Image Formats for Rendering Write Nodes

Toon Boom Vector Graphic (*.tvg)

Toon Boom's proprietary format for storing vector drawings.

Truevision TGA/TARGA (*.tga)

A standard image format with lossless compression and support for transparency.

TGA files use more disk space than PNG files, but rendering in TGA is faster.

Silicon Graphics Image (*.sgi)

A highly capable format with lossless compression as well as support for double precision and transparency.

Photoshop Document (*.psd)

An Adobe Photoshop proprietary format used for image editing.

PSD files exported by Harmony contain a single background layer with the rasterized image.

Y'UV frame (*.yuv)

A legacy format optimized for NTSC television. The image information is encoded in the Y'UV color space, which means Luma (Y') and Chrominance (UV).

PAL frame (*.pal)

A legacy format optimized for PAL television.

Toon Boom Scan Files (*.scan)

A Toon Boom proprietary format used by Scan to store scanned image information along with its registration (peg) information. SCAN files are in gresycale.

Portable Network Graphics (*.png)

A highly portable image format with high lossless compression as well as support for transparency and double-precision. PNG is typically used for Web applications, graphical user interfaces and image sharing.

Rendering in PNG takes more time than rendering in TGA or in uncompressed image formats, but saves a lot of disk space.

Jpeg (*.jpg)

A very compact image format with lossy compression. It is typically used for Web pages and photo sharing. Because it does not preserve image quality, it is recommended to never render in Jpeg format unless you are exporting stills for a Web page or are making quick render tests.

Bitmap (*.bmp)

A standard uncompressed image format commonly used on Microsoft operating systems.

Toon Boom OPT image (*.opt)

A legacy Toon Boom proprietary format that stores raw image data with lossless compression.

Toon Boom VAR image (*.var)

A legacy Toon Boom proprietary format that stores raw image data with lossless compression in greyscale.

Tagged Image File Format (*.tiff)

An image format with many compression and encoding settings. It is often used for image exchange in visual arts and publishing.

TIFF images exported by Harmony are uncompressed, encoded on a per-pixel (interleaved) basis in PC byte order.

Digital Picture Exchange (*.dpx)

A professional photo format that supports various different approaches to storing colour information, which can be used for storing, exchanging and editing raw information recorded by cameras. It is commonly used in film production.

OpenEXR (*.exr)

A highly capable deep image format. Each pixel in an EXR file is exported with its Z-depth information. Additionally, if a pixel is semi-transparent, the color and depth information of pixels further back is stored along with it. If your scene has multiplane or 3D elements, this format can be used for compositing your animation with other graphical elements in 3D animation software.

Portable Document File (*.pdf)

Typically, PDF files are used to store, archive, share and print documents. However, Harmony uses the PDF format for its capability to store bitmap images and vector graphics.

If the write node is connected to a vector drawing layer or to a vector composite, the exported PDF files will contain the image as a vector graphic. It will ignore bitmap layers, effects and deformations. Otherwise, the PDF files will contain the rendered image as a bitmap.