How about bringing back selective exposure fusion?

[Tom Sharpless]

I hoped PTGui 11 might revive a really useful feature of versions before 9: support for selective hdr shooting.

For example, you could take additional short exposures just toward the windows, and PTGui would align and blend those shots perfectly, using exposure fusion

Nowadays it demands a full set of photos at each exposure level. In many cases that is not just a waste of time and effort, but also creates needless ghosting problems.

[JPS]

That'll be a GREAT thing, indeed ;-) !

[PTGui Support]

Hi Tom,

I don't think anything has changed in this respect. It was never
supported, and it's not something I have ever recommended, but it may
have worked under specific conditions. And then I don't see why it would
not work now; the exposure fusion algorithm hasn't changed.

PTGui 4 (or so) to 10 are still available for download, see 1.8:
https://www.ptgui.com/support.html#1_8

Kind regards,

Joost Nieuwenhuijse
www.ptgui.com

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[Erik Krause]

Am 14.09.2018 um 21:05 schrieb Tom Sharpless:

> For example, you could take additional short exposures just toward the
> windows, and PTGui would align and blend those shots perfectly, using
> exposure fusion

You always can merge bracketed sets first, tonemap (or exposure fuse)
then stitch. However, doing so can result in images of different
brightness, which you need to correct in PTGui. The benefit is that you
can deal easier with ghosting.

--
Erik Krause
http://www.erik-krause.de

[John Houghton]

On Friday, September 14, 2018 at 8:05:41 PM UTC+1, Tom Sharpless wrote:

Nowadays it demands a full set of photos at each exposure level. In many cases that is not just a waste of time and effort, but also creates needless ghosting problems.

This isn't quite true.  It only demands a full exposure set for each level in order to do the automatic linking.  Once they are linked, you can add extra single images, which will go into extra blend planes (assuming they are taken with an exposure outside the range of values used for the linked images).  I did the attached test with just one extra image of the window shot on a different day with a different lens to capture the lost highlights in the main set (HDR processed).

John

[Erik Krause]

Am 15.09.2018 um 15:46 schrieb John Houghton:
> Once they are linked, you can add
> extra single images, which will go into extra blend planes (assuming they
> are taken with an exposure outside the range of values used for the linked
> images). I did the attached test with just one extra image of the window
> shot on a different day with a different lens to capture the lost
> highlights in the main set (HDR processed).

In my experience this works only as long as the additional images are
mostly black along the edges. If not you get visible seam lines. Pretty
ugly ones in True HDR and slightly soft ones in Exposure Fusion. See
attached images.

BTW.: This is the same problem that causes bad results if shooting in
automatic mode.

[Tom Sharpless]

Thanks for clarifying this, John and Erik.  As  usual I seem to have given up too easily.

Most blending issues can presumably be handled by stitching to psd and doing the final blend in PS.

[John Houghton]

On Saturday, September 15, 2018 at 8:09:44 PM UTC+1, Tom Sharpless wrote:

Thanks for clarifying this, John and Erik.  As  usual I seem to have given up too easily.

Most blending issues can presumably be handled by stitching to psd and doing the final blend in PS.

Tom, that is in fact what I actually did when I stitched the original panorama back in 2009. I aligned the separate windows shots with the stitched equirectangular image and merged with masks in PS.  By just merging in the window glass areas, the surrounding masonry does not suffer the edge darkening characteristic of HDR blending that makes it look grubby!  But it can be a lot of manual work, of course.

John

[PTGui Support]

..and manual linking is always possible:
Select a range of images in the Source Images tab, right click and
select 'Link selected Images'.

Linking only ensures that these images will have the same yaw/pitch/roll
angles and ensures that no control points are needed between them. It
does not affect HDR processing; this groups images by their effective EV
regardless of whether they are linked or not.

Joost

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