File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)
1–10 of 25 posts
Re: File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)
#2Kind of wish this site went to more effort to explain some of the details. I'm a graphics programmer so I can guess why PNG is bad at alpha, but they've done nothing to convince me that EXR gets it right other than show one or two comparison screenshots.
Re: File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)
#3Sorry, but this looks like opinionated nonsense. There's an underlined and bolded "PNG is a forbidden file format" that is in fact not a link, without explaining how and why it is forbidden.
Re: File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)
#4I think a missing context here is that this is aimed at people who work with VFX and other forms of computer-made images; and even more in context of "what should your authoritative master format for archival purposes be".
Which also makes the line about JPEG noise make a lot more sense.
AFAICT, this is not a generic "PNG always bad and you should never use it to display images on the web" screen.
Re: File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)
#5> Screen-grabs can be taken in JPG
JPEG is unacceptable for screenshots of text, unless you can disable chroma subsampling, which isn't always an exposed option.
As a quick test, I took a screenshot of this comment, and saved it as both a PNG and 100% quality 444 JPEG, exported from GIMP. The JPEG is 81477 bytes, and the PNG is 44212.
Re: File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)
#6I think a missing context here is that this is aimed at people who work with VFX and other forms of computer-made images; and even more in context of "what should your authoritative master format for archival purposes be". Which also makes the line about JPEG noise make a lot more sense. AFAICT, this is not a generic "PNG always bad and you should never use it to display images on the web" screen.
I agree with their VFX arguments (well, I'll take their word for most of it, since I don't work in the VFX industry), but they also say
> Never ever PNG, not even for web
Re: File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)
#7This page makes no sense: e.g. proposing (uncompressed) jpeg over png for screenshots without any explanation why (note that even uncompressed jpeg doesn't necessarily store the exact original rgb color values but is likely ok for 8-bit rgb). Calls png "forbidden" but lists a bunch of other formats (without listing an actually good one like jpeg xl) as a valid replacement without saying what those (like webp which in its lossy version cannot even encode color at full resolution) formats do that png doesn't.
Complains something about alpha channels but doesn't explain what (and the mentioned jpeg has no alpha support)
PNG supports 16 bit per channel and ICC color profiles so can do HDR.
Re: File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)
#8This is the first time I've heard about (Open)EXR, and it honestly sounds like a pretty neat format. But this article lacks context, and it sorely needs it. PNG has many good uses. Apparently not in the author's chosen domain, and yet they condemn PNG entirely.
Which makes this a highly opinionated piece. And why should I listen to the opinion of somebody who thinks it's necessary to disable context menus on their website?
Re: File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)
#9I think a missing context here is that this is aimed at people who work with VFX and other forms of computer-made images; and even more in context of "what should your authoritative master format for archival purposes be". Which also makes the line about JPEG noise make a lot more sense. AFAICT, this is not a generic "PNG always bad and you should never use it to display images on the web" screen.
I agree with their VFX arguments (well, I'll take their word for most of it, since I don't work in the VFX industry), but they also say > Never ever PNG, not even for web
I don't think that any random image format can really replace PNG for web in terms of browser support...
Re: File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)
#10Kind of wish this site went to more effort to explain some of the details. I'm a graphics programmer so I can guess why PNG is bad at alpha, but they've done nothing to convince me that EXR gets it right other than show one or two comparison screenshots.
Those comparisons are in 256-color GIF. The author is certainly making a lot of effort to avoid using PNG. :)