Which format do you find the best to save your renders in and why?

JPEG most of the time.

The renders I do before postwork are large enough to make compression defects negligible.

It's only when I know ahead of time what I will do will be for print that I use a lossless format, like TGA.

TIF or Bitmap - then I bring it into Photoshop (and After Effects depending on the project) for significant alterations or integration with something else.

Just like TGA - lossless formats, but yeah, they start out large files sizes to begin with.

For animations I use Quicktime: Animation Codec - lossless - and also huge!

-Lew ;-)

Jpeg for test renders

Tiff for final renders without any of the compression options

PNG - lossless and contains alpha information if I need it

Same as Frank, I save to PNG because it's lossless. If you need to do postwork then this is crucial because of the continuous opening of the files.

PNG also for the same reasons as above!!!

bitmap most of the times, psd when I use the multipass features, and 16bit tiffs when the sky is my main subject ( well, I love creating Vue atmos, you know) to avoid nasty banding effects.

I dare to be different!  PSD for everything

You wreck-loose! Out of the forums!
;-)

Quote - You wreck-loose! Out of the forums!
;-)

PTTTTFFFFFFFFFFFF  !!

I put banana in my curry too ...

Quote - I put banana in my curry too ...

I wouldn't like to be in your house after that!! :ohmy:

Quote - > Quote - I put banana in my curry too ...

I wouldn't like to be in your house after that!! :ohmy:

Yea, it's probably why hubby works nights....just leaves me and my dog (who likes to share my curry)

I put banana in my curry too ...

There's just no stopping you - you... You...!

(so horrified, he can't think of something - merely HUFFS, folds his arms and stares at the wall and ceiling - can't even look at the keyboard to type... only how am I still typing...? Some mysteries are better left unsolved...)
;-)

JPG and/or PNG.

Mmmm Banana and kipper pizza

I use PSD exclusively for all my work,- old habits die hard- but upon reviewing what others use, I may have to change my ways. Bananas and Curry is not as bad as it sounds. But nothing is worse than boiled peanuts -imho. My wife loves them and then tries to kiss me after she eats them. Now she has the kids liking them. -oh the horror!

Get ready to wretch - a plop of Mayonnaise in about twice the size plop of Peanut Butter - mix well until creamy - dip apples and celery in and enjoy!
-Lew ;-)
BTW - still TIF and PSD and BMP - he says in a feeble attempt not to derail this thread further...

.PNG for everything.

Jon

 TIFF for stills, TIFF sequences for animations to be composited elsewhere, Quicktime (H.264 compression) for dailies

bmp or tiff, uncompressed, 
if it's for client's work, who will me redo assembly in PS or such,
else jpg for my own work :
I won't retouch it, because I try to achieve what I want, inside Vue.

PSD...and it's mostly because I'm use to it :)

Gill - I've got a recipe for you if you like banana in cooking :D

Quote - PSD...and it's mostly because I'm use to it :)

Gill - I've got a recipe for you if you like banana in cooking :D

PSD for me is the best because I don't have to change the format when I save my postworkings as  I always use several layers.  And it saves the alpha info which I use often.

Ooh, yes please!  I like bananas in most anything.  Have been know to add it to scrambled egg.  Love it mashed and grilled on toast and then smothered in golden syrup.

And I wonder why my bum's so big ?  ;-)

hehehe

I'll PM ya a linky :D

PSD sounds like it may be worth saving to.

PSD -guess old habits die hard and I like to use multipass rendering.

HATE boiled peanuts. My husband and I tried them once. Now when we travel and see the stands on the side of the road, we gag.

I like bananas, too. Actually, bananas and curry sounds good. I use bananas as a base for my bread dough in my bread  machine. Gives the dough a little bit of sweetness, that plus the raisins and you don't use sugar.

Actually, recently I found a very noticeable diference in the final image when I saved out, but can't recall which format :/

I usually export as .bmp, but also got into habit of saving out a .tif or .psd as well, for back up, because...it's too easy to save over the original...which I'm very wary of, lol

Anyway, doing that I noticed one format was noticably degraded, but it wasn't saved out in a format or style that should have done that:
-like say, exporting as a .png but only 256 colours would be bad, it wasn't that extreme though,
nor was it as bad a change as that, as 256 usually causes "banding", this was more "grainy".
-I think it was a .tif or .psd that was poorer than normal.

Should have taken a note of it at time and investigated. Probably just a goof on my part (which os par for the course, haha), but it was very odd.

Peanuts?!
in the style of Minsc form Baldur's Gate
"Black Forest Gateau for EVERYONE!" :p

I never use PNG, as it has platform dependent gammas associated with it-- so images can look different from Mac to PC to Linux.

I prefer JPG at 100 quality, but if I'm network rendering a really large image with lots of tiles, I'll let it render in BMP as the JPG conversion at the end of the HyperVue render has been know to cause hiccups.