What the crap?!

I render out of 3D apps and sometimes selectively want alphas on certain objects – but I usually need the entire image, or, I may want to “tune” the alpha before I use it as a mask. Now, Photoshop just nukes all that data. Nice.

Why not just add a box in Preferences that says “Pre-compute Transparency from Alpha” or “Keep Alpha as Separate Channel”? Now I’m going to have to render out multiple passes to get what used to take one step. CS5 just complicated my workflow….

Neverming it was four years in waiting (since CS3 changed this behaviour to “coxrect one”) and historic debates in http://forums.adobe.com/thread/369637 how hard is to “add an option” to open so called “transparency” as “alpha”…

Finally to upgrade! :) Cheers- keep up good work!

The new plugin opens the transparency channel from the EXR file as an alpha channel. That means that it may not look correct or composite correctly in Photoshop, but it may be how some people are used to seeing their EXR files in other applications.

The existing EXR plugin that ships with Photoshop does not “bake the alpha into transparency” – the transparency channel in the EXR file is opened as transparency just like it’s supposed to be. The existing EXR plugin imports the image with the correct appearance and ability to composite correctly in Photoshop.