PTGui Pro producing blurry/dark panoramas when using Masking tool?

[Mark Galasso]

When using the masking tool, see 2nd screenshot of area masked, after I create that panorama, the application of the mask seems to produce weird results in the final pano output (see 3rd screenshot), notice how dark it is? 

And this has been happening on other panos that I created that had some masking applied in one or more of the photos. 

On one of them as long as I didn’t use more than one mask, it didn’t produce a darkening of the area after creating the final panorama…but if I used two masks (it was of an overexposed doorway) it produced weird anomalies, a darkening and hazy look to some area of the panorama?? 

Has anyone had this issue and can you tell my why it’s doing that? And what to do to get the mask (s) to apply properly so that when you create the panorama there

are no weird anomalies in the created panorama?

Also, after aligning bracketed photos (which does optimization ) if I again "optimize" I end up getting messed up final panoramas being generated? Why does PTGui Pro

mess up after you optimize? like they tell you to do in their video tutorial

Appreciate any help.

Thanks

Mark

[Mark Galasso]

I forgot to mention that masking in some cases also produces "black" artifacts from the masking done on some bracketed photos after they are stitched into the panorama

So, it seems that all the way around PTGui masking tool is not functioning properly unless I am doing something wrong?

[PTGui Support]

Hi Mark,

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding what you are trying to do I think you are
misunderstanding the way masking works. Masking (red) makes a 'hole' in
an image which will be filled with content from other overlapping
images. It will not magically fill the hole (like content aware fill
does in Photoshop). In your example you've masked out the reflection of
the photographer and tripod, but you don't have an overlapping image of
the door without the reflections. PTGui will make the masked pixels
transparent, or if you use JPEG it will make them black (because jpeg
does not support transparency).

Regarding the second problem, optimizing in general should not mess up
the panorama. As you say, aligning already includes a final
optimization, so doing another optimize should in fact change nothing.
If you think there is a bug, could you make the set of images available
so I can reproduce and fix the problem?

Kind regards,

New House Internet Services BV
Joost Nieuwenhuijse

-----------------------------------------------
PTGui - Photo Stitching Software

www.ptgui.com
For support see: http://www.ptgui.com/faq/
-----------------------------------------------

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[PTGui Support]

Hi Mark,

You also mentioned the hazy look, this is usually caused by attempting
to do HDR panoramas from images taken in automatic exposure mode. You
should use manual exposure mode (M mode of your SLR) when doing HDR in
PTGui.

Please see:
http://www.ptgui.com/hdrtutorial.html

and section 6 in the FAQ:
http://www.ptgui.com/support.html#6_1

Kind regards,

New House Internet Services BV
Joost Nieuwenhuijse

-----------------------------------------------
PTGui - Photo Stitching Software

www.ptgui.com
For support see: http://www.ptgui.com/faq/
-----------------------------------------------

On 25/05/16 09:42, Mark Galasso wrote:

[Mark Galasso]

Hi John,

Thank you for the reply. I was not aware, apparently, of how the masking works with PTgui, but I will tell you that the masking did work on at least one instance by eliminating my reflection from a door glass pane, without there being an overlapping image without my reflection in it. So, I have been quite confused by the inconsistency of PTGui which has led to more confusion about how the masking truly works. I did see some instances though, were black pixels were inserted in my JPEG masked ares, but then again as mentioned above, in other instances the masking worked??

Could you provide me with some specific tutorial links to masking please if possible? I did look at one on your website but, it was very general.

When I Get a chance, I will post some examples of the optimization messing up the panorama after the initial alignment of the images, this is another area of inconsistency with your software.. I don't recall the optimization after the initial alignment of the images causing any weird panoramas with the trial version of PTGui.

Well.... I just tried to duplicate the post optimization issues I experienced every time, last night, but today it is not doing it any longer so I cannot duplicate what it was doing last night... (odd)

However, I'm glad it stopped doing this!

-Can you tell me how to set the JPEG quality % default? so I don't have to manually change it, to say 100% every time I create a new panorama.

Thanks for the help & Please let me know if there are some detailed masking tutorials.

Best Regards,

Mark

On Tuesday, May 24, 2016 at 9:42:20 PM UTC-5, Mark Galasso wrote:

[PTGui Support]

Hi Mark,

Here's a tutorial describing the masking feature in detail:
https://www.ptgui.com/examples/masktutorial.html

To change the default jpeg quality:
- start a new project
- switch to Advanced
- go to Create Panorama
- change the jpeg quality
- do File - Make Default

Kind regards,

New House Internet Services BV
Joost Nieuwenhuijse

-----------------------------------------------
PTGui - Photo Stitching Software

www.ptgui.com
For support see: http://www.ptgui.com/faq/
-----------------------------------------------

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>
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[Mark Galasso]

Hi Joost,

Thank you for the reply. 

I saved the JPEG quality default setting successfully, thank you for that explantation.

Regarding the masking tutorial, that is the one I watched already initially and I downloaded the images and followed it that way as well.

However, I felt that this didn't do a good job of explaining the masking process, not nearly thorough enough.

Where in that tutorial do they show you the overlapping image that will replace the masked portion of the picture? 

specifically, I did not see any overlapping image of the couple in the last part of that tutorial? 

All they did was show you the couple with the "red masked" outline and that's it? no demonstration of using an overlapping image without them in it?

Do you have anything else tutorial wise that will be more thorough about how to use the masking tool?

Or maybe you could provide me with some examples?

When you speak of an overlapping image to replace/fill in the Red mask in a photo... do you mean that you would need to carve out/mask out the same area in the overlapping image

without the part you are masking out in the initial image being masked and then what? Can you explain this part of the process please?

Does this mean when you are doing a shoot and you see a reflection for example that you want to take out later, you will need to shoot that same shot, but without that reflection?

And if you then have a shot without the reflection you don't want, why would you need to do a mask on the initial photo with the reflection you don't want if you already have another shot with the reflection not there?

Sorry to be confusing, but I am confused about how to do this..

You mentioned earlier, that JPEG could not save transparent masks...

When you shoot in RAW can you explain what advantages you are afforded with the masking tool?

Is it just that you can save transparent pixel masks? whereas with JPEGs you will only see black pixels when masking?

Thankyou for your help and any explanations that can clear things up.

Best Regards,

Mark

On Tuesday, May 24, 2016 at 9:42:20 PM UTC-5, Mark Galasso wrote:

[PTGui Support]

On 27/05/16 01:07, Mark Galasso wrote:
> Where in that tutorial do they show you the overlapping image that will
> replace the masked portion of the picture?
> specifically, I did not see any overlapping image of the couple in the
> last part of that tutorial?
> All they did was show you the couple with the "red masked" outline and
> that's it? no demonstration of using an overlapping image without them
> in it?

Hi Mark,

I'll look into the tutorial and will see if this can be made more clear.

>
> Do you have anything else tutorial wise that will be more thorough about
> how to use the masking tool?
>
> Or maybe you could provide me with some examples?

Download the images and project files at the bottom of the Masking
tutorial and follow along with the tutorial. I'm sure you'll then
understand how it's meant to work.

>
> When you speak of an overlapping image to replace/fill in the Red mask
> in a photo... do you mean that you would need to carve out/mask out the
> same area in the overlapping image
> without the part you are masking out in the initial image being masked
> and then what? Can you explain this part of the process please?

You would just carve out the unwanted part. Then blender will then look
in the overlapping image(s) for content to fill the gap.

>
> Does this mean when you are doing a shoot and you see a reflection for
> example that you want to take out later, you will need to shoot that
> same shot, but without that reflection?

Exactly.

> And if you then have a shot without the reflection you don't want, why
> would you need to do a mask on the initial photo with the reflection you
> don't want if you already have another shot with the reflection not there?

The problem is that the only way to get rid of the reflection would be
to move the camera. And moving the camera will introduce parallax and
thus give stitching errors. So what you would do is first shoot the
complete panorama from the desired viewpoint. Then move the camera a bit
and take an additional image so that you have a view of the window
without the reflection. This extra image will be included in the project
using viewpoint correction, and masking will be used to ensure that it
will only be used to replace the reflections.

Exactly the same problem occurs with the camera's shadow: you cannot get
rid of this without moving the camera, but moving the camera will
introduce parallax.

For more about viewpoint correction see
http://www.ptgui.com/examples/vptutorial.html

As shown in the tutorial the other main use for masking is to correct
problems caused by moving objects or people. This doesn't require you to
shoot any additional images, you just place masks to tell the blender
which parts of which images should be used in the overlap area.

>
> Sorry to be confusing, but I am confused about how to do this..
>
> You mentioned earlier, that JPEG could not save transparent masks...
> When you shoot in RAW can you explain what advantages you are afforded
> with the masking tool?

I was referring to the panorama file format, not the source image
format. If you mask our parts of the source images and there's no
overlapping content from other images then the panorama would have a
transparent hole at that location. With Tiff or Photoshop output this
can be represented by transparency (you would see the grey/white
checkerboard when opening the image). But jpeg doesn't support
transparency so PTGui will need to use a color (black) to fill the hole.

Joost