PNG vs TGA

[Chris Wright]

If you’re doing 3-D animation, I strongly recommend Tiff trillion 16bit outputs. They don’t have any pixel shift. The next one is PNG, which is a little smaller and has almost no pixel shift. TGA is old, bad pixeling, and won’t even do 16bit.

https://technicolorsoftware.hostzi.com/

[Dustin Brown]

What do you mean by pixel shift? I did a search on Google and I didn’t really see anything that talked about the pixel shift of the three formats you mentioned. What’s the bottom line, if I render TGA sequences my footage is going to look jittery? Thanks again.

[Chris Wright]

if you render out an image and zoom in 1600% in photoshop, the RGB numbers will be shifting higher or lower, eventually visually apparent as banding from generation loss.

https://technicolorsoftware.hostzi.com/

[Dustin Brown]

Good to know. Thanks, Chris, I appreciate your time.

[Christopher Wright]

Where did you get that info??
I’ve been using 24 bit Targa sequences out of Lightwave for years,
even for feature film work, without “old, bad pixeling.”
I only started using PNGs because FCP reads the alpha channel better than 24 bit TGAs on the MAC.
Tiffs were always the Apple way to go, where most animators/editors used TGAs on the Windows compositing side. It all only depends on which “flavor” your software prefers.

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[Dustin Brown]

Weird, you guys have the same name.

I’ve had issues using TGA sequences in Premiere before. I forget what it was, but something was acting wonky. I think that’s what initially got me using PNGs.

[Christopher Wright]

Both can be saved out as 24 bit formats, again it is just what works best for your specific workflow,
OS, hardware setup, and software apps. There is no difference in quality.

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[Kevin Camp]

if you are working in 16bpc color, then png should be able to record all the color data (it does depend a bit on your software… i know older versions of photoshop only worked with 8bpc pngs and at one point it could read 16bpc, but write 8bpc).

tga is only capable of recording 8bpc (which is 24-bit color – or 32 with alpha, 8 bits for each channel, rgba).

tiff is capable of 32bpc color if you are capable of working/rendering 32bpc in your 3d app, and psd is also capable of 32bpc.

personally, i’d probably go with png if that fits the workflow (and it sounds like it does)… but tiff is more universal – almost a standard in the industry.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Christopher Wright]

Kevin,

I have never used Tiff sequences for animation work.
Although you can render to 32bpc, tiffs still can’t/don’t carry an alpha channel, correct??

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[Dustin Brown]

TIFF does support alpha channel.