Hi all, does anyone have a workflow that reads / extracts these on a Mac to a PSD file; or something that can be used in photoshop?
The Exr-IO plugin seems to do this, but that one doesn’t work on a Mac. ProEXR works on Mac but does not extract the crypto’s to usable B/W layers, at least not in Photoshop.
What I get from the chaos video on Cryptomatte’s is that these take depth of field better into account than regular alpha’s.
Thanks!
Cryptomatte generates masks that account for blurring, either from DoF or Motion Blur, which is its advantage as you say.
Unfortunately it seems there is no option to open cryptomattes correctly in Photoshop on the Mac, from what I can see in threads like https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/mac-compatible-exr-plugin-for-photoshop/td-p/13565575 .
Are there other applications that handle EXRs better than Photoshop? Often times video editors do a better job of handling EXRs than Photoshop does, just in case that opens up some new avenue to explore.
Maybe opening the file with Chaos Player might work as an Photoshop workaround? I know it opens .EXR’s. And also, I don’t know a lot about working with cryptomattes so I probably should keep my nose out of it 
“Proper” compositing software like Nuke or Fusion should read cryptomatte well and allow you to export to other formats.
Thanks all! After some goofing around I got it to work with the free version of Davinci Resolve with the Reactor plugin, as in Tom’s tutorial on Cryptomatte’s. Bit more clicking around than I hoped, but it works.
Good to hear! Well, that you have a resolution that is - still a shame it takes more clicks due to there being no equivalent to something like EXR-IO on the Mac, though 
Hi gpakrest,
I know this thread is a bit old, but following up on Tom’s last point about there being no EXR-IO equivalent on the Mac, in case it helps you or anyone landing here from a search:
Full disclosure: I’m the developer. I had the same problem (Cryptomatte in Photoshop on a Mac, ProEXR only giving me unusable layers), so I ended up writing a Photoshop plug-in for it: CryptoEXR. It opens multi-layer EXRs directly in Photoshop on Apple Silicon Macs and decodes the Cryptomatte IDs into their own layers, with no round trip through another app.
The Resolve + Reactor route works fine and is free, so this is more for people who want to stay in Photoshop. There’s a free 30-day trial if you want to check it on your own EXR-files:
I haven’t had many V-Ray files to test with yet, so feedback and bug reports are very welcome.
Affinity Photo reads crypomattes and is free now AFAIK.
I work in a Photoshop world however (also on Mac) so kudos for writing that plugin