Lighting renders correctly, but doesn’t save correctly?

[Nathi Tappan]

Odd one… everything is fine, and when I hit F12 everything works correctly.

But the saved PNG does not have the same lighting as the image we see on the render. I tried with and without the compositing bit… I also tried saving the usual Image>Save As…

I tried on 4.3.2 and 4.2.7 LTS.

Any suggestions? Here’s my file.

Here’s how different they look:

[Dwayne Savage]

Just a few questions: 1. Do you have the PNG set to RGBA? 2. Under view layers tab of properties editor do you have z depth pass checked? You also need combined checked but based on the image I’m pretty sure you have that one checked. 3. What color depth are you using?(8 or 16) 4. Are you rendering in eevee or cycles? 

[Nathi Tappan]

Thank you Dwayne!! To answer your questions:

1. Yep, set to RGBA!

2. I did not have Z pass enabled. But now I did and still ran into the same problem.

3. 8 for color depth. But I tested to 16 and still the same.

4. I tried both 🤔

Puzzling, right? The craziest part is that the render looks perfect. Is the saving of the image that is the problem? I tried multiple formats too, not just PNG. JPEG actually looked the most accurate, so I’m starting to think the image is actually right, and there is no problem. Maybe the checkered background is throwing me off with such a small change in brightness with the transparency. 

[Paul Caggegi]

4.2.7 is out!? (Updates LTS for marking purposes). I am assuming you fixed the issue?

You may have found the answer already (I’m going through the list of alerts here) but in case you haven’t, Material Preview can has Scene Lights and Scene World toggles – Lights can sometimes be toggled off by default.

Whereas Rendered Viewport shading generally has everything toggled on

If you’re using the compositor, you can also preview in Rendered mode what the composited version will look like by enabling “Camera” or “Always” in the Compositor section of the viewport settings.

The reason for this, is that lighting, effects, compositing – all take up memory. Sometimes you want to work with a close approximation (which is faster) and then you have a setting which will show you what it looks like before you render (Rendered view).

It depends on what is going to slow down your machine. I typically have Scene Lights enabled in Material Preview, but not Scene World, and the Compositor is disabled. In Rendered Preview, I have everything.

Note too that effects will ONLY show in Rendered view, as will depth of field effects – should you come across those in future.

[Nathi Tappan]

Thank you for the detailed answer Paul! I think I have it fixed. The render looks perfect, it was the saved file giving me a brain twist. Thanks again!

[Dwayne Savage]

Z depth is definingly needed when using alpha and grease pencil or at least that’s what I’ve been told.

You may need to save as openEXR. Blender’s renders are 32bit float. PNG is straight 32bit. So, some information gets lost. Also you are on a Mac which has a higher range of colors on most of their displays which means you can see more subtle changes than most PCs. If I remember correctly PNGs are straight alpha instead of premultiplied alpha which means emissive alpha often times get lost. I’ll have to check my notes. I think I have some color management settings that could help. Just incase openEXR isn’t options for your needs. 

[Paul Caggegi]

Oooh I must try the above, Dwayne! I normally have rendered at straight 8Bit png with Film Transparent ticked in my Render Properties. I should try this. PNGs seem to work universally if you’re using them as textures for brushes. I now want to see if EXRs perform at all, or any different…

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