Is the render output linear color or 2.2 gamma?

Question

I know Blender can nowadays use a proper linear workflow. The thing that is unclear to me even after reading the support documents is whether or not Blender saves the output with linear color or does it convert the PNG files to sRGB while saving them?

In other words, when I render (in this case with Cycles) a PNG sequence, are they saved with 1.0 gamma or 2.2 gamma?

---

This question is not answered in the other topic. I have read it carefully. Can you point out the exact sentence in that topic that answers if the output files are saved as linear on sRGB?

Answer 1

The gamma of the output image depends on what the image format supports. Generally, output to PNG or JPG will result in a non-linear gamma correction (2.2). Usage of the OpenEXR format supports linear colour space, and you would keep your 1.0 gamma value.

Additional info: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.64/Color_Management

Answer 2

At the moment, saving as JPG, Iris, PNG, JPEG, JPEG 2000, Targa, Targa Raw, DPX, TIFF will apply a sRGB curve (Gamma 2.2) to the image data:

Saving as Cineon will apply cineon colorspace (logarithmic curve) to the image:

Saving as OpenEXR and OpenEXR Multilayer results in linear colorspace (linear render values):

Also see: Colour shift when viewing render outside of blender