Change in EXR open from CS2 to CS3 can this be fixed?

Read the thread again "lamer".

You seem to have missed a lot.

Everyone has to live with their decisions in life Jeff. It's unfortunate my voice has become such a political sounding board - when in fact I hate politics more then anything... If you really see what Adobe is doing to its customers Jeff, you will understand the bigger picture.  Not that you don't have an idea what is going on.... The dismantling of industries due to the power of one company for the sake of out of control features - for only profit margins, is corporate suicide.  Tons of jobs are vaporizing in many areas of graphics or moving overseas to areas of the world that apparently Adobe could care less about strangely enough. Adobe is basically cutting their own throat through corporate marketing decisions that are half baked. When you only feed the mind and don't exercise the body, eventually the quality of life fails. Adobe is really cutting their nose off despite their face when dealing with how things should work vs. how things are done.  I can only blame the developer for not whole heartily digging deeper into the true meaning of how industries function - right or wrong.

I have always been part of the solution Jeff, but arrogant attitudes of misunderstanding has been the blockage. If you cant take the heat, get out of the kitchen I always say. If you can't listen to the hard side of the real world, then maybe you should turn a deaf ear to the problems. That is pretty much my experience from Adobe. I'm not into blowing smoke up anyones a$$ telling you have done a great job. Nor am I interested in playing political tennis with a bunch of people that can't stand some harsh constructive criticism. The real problem is restriction and control of a product for the benefit of the ONE company and not for the industries they serve. Again, demise of the ONE theory.

Continued out of control features is not the solution to corporate health. People are pretty much getting fed up with the piles upon piles of nonsensical features that pretty much leave new and old users alike lost in a sea of confusion. I don't find that progress intelligently planned....

Don't worry about me shooting my mouth off Jeff. Worry about me when I stop talking...at that point, I don't care anymore...

I guess the suggestion to keep to 25 words or less were kinda lost on you huh Joey?

Very, well....in 25 words or less:

"I have a problem with Photoshop. It currently takes my Alpha and converts it into Transparency unnecessarily. I don't want it to do that. Can you please fix this?"

Oops,... sorry that was 29 words by my count in Word. But Progress and countless others already tried this.

Fact is, if you want something, it would behoove you to ask in a manner that improves your possibly of achieving it (otherwise you are seriously wasting your breath).

I am attempting to share with you and others in this thread, in excruciating detail, the problems most animators deal with in regards to Photoshop so that you will have a better understanding of why the original "25 word or less" request was made in the very first post. That original post, clearly and explicitly explaining the problem, was apparently not understood. Therefore I am providing you a 26 word or more explanation.

I will be the one who decides if I am wasting MY breath, thank you.

Fact is, Chris know a _LOT_ more about CGI that many (most) of the people posting in this thread.

Chris knows plenty about his side of the industry and the product he works on. There is no disputing that. But he does not know everything about our(animation) side of the industry. Just as I don't know everything about what’s inside of Photoshop. This exercise is an attempt to provide to this thread more detail about the animation side of this industry and the needs of animators and compositors specifically, and how Photoshop fails to meet our needs at this current time.

Just because Photoshop fails to meet our needs, does NOT mean that Photoshop, or its programmer, is a failure.

Fact is if you WANT to bring about change in Photoshop code, you need to impress upon the keepers of the code that A) you know what the f$$k you are talking about and

And after everything I've written you come to that conclusion?

Instead of saying that I don't know what I am talking about,  refute my arguments. Show me and everyone reading this thread that I don't know what I am talking about. Just one person, illustrate for me that Photoshop does not damage a Softimage file with an alpha in it. Please, go for it. Show everyone that I don't know what I am doing and that I am not really getting this result by opening a PIC or IFF file into Photoshop using the default Adobe provided loaders and then saving with those same plugins.

BTW, what your experience in animation? This is not a flippant question. Seriously, are you a 3d animator? Have you created 3D animations and have you used software such as Matador, Aurora, Shake, Eddie, Fusion, Nuke, or Flame etc? Do you have experience doing what I do?

B) you know how to talk to engineers and encourage them to make the "simple" changes that might help you.

I've been polite, courteous, well spoken and well minded. But the engineer that you speak of has addressed me and by default others in my industry the following way....

Chris Cox wrote: because you know bugger all about the tools and techniques you use.

How else am I supposed to address this kind inflammatory attitude without providing the necessary and specific detail to the opposite of this accusation. Is that why you wish me to use 25 words or less? So I can't defend myself or prove my point? I'm not going to flame him nor am I going to flame Photoshop. I've been clear that for particular industries and workflows that Photoshop is stellar.

But for my industry and my workflow and for many others in the same position who need to edit images a certain way, it is not stellar. I've provided the details and examples here to back that claim up.  If I am wrong, provide detailed examples to the opposite. Otherwise don’t tell me I know bugger all about the tools and techniques I use.

These are really simple concepts to grasp. I want to open my IFF and PIc images, see all of the Alpha and all of the RGB separately, and paint on the RGB or Alpha independently. Photoshop does not permit this in a simple and unconvoluted manner for files with an Alpha.

The excuse for that? We're told we don't know what we are doing, we're told we don't know how to use the tools we use, we're told we don't understand that the other tools we use display everything wrong,  and we're told we don't understand that Photoshop does it right.

Is that a receptive response? Is that an enlightened response? Is that an example of Renaissance? Is that tolerant? Is that open-minded?

As for completely changing the way Photoshop deals with opacity, transparency you may as well deal with the fact that there's little chance (call it a snowball's chance in heck) that Photoshop will make any fundamental changes in the basic behavior for any individual industry (read this as go pi$$ up a string doode).

What we want could be done in the next release of Photoshop without altering any major core system or compositing code. The fix is fairly simple. Only the following things need be done:

1) Alter the image loaders to provide the user an option dialog on Open which will provide options to send the Alpha to Transparency, or Mask, or Arbitrary Channel on open.

2a) If the user directs the Alpha to Transparency it works no different than it currently does, a cutout is created.

2b)If user direct Alpha to Mask, Alpha is inserted into the Mask Layerand linked. The Trasnparency layer is filled with a 0% full field plane of Transprency the same as what happens when you currently load any image without an Alpha.

2c) If the user directs the Image to Arbitrary Channel the Alpha is inserted in the Channels as an independent "alpha".

3) Add functions to allow the user to move or swap Transparency to Mask, Mask to Transparency, Transparency to Alpha, Alpha to Transparency, Mask To Alpha, or Alpha to Mask.

4) Alter the image loaders to provide the user an option dialog on Save that will permit the user to select Transparency, Mask, or Alpha from all layers, or a selected layer, to be saved to the Alpha Channel of the file being saved.

Steps 1, 2a, 2b 2c can be done by modifying the loader plugins.

Step 3 will take a little more effort but wont effect any compositing channels, just the data content that drives the compositing and how that data is shifted from one channel or plane to the next.

Step 4 will probably require some coordinating between Photoshop and the loader plugins.

How do I know this, because some loaders already partially behave this way, that is they send the alpha to different places other than transparency.

With full redirection it doesn't affect core Transparency processing or compositing code, it doesnt even affect the optimization occurring to the cutouts. The Alpha in Mask accomplishes the same exact thing which Alpha in Transparency does. Produces the same result. If we choose to use that then we can, else everyone else can continue to use Transparency like they always have.

Further, with Alpha to Mask, we can link/unlink the alpha, disable/enable the alpha, paint on image exclusively, paint on alpha exclusively, etc.

For the time being that solves the immediate and pressing problem and it does not alter or interfere with any of the existing Photoshop system core.

Granted it does not solve all of the painting features we would like to have such as painting on image and mask simutaneously with full featured image and/or mask visibilities. This is not the same as disable mask. We would like to see all the image, paint on image/mask, and mask be visible/not visible. There are other permutations of this, see Matador, Quantel, Aurora. Some of this can be handled, though in a less intuitive manner, with these new abilities to swap T, M, A planes to different locations until a more comprehensive solution can be addresed.

It also does not address the premultiplication issue or the myriad of problems that creates for us. But it would be a really big first step towards addressing our immediate needs.

In terms of working WITH legit representatives of an industry that CAN offer useful and reasonable feedback, I'm sure Chris (and the other "keepers of the code") would be perfectly willing to discuss "things" but the format would be up to them. As it relates to file formats, again, except for PSD, PSB and TIFF complaining how Adobe handles them is foolish since it's neither Photoshop's job nor responsibility to do ANYTHING other than follow the spec...

As I illustated in detail, not once but twice, Photoshop changed the image. It appears to write the image spec just fine, at least on appearance it looks that way, but it changed the image data. It is Adobe's responsibility to prevent that from happening because it is happening before the file is written out. Again it is real simple, Open file in Photoshop, Save file from Phtoshop, image changed. Please go open your copy of Softimage and Photoshop and replicate the process to show me that it is any different.

if you don't like the result, go complain to the people who owns the responsibility to control the spec–that's way above Chris' (and your) pay grade...

Mayas IFF spec and Softimage PIC spec are fine. They've been used to render billions if not trillions of images from every corner of this indusrty. I would even speculate that far more images have been rendered in both formats than the total number of all images that have ever been read in and saved out of every copy of Photoshop ever shipped since it was first sold in the late 80s. What Photoshop is doing to our PIC and IFF files is Adobe's problem to resolve.

Interesting idea, I hadn't considered that.....do I need to complain to someone at Adobe above Chris' pay grade?

Did I mention trying to keep your word count lower? Seriously, the less you say, the more each word can have meaning...

I'll keep my word count to whatever I please.

BTW, the moment you stated that the "alpha" you had in the demo image of the sphere had no meaning, you lost the *******' battle doode...if that alpha had no meaning, why the heck did you export it with an alpha–that didn't mean anything–and that you expect Photoshop to ignore, even though you saved the image with it?

You miss the point entirely. It does not have meaning to me for the purpose I wish to not use it. It has intended meaning to the image, sure, it is intended to represent transparency in a composite if one chooses to composite the image. It did not have meaning to me because I will not use the alpha in that example. But the alpha is an accessory. In the animation industry we don't have to use the alpha if we do not want to. We are permitted that freedom to choose to use it or not use it. I chose this common example to illustrate in detail a valid case of this exercised numerous times a day by hundreds of animators or texture artists where they may not want to or need to use the alpha that is generated.

The alpha is there because the software generates it automatically. Many softwares don't give you a choice to not generate the alpha on output. But it is assumed you might want it now, might want it later, or may never want it at all. So it is rendered by default. It is an accessory. It is there for the animator/compositor to use how the animator/compositor chooses to use it. It is sacred because it is designed to be relative the RGB pixels, but it ultimately belongs to the artist, animator, or compositor, to do with what they please. It does not belong exclusively to any software or  any software developer.

Regardless the fact that I don't need the alpha in this case, I might need it later, so even if the software permits me not to render the alpha I render it anyways because I don't want to have to go back and rerender the image I already rendered just to get the alpha at a later time.

Besides, that ends up putting Adobe Photoshop in the driver seat of how I and everyone in CGI choose their render managment. Thats ridicolus. I should not be deciding which channels to render or not render or how to render them with premult on/off just because of one app with an unorthodox workflow as it relates to CGI. In some cases studios are generating hundreds of thousands of images. Daily. They don't want to have to go back and rerender thousands of images just to get their alpha, just to accomodate Photoshop. Thats redundant, duplicative, and wasteful render managment just to fall in line with Photoshop.

We have other applications, and we use these other applications. If we are using Maya Softimage, Shake, and DS in a pipeline and all these apps play well together but Photoshop does not, why in the world would any pipeline engineer screw their pipeline to the wall, render unnecessary file runs, and create extremely unnecessary adjustments just to bring all other applications in line with one application, Photoshop. That is ridiculous, time consuming, redundant and wasteful. Just because the development philosophy at Adobe is that they think they know better than everyone else and choose not to fall in line with the rest of this industry as best it can. This is why the other applications matter and should not be summarily discounted as meaningless to this argument. When you consider the current playing field for high end 3D, Maya, Softimage, Max, Houdini, Lightwave, Shake, Nuke, Fusion, Flame, Combustion, etc,  Photoshop is a super minority in this equation.

You also did not understand one of the precise examples I provided. Since I did not provide enough detail to make that example clear, I'll expand.

So I render out a 3000 frame Maya IFF animation. I have 20 passes as 20 layers I choose to comp in Shake for the final animation. Thats a grand total of 60000 separate images each with RGB and Alpha. One of those 20 passes has render bugs on frames 1573-1582. I can go back and try to force the animation software to render out the bugs, that could take an enormous amount of time to find the offending object, light, camera, shader, texture, material, polygon, or operator causing the problem. Or I can just paint the bugs out on each frame. I'll be using the alpha later in Shake so I can't toss the alpha in this example. So I proceed to bring the ten images from the image pass into Photoshop. Each image is converted to a cutout. Fine, I did not want that but in this case I don't need to paint on the black background. I paint the little black render bugs out of the image RGB for each image and save the images back out as IFF files. I have to use IFF because I have 2990 other frames, or 59990 unique images, that depend on these 10 to complete the 3000 frame sequence. I didn't plan on using Phostohop because I did not plan on having render bugs. Nobody does. But...oh my.....now my 10 IFF files that I corrected in Photoshop are mangled because they have big chunks of white all around the image that is not supposed to be there. Ok, if I'm comping using strict alpha this might work in Shake, maybe, it all depends on what else Photoshop did to the file that I cannot visually see. So I have to worry about what else is wrong with the file. What other color was changed, how dependable are these mangled files?  It might work, indeed, if I am lucky. See, at this point Photoshop is forcing me to rely on luck. It might work.  However, if my intention was also to use a second Shake instance of that image pass and comp that specific pass instance ignoring the alpha from the source and then using a RGB luminance comp or some other color based VFX composite or control( a glow or halo effect generated from RGB Luminance for example).....

I'm screwed to the wall....

Why? because for those 10 images I ran through Photoshop there is now luminance in the RGB that should not be there and my pass is worthless to use the way I want to use it.

Photoshop in this example was a liability.

You see why Chris kinda discounts what you say?

No I don't see why. Nor do many others in this industry.

And the fact that it is so obvious that we are being discounted is troubling.

Joey