EXR not loading in photoshop

[Hussein052]

Hello, i seem to have a problem in loading the EXR in Photoshop, the EXR file does not load in Photoshop by all ways , i.e by drag and dropping or importing via batch script, nothing happens, however all other file formats seem to be working fine in terms of importing. any advice would be appreciated.

[GabaCGStudio]

you can use PROEXR photoshop plugin , or ArionFX ...

[maru]

Can you show your EXR save window in 3ds Max?

There were some problems with opening EXRs in PS (error message), but it was solved some time ago.

[Hussein052]

Sorted.. reinstalled Photoshop..seemed to be a bug in Arionfx for photoshop

[johan belmans]

Hi there

In most cases Arion FX does open EXR's without any problem.
But whenever your EXR is 13K or larger, Arion will crash. I did not investigate from which resolution Arion Fx is crashing, but 11K is no problem.
What you could do in case you still want to use the EXR which Arion Fx can't handle, is temporally renaming both Arion Plugin files to another extension. And the EXR will open in Photoshop.

[alexyork]

Resurrecting this ancient thread because this has been an on-going issue lots of us in the studio have been having. It seems pretty random, with some EXRs opening in some versions of Photoshop just fine, but not others. We're all rendering to 16-bit Half Float EXR. Is there anything else we should be checking over?

Current work-around is opening the EXR in Corona Image Editor and outputting again as EXR which fixes it.

[alexyork]

As a follow-up to this, rendered something overnight last night - the beauty pass, refraction and zdepth EXRs open up just fine in Photoshop, but the reflection pass and wire colour EXRs don't open.... so I guess it's nothing to do with output file format I would have to say? Must be some extra/different info stored in certain passes that is breaking these files.

[Frood]

Hi Alex,

maybe you could attach a zipped wirecolour (assuming it will be the smallest one) EXR that does not open?


Good Luck

[alexyork]

Hey Frood. Can't send these as they're client work but I might be able to cook something up that breaks...

[Frood]

That would be even better. Mean a scene + result to investigate/compare. Not that I'm saying myself could do it but if you want to solve that issue and want to have the support team to have a look, there may be no other way.


Good Luck

[alexyork]

I have used the dropbox uploader to share some EXRs rendered last night that show this issue (broken EXRs.zip). The two main renders renders for cam6 are broken but all the other elements, and all other output EXRs from the long list are all perfect. Interestingly, if you browse these EXRs in bridge you can immediately see that the broken EXRs don't show any resolution data, or colour profile. Something is going wrong with the output... but just to remind, as soon as you open it in CIE you can see it fine, and export to another EXR without issue. And also, all these EXRs (per camera anyway) were output by the same machine during the same rendering session.

[maru]

I have used the dropbox uploader to share some EXRs rendered last night that show this issue (broken EXRs.zip). The two main renders renders for cam6 are broken but all the other elements, and all other output EXRs from the long list are all perfect. Interestingly, if you browse these EXRs in bridge you can immediately see that the broken EXRs don't show any resolution data, or colour profile. Something is going wrong with the output... but just to remind, as soon as you open it in CIE you can see it fine, and export to another EXR without issue. And also, all these EXRs (per camera anyway) were output by the same machine during the same rendering session.

Hi Alex and sorry for the delay. Can you explain what exactly is broken? What we should be looking at? All files open fine for me here (Photoshop 2020) and I can't see any glitches. Maybe it really is Photoshop fooling around?
Also, have you tried removing all render elements and adding them back? This is known to sometimes fix broken output.

[alexyork]

I have used the dropbox uploader to share some EXRs rendered last night that show this issue (broken EXRs.zip). The two main renders renders for cam6 are broken but all the other elements, and all other output EXRs from the long list are all perfect. Interestingly, if you browse these EXRs in bridge you can immediately see that the broken EXRs don't show any resolution data, or colour profile. Something is going wrong with the output... but just to remind, as soon as you open it in CIE you can see it fine, and export to another EXR without issue. And also, all these EXRs (per camera anyway) were output by the same machine during the same rendering session.

Hi Alex and sorry for the delay. Can you explain what exactly is broken? What we should be looking at? All files open fine for me here (Photoshop 2020) and I can't see any glitches. Maybe it really is Photoshop fooling around?
Also, have you tried removing all render elements and adding them back? This is known to sometimes fix broken output.

Hey :)

Did you view them in Bridge also? The broken EXRs don't generate thumbnails, and often don't seem to show the actual resolution either. There's 100% an issue with the files - if it was an issue with a specific version of Photoshop the files themselves wouldn't show any issues, I think. I think that certain versions of Photoshop might be able to process these files, but it's a certainty that somehow those particular EXRs were somehow written incorrectly. The max elements setup isn't broken - you could resubmit this same job to Deadline and have it render on the same machine and it would randomly save those elements just fine but others not. It seems truly random - I suspect something is going wrong during the writing process, perhaps autosave is kicking in? I remember that once upon a time corona autosave would crash a render sometimes. Maybe this is a similar thing?

It's strange if nobody else is experiencing this at all.

[dj_buckley]

It's a completely random issue.  The only fix I've found is installing Proexr or ExrIO for Photoshop.  My preference is Proexr

[alexyork]

Just checking in here if devs are actively looking into this? It truly seems to be something related to the writing of the specific EXRs, and totally random. Anecdotally, we have also experienced that a render over Deadline might come out fine, but the same render done + saved manually out of the buffer can result in a "broken" EXR.

We have managed to find out that photoshop v 18.x seems to open these broken files fine, but v 21.1/21.2 doesn't open them. That tells us there's an issue with the files themselves.

Not to put too fine a point on it but this is a huge pain in the arse on a daily basis as we're unable to mass-load EXRs in a stack and it's slowing production considerably. Moving everyone to an old version of photoshop is far from ideal too as the new versions have some really useful tools.