I have been trying to understand why importing poser "exr" files into editors (PS CS6) and viewers (IfranView) always appear washed out.  This happens from both Posers render cache and exported files from Poser.

Also if you import a exr file that was saved by Poser Pro 2014 into the background it is not washed out but only the top half is displayed.

Hi

I think that this covers at least some of what you are seeing.

At least an explanation of the washed out image thing and how to fix it.

http://poser.smithmicro.com/tutorials/HDRI.html

I'm not sure about the half image showing up though I've had times when I've had that happen with things I imported into Poser.

Mike

.exr is one of a handful of high dynamic range image formats: if you don't know what it's for, don't use it.

HDR formats, unlike things like JPEG, TIFF, PNG etc. have no Gamma bias (in other words, can be considered to have Gamma = 1): if you don't know what that means, don't use such formats.

The 'washed out' appearance is exactly what you'd expect to see if you casually open such a format in Photoshop. If you don't know why that is, don't use such formats.

Mike

Thanks for the link. That information is quite useful. This explains alot. I have always wondered why the images look better on  Poser screen  than they do when saved in other formats.

cspear

I understand a some  about all of the things you mentioned. But would like to know more.  That is why I came to this forum for information. Using some of info you provided gives me a basis to do more research.And I appreciate your post. For me to to not use it because I don't understand it means I must understand it first to use it. So that is why I posted.

I am trying to utilize the render cache to serve as a repository for files that can be pulled up on the Poser screen or ported directly to a  image editor such as PS without going through the 'save as' menu and all the tedium that follows. There are probably certain default settings that Poser uses to give such great on screen renders.

I see that you're using CS6. Open up an EXR file and slap an 'Exposure' correction layer onto it. Leave the Exposure and Offset sliders alone and play with the Gamma slider: this should give some idea of why you'd want to use HDR images. Then try using all the sliders in combination to get an idea of how powerful this could be (and what a pain it is to use).

I use HDR images a fair amount for solving challenging imaging problems, but hardly ever for Poser renders. To be truly useful, the source material has to be created - i.e. at the capture / scanning / rendering stage - with a High Dynamic Range workflow in mind.

For most image editing purposes EXR (and HDR) is hopeless, there are loads of Photoshop features that don't work with these formats. 

EXR is quite expensive (in terms of memory footprint, additional steps in your workflow) as a way of avoiding the hassle of going through the 'Export Image...' routine. Consider setting up a keyboard shortcut for doing that in one step. Or use the D3D FireFly render script, which lets you automatically save your render to a pre-defined location and file name.

 cspear

"Consider setting up a keyboard shortcut for doing that in one step. Or use the D3D FireFly render script, which lets you automatically save your render to a pre-defined location and file name."

I would like to use  the D3D script but I find there is too many steps involved in saving as apposed to the old 'Ctr-R' which automatically saves in the cache.  Is there a way to  to set up a hotkey to call a  the D3D Script after its been  initially set? This would be more useful.

With my first plan I thought about finding the settings in CS6 using them in a batch script in CS6 to that directory the  PS script  would apply the settings, save the files in a designated directory.