[ishook]

So I just installed the Photoshop plugin, everything seems to be working as designed. I made all my light layers Linear Dodge, and it looks pretty close to how the top "rendered" layer and the image in MaxwellRender look. But when I turn off my "rendered" top layer and show only the lights that create the image, it gets a little over-exposed. It's close, but it's off a bit. Is there something else I should be doing with my layers to get the exact same image as the top layer or the original maxwell render? Even tweaking exposure globally doesn't fix it the way it should since some areas get corrected, but then other areas darken.

I'm using the latest everything, with Photoshop CS6x64

Ian

[Brany]

It's complicated to get the exact same result mixing lights and getting the render straight. Photoshop and Maxwell itself can introduce numeric errors and other things like gamma correction that can distort the light mixing and even the render layer visualization in PS.

A high SL MXI can have less differences than a noisy one, i.e.

[AlexP]

In 32 bit mode and linear add there is almost no difference, only in exposure I think. In 16bit difference is more visible, IHMO too big...

[Brany]

8 and 16 bits have gamma correction. Maybe the problem in that case is each light has gamma correction applied, and then you blend them (screen is better than linear dodge for 8-16 bits), but the right way to do that is applying gamma -before- layer blending, to the final image.

I don't know if you can apply inverse gamma to a set of layers in PS, and then apply the gamma correction to the final image blended. That way maybe render and blended lights will match better at low bitdephts.