that use these features, although the files you write will still be single-part flat images that are compatible with EXR readers that haven't yet upgraded.

Even if you're using an older version of After Effects, you can still download the latest ProEXR plug-ins and install them with your copy. Likewise, the Photoshop and Premiere plug-ins will work just fine in older versions of those programs.

As usual, this update is free and recommended for all ProEXR users. Enjoy!

ProEXR 1.9 beta

There have been some significant changes in the world of OpenEXR this year, so it's time to incorporate some of them into ProEXR. The changes are big enough that I felt it best to release 1.9 in beta form and leave ample time for testing and feedback. Download links and more details after the jump.

WebM and Theora plug-ins for Premiere (beta)

When people think about video in HTML5, they usually think H.264. But many browsers also support Theora (.ogv) and WebM, two video formats that have the advantage of being truly open, with no patent licensing fees required for the privilege of using them.

Theora and WebM actually share a common heritage in the VPX codecs created by On2 Technologies. On2 gave their VP3 codec to the Xiph.Org Foundation in 2001, while Google got VP8 when it acquired On2 in 2010. Now both codecs, once proprietary, are open source and freely available, attempting to unseat H.264 as the preferred web video format.

The only problem is that my favorite video editor, Adobe Premiere Pro, has no way of reading or writing these formats…until now. I've taken the open source encoders and built Premiere plug-ins around them (they also work in Adobe Media Encoder). The plug-ins themselves are open source as well, currently in a beta release. Find download links in the ReadMe on their respective GitHub pages:

WebM | Theora

The Theora repository also has a plug-in for using Ogg/Vorbis, Opus, and FLAC audio files in Premiere. Vorbis is a similarly free alternative to MP3 (Both Theora and WebM use it for audio compression), Opus is a new high-quality codec, and FLAC is the Free Lossless Audio Codec.

WebM is actively being developed by Google. There is talk of supporting alpha channels and lossless compression in the future. If they follow through, WebM could become a reasonable movie format for use in production.

Please download, experiment, and send feedback. And enjoy!

Update: the WebM plug-in is now released!

WebP plug-in for Photoshop (beta)

A side project of the Google's WebM open source video format is WebP, a still image format based on the VP8 codec. WebP supports both lossless and lossy compression and claims to do each better than PNG (lossless) and JPEG (lossy). WebP also supports an alpha channel.

I was naturally curious about this new format, so I've made a Photoshop plug-in to use it. Like WebP itself, the plug-in is open source and currently in beta release. Download links can be found by visiting my WebM project on GitHub.

There is an entirely seperate open source WebP plug-in available from Telegraphics if you want to try that too.

Update: In 2019 Google posted their own Photoshop plug-in, which includes a preview. Download it from the GitHub page.

ProEXR 1.8

Eagle-eyed Adobe watchers who have read through the list of features in the next version of After Effects have seen that it will include version 1.8 of the ProEXR plug-ins. Yes, such a thing does exist, and I'm releasing it today. The next AE may not ship for a little while, but you can grab these plug-ins now and use them in whichever version you've got, all the way back to CS3.

This is a modest release, befitting a 0.1 version upgrade. The flashiest new feature is found in After Effects, something called channel caching. The quick explanation is that an EXR with many channels will read much faster if you turn it on (go to the Interpret Footage dialog and click the More Options button). More details in this blog post.

Version 1.8 also contains a year's worth of minor bug fixes, optimizations, and other improvements to all the plug-ins in ProEXR. And yet they are completely compatible with the previous versions, so fear not.

The update is free, as always. I recommend you upgrade ASAP.

Enjoy!