Editing renders

[Peter Milner]

There seems to be a difference between a high quality photo and a high quality render:

When our graphic designer is trying to adjust levels he finds that with a render there is limited information particularly in very dark or light areas compared with a photo which acts more like a HDRI. This makes it very difficult to brighten up very dark areas or vice versa.

Is this a limitation of the software or can something be done about it?

[Jelena]

its the limitation of 8 bit. you need at least 16 bit to get more information in color to avoid dead pixel in dark and bright areas.

[Peter Milner]

I don't think that's the problem as the photos we work with are also 8 bit.

[Jelena]

sure, but in this pictures - well lightend - are almost no pixel with 0,0,0 or 255,255,255. so you can brighten them up in a, lets say correct way.

edit: what i want to tell is, that the postwork with renders is much more easy with 16 bit, because of more information in the pixel ;)

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

It's most likely a tone operator issue.

You can try saving as .hdr or .exr and working on that data directly. It's data before a tone operator is applied and therefore very similar to what's held natively in an .nXtImage.  Tone mapping will be provided by your hdr editor.  I know photoshop can deal with some of these formats-- no idea how well.