Saving Images

[STUDIO_ARCHITECTS]

Hi
I was just wondering what the best format is to save my images as. I am just starting to get the hang of this whole LWF thing, but now I want to Do post work in Photoshop. If I save my images as exr. they look washed out in PS, should I then set the gamma in PS to .4545. Or should I save my images as tga out of vray? And I also can't duplicate my layer in PS if it is a 32 bit exr....why is that?

Hope someone can help
Regards
Reynhardt

[3DMK]

images output

If you are doing photoshop post work then you are better saving as .exr as this is basically the highest quality you can get, it's a 32bit floating point format just as the render produces in max. It is the same bit depth as a HDR image which allows for a far greater range of colours.
The reason it looks washed out in photoshop is that by default photoshop will show you the image with a gamma of 1.0. [most monitors are set to around 2.2]
You must convert the .exr 32 bit to a 16bit image to do ANY work on it as photoshop won't do any commands other than a few such as exposure on 32bit images.

Goto
Image--MODE---16 bit

in dialog box do below

Simply move the gamma slider untill you find the sweet spot [usually between 1.5 to 2.2]

Press OK

You can now continue working as before although remember you are working on a 16bit image which will end up twice the sice of your standard 8 bit images. It's best to keep your photoshop file as 16 bit [281 trillion colours] as this again will hold twice the colour info as an 8 bit.[16.7million colours]

[STUDIO_ARCHITECTS]

Thanks mate!