Fnord Software ships ProEXR plug-ins for Photoshop and After Effects

"Fnord Software has shipped ProEXR, a set of 6 plug-ins to provide complete support for the OpenEXR file format in Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. Both Adobe applications include basic support for OpenEXR, but ProEXR provides access to important features of the format including multiple image layers, preservation of color space information, and choice between all compression options available in the latest OpenEXR libraries. The ProEXR Photoshop plug-in sells for US$95 while the After Effects plug-ins are free and open source.

With ProEXR, artists working in Photoshop CS3 Extended can work with layered EXR files and save projects as EXR without collapsing layers. This one file can then be opened in digital compositing applications such as After Effects, Shake, Nuke, and Fusion. In many cases, OpenEXR is the only layered format the application supports.

In After Effects, the 5 free plug-ins included with ProEXR take care of everything from OpenEXR file I/O, to extraction of channels into a composition, to automated project set-up from a layered file. They are open source to ensure that production facilities have unlimited ability to integrate After Effects with their OpenEXR-based pipelines.

Other features unique to ProEXR include the retention of OpenEXR color space information, support for both 32-bit and 16-bit floating point pixels, and full control over alpha channel processing in Photoshop.

ProEXR for Photoshop is available for Mac OS X and Windows as a 15-day trial version which can be permanently unlocked by purchasing a serial number. The included After Effects plug-ins are free and do not require a serial number. All Mac plug-ins have been compiled as Universal Binary to take advantage of the Intel processors found in new Apple hardware."

Source: The Digital Production Buzz