the png debate

[Robert]

I use:

RPF - if i need to work with combustion
EXR - if i really need to manipulate an image later (or vrimg)
PNG - for all other proposes

simpel, isn't it?

[joconnell]

this is understandable; since they are lossless and compressed, this is what has to happen on write, or read, I would imaging. Like opening an archive every frame.

Totally correct but I use compressed tga files for everything and they write a lot quicker than png so I'm stick to them for the moment. I will shift to exr when I start doing my own compositing but in the mean time our flames can't use exr :/

[studioDIM]

I use RPF all the time, because I use DOF, MB and ID selection from combustion for all kind of obscure purposes. Unfortunately, this format slows down combustion A LOT, but the flexibility is unbeatable.
If combustion had support for EXR channels, I would switch to EXR.

Ditto!
I still have to give a go at nuke 4.5 demo for its support of exr chans, but boy, it's a fairly steep climb both for the learning curve and the price...

Lele

[joconnell]

Yeah but I'm quite impressed at what digital comain are doing with it on their car ads - I don't think after effects is as good for reusing layers multiple times in the same comp...

[mike_kennedy]

Late replying, sorry,the way they suck with PS CS is that PS knocks out the alpha and many times I would rather make that choice myself. We still use PNG's in AE for sure, the alpha is normally desired. Is there a way to get better control in PS over alphas for PNG files?
Not a PS power user, I do most of my comps in AE.
Cheers
Mike K

[mike_kennedy]

Format really depends on what speed things up for you, in our case we are writing so many files every day that speed across the network ends up being more important than how fast the files open in AE vs say TGA. We work at HD so the time for it to move across the network versus how fast our machines can deal with the files is the kicker, we have a fairly decent network but have really kick ass machines so it works in our favor.
Cheers
Mike K