Am 25.04.2010 22:08, schrieb Kenneth:
> Hmm, I vote no. Sorry to be the one nay-sayer here. Given the past problems of
> different applications not reading the embedded gamma of .png images correctly,
> is this a good idea?  Or am I missing something that I should know about?
>
> Is this idea based purely on image quality (.png vs. .jpeg, for example)?

The idea is basically to adapt the output file defaults to the changes 
of time. Question is of course, what criteria should the default format 
fulfil?

I think the paramount critera should be that (a) the files can be easily 
exchanged between applications as well as via the internet, and (b) the 
file format does not use lossy compression.

In my opinion that pretty much leaves us with PNG as the only choice.


As for gamma, note that gamma issues also exist with any other image 
format (except for Radiance HDR and OpenEXR, but those are not 
widespread enough to qualify as a default output format); the only 
difference is that the PNG file format /promises/ proper gamma handling 
but /some/ software fails to comply, while most other file formats don't 
even give the promise in the first place.

For a user adhering to best practices, /at worst/ PNG will still be just 
as good as any other formats.

Of course there may be reasons for a user to deviate from best 
practices; in that case, they can choose their own default output file 
format by placing "Output_File_Format=Whatever" in their standard 
povray.ini.

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