How to stitch a pano with very light windows and dark corners?

[Brandan]

Is there any particular trick  or technique to stitching a pano that is taken inside a house that is relatively dark compared to the landscape seen though the outside windows? So far when I have done it no mater what I do the windows will be blown out even if I have taken extra shots of the windows with different settings that show the outside world clearly and I then use a mask to include what is in the window.


I have seen people do this perfectly, so I must be missing something fairly simple.

Thanks,

Brandon

[paul womack]

Brandan wrote:
> Is there any particular trick or technique to stitching a pano that is taken inside a house that is relatively dark compared to the landscape seen though the outside windows? So far when I have done it no mater what I do the windows will be blown out even if I have taken extra shots of the windows with different settings that show the outside world clearly and I then use a mask to include what is in the window.
>
>
> I have seen people do this perfectly, so I must be missing something fairly simple.

Dunno about simple, but one answer is HDR.

BugBear

[Brandan]

I have attached two files to show my problem.


Normallowrange shows what happens if I just stitch my project. High dynamic range looks the same. Using the color optimizer in hugin will change some of the colors, but not come even close to solving the problem.

The big windows in front are blown out and a person can not identify that the upper windows have blinds covering them. The reflection on the floor is also pretty blinding. The side windows look pretty good. The kitchen behind the camera is pretty dark and the window outside it is blown out as well.


I have been playing around and the second one is my best so far, but far from perfect.
In the second one I had hugin output the blended layers of similar exposure, I then made another project and took the different layers and stitched them together. A person can now see out the front windows, the floor looks great(though there is now an alignment problem, no idea why), The side windows look a little worse, but is livable. The kitchen is a little bit lighter.

The main problem with it is the stove between the two big windows is competently lost.

-------------------
Any thoughts on what I am doing wrong here? In my source photos a person can see out the windows as show in the pano that I was playing around with. How do you guys get hugin to deal with extreme color changes in a pano? If in the preview window I adjust the color down the windows become very clear while also darkening the rest of the room. If I lighten it up in the preview the kitchen becomes very easy to see while making the windows even worse. Is there a way to stitch a dark and a light copy and have hugin put them back together maybe?

[kfj]

On Wednesday, May 7, 2014 12:25:40 PM UTC+2, Brandan wrote:

I have been playing around and the second one is my best so far, but far from perfect.
In the second one I had hugin output the blended layers of similar exposure, I then made another project and took the different layers and stitched them together. A person can now see out the front windows, the floor looks great(though there is now an alignment problem, no idea why), The side windows look a little worse, but is livable. The kitchen is a little bit lighter.

In my experience, fusing the stacks first and blending the fused stacks after works best. You may want to fine-tune the enfuse options, specifically exposure-mu and exposure-sigma - I think in newer versions it's now called exposure-optimum and exposure-width.

Kay

[dkloi]

I export different versions of the pano and then use enfuse to create an exposure fused version. Usually create a mid-tone pano, a light pano (showing the shadows), and a dark pano (with the highlight detail). The three versions can either be created using the same set of source images or with bracketed sets, but all imported into the one project and aligned with each other. In the preview window I select which images to include and use the exposure adjustment to control the brightness of the exported pano.

Alternatively, you can create an HDR pano (e.g. in OpenEXR format) and then use a tonemapper (e.g. Photomatix) to render it.

Here are examples of the blend, then fuse method:

https://www.360cities.net/image/scotland-st-andrews-st-rules-tower

https://www.360cities.net/image/glasgow-university-undercroft

[dkloi]

https://www.360cities.net/image/glasgow-university-undercroft

I've attached the three different exposures and the final enfused version at the bottom. This was then further post-processed to end with the final panorama.

[David W. Jones]

That's very well done! I love HDR.

--
David W. Jones
gnome...@gmail.com
wandering the landscape of god
http://dancingtreefrog.com