cylindrical panos kinda poor

[Steve Z]

cylindrical panos are ok by me.  But it strikes me odd that 
i have to make them in photoshop cuz ptgui wont and i use

ptgui plenty for other architectural fixes.  I square them up

in lightroom (nef), export as tiff.  I wonder what i'm missing?  

current version, 

mac osx10.8

[John Houghton]

On Saturday, December 21, 2013 5:25:04 AM UTC, Steve Z wrote:

cylindrical panos are ok by me.  But it strikes me odd that 
i have to make them in photoshop cuz ptgui wont 

Steve, there are three places where you can select cylindrical for the output projection:  there's the Panorama Settings tab, the Projection menu on the Panorama Editor window, and the Cylindrical icon on the Panorama Editor window.  It's hard to believe that you missed all of these. What exactly is the problem?

John 

[Michel Thoby]

Steve, I fully agree with John and I would have just said the same answer. 

However I won't repeat his message, because the ability of PTGui to handle cylindrical panorama is IMHO indeed crippled, yet most probably not in the way you suggest. Sorry to possibly hijack your thread.

While it could be considered inferior in many aspects, the cylindrical projection has the unequalled advantage over spherical in panorama making: the horizontal HFOV is theoretically unlimited.

Before the time when spherical became the de-facto standard, this unique feature was quite often creatively used to attach together several different successive representations of a scene in a sole (i.e., self-contained) cylindric panorama file. No need to use QT sprites or to link several panoramas: for instance, the room on the scene is initially empty but it is progressively crowded while panning one turn after an other (or vice versa). The ocean shore progressively changes as the tide is in then out, day  and night, etc... http://www.tawbaware.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?t=4375 . 

Still found on the web is the 1440°HFOV "4-seasons in Lauragais" by Eric Lerch http://panograph.free.fr/lauragais/4saisons.html

I had complained to Joost many years back to no avail: PTGui still refuses to stitch (or output) a cylindrical panorama having >360 deg HFOV.

I must sadly admit that nowadays my plea might be definitively vain: as QTVRAS is useless on modern computer Operating Systems, there may be no practical way left to convert a 360++° cylindrical image into a "viewable panorama" file:((

Michel

[Geoff - Spherical Visions]

Would agree with you Michel, its a great facility to have which is sadly missing :-(

[Erik Krause]

Am 21.12.2013 12:05, schrieb Michel Thoby:
> I must sadly admit that nowadays my plea might be definitively vain: as
> QTVRAS is useless on modern computer Operating Systems, there may be no
> practical way left to convert a 360++� cylindrical image into a
> "viewable panorama" file:((

+1

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

[Steve Z]

" It's hard to believe that you missed all of these. What exactly is the problem?"

It's true. I did not miss all of these, so that's why I am asking, "what's the problem".

4 images totaling 230 degrees. Would it work better on unadjusted raw images?

I did not investigate a whole lot cuz PS just did it in a moment.

On Saturday, December 21, 2013 6:51:03 AM UTC-7, Erik Krause wrote:

Am 21.12.2013 12:05, schrieb Michel Thoby:
> I must sadly admit that nowadays my plea might be definitively vain: as
> QTVRAS is useless on modern computer Operating Systems, there may be no

> practical way left to convert a 360++� cylindrical image into a

[Steve Z]

OK i did try unadjusted raw and it only left one gap which i bet I could fix 

with some effort, and the HOV changed to 143°, but it required full frame fisheye.

[Erik Krause]

Am 21.12.2013 18:22, schrieb Steve Z:
> " It's hard to believe that you missed all of these. What exactly is the
> problem?"

You didn't specify your problem. Please give detailed steps of your
workflow and describe in what the result differs from your expectations.

Apart of the inability to specify more than 360� (which is a very
specialized usage) PTGui creates excellent cylindrical panoramas. No
need to use unadjusted raw (which has more drawbacks than benefits), but
don't use lens correction in lightroom.

[John Houghton]

On Saturday, December 21, 2013 5:29:33 PM UTC, Steve Z wrote:

OK i did try unadjusted raw and it only left one gap which i bet I could fix 

with some effort, and the HOV changed to 143°, but it required full frame fisheye.

Steve, Adjustments to the RAW files made in Photoshop will be ignored by PTGui, which uses DCRAW to convert the images.  It's best to convert the images to TIFF and input those to PTGui.  I suggest you upload JPEG versions of your images to http://ge.tt (no need to register) or other web space that may have access to. Post a download link here and we will then be in a better position to understand and investigate your problem.

John

[Michel Thoby]

Again I cannot better tell than John and Erik:)

Steve, It is true that many other programs (including Photoshop) can also alternatively be used with the same result. Yet, from adequate source images (that were correctly shot around the entrance pupil of the lens), PTGui can actually output a perfect panorama (flat) image formatted in cylindrical projection with a maximum Horizontal Field of 360 degrees and a maximum Vertical Field of 160 degrees. No gap should have to be fixed if the adjacent images overlap as required.

BTW and to complement my previous message on this thread, PTGui can alternatively output a QuickTime VR (.mov) file based on the cylindrical flat image. Alas this feature is not documented in the PTGui Help feature and thus it is not mentioned on the relevant "Main Window: Create Panorama tab" page [file format] :(

While the viewing experience is the same in both cases, I strongly suspect the PTGui outputted QTVR (.mov) file NOT to be a "genuine" cylindrical QTVR movie. It rather seems to actually be a basic CubicQTVR movie with a restricted vertical field of view. The QTVR Options (that are available when activating the File format Settings drop-down menu of the Create Panorama tab page) define the... "Cube face size". This is obviously  irrelevant for a cylinder...

Note: Pano2QTVR opens the (PTGui made) "cylindrical" QTVR and one can see the six cube faces (with a hole at the two poles) whereas Pano2VR cannot open a true original cylindrical QTVR and it then flashes an error message.

 

Michel

[Steve Z]

I made 4 LR lines corrected, cropped tiffs and then go to ptgui to make a cylindrical pano cuz 

I know it's too wide for anything else.  Then I use any projection that will work.  I dont often 

use the pano head cuz I'm far enough away and have plenty of overlap and modern software

seems to cover our errors pretty easily.  And so it worked pretty easily in PS.  I use ptgui

cuz it's so good, but I'm surprised this simple scenario was superior in PS.  In ptgui, a cropped 

straightened set of tiffs were much worse aligned than no correction at all nefs.

The error with nefs is minor and can by managed eventually, see below.  But there was no 

error is PS so why bother?  But it does strike me as a curiosity.

[John Houghton]

Steve, Do NOT "correct" or crop the images in LightRoom.  Input the images to PTGui as from the camera but converted to TIFF.

John

[Steve Z]

well yes, I learned that with the sample previous note.

Thanks !

[Erik Krause]

Am 21.12.2013 20:46, schrieb Steve Z:
> In ptgui, a cropped straightened set of tiffs were much worse aligned
> than no correction at all nefs.

PTgui assumes images to come geometrically unaltered from the camera and
as default assumes them all to have the same dimensions and the same
field of view. If this isn't the case for your images you can still
stitch them successfully, but you need to tell PTGui about that by
checking appropriate individual lens parameters on Lens Settings tab
(advanced interface).

[zarl]

Hi Michel,

these are two different formats. The newer spherical QTVR format was introduced with QuickTime 5 and was still available in QT 7. Apple dropped support for the old cylindrical (pre 5.x) QTVR format somewhere in between (I'd really have to dig through some old old readme files). What's the status with QuickTime X regarding spherical QTVR support? Apple seems to have deleted all QTVR related information from their technical articles.
I'm not sure which other player actually can be used to show 360+ cylindricals. Is DevalVR (PC only) still active? I'm not sure about all the viewers listed in http://wiki.panotools.org/Viewers
The World Wide Panorama may host some extra long panoramas based on this old format and I wonder which modern browsers display these files.

And yes, it was a cool format to be viewed interactively.  But with a little workaround it's easy to stitch these files today. Just duplicate one project that includes the first 360 degrees, offset it so there's enough space (and some little overlap) to add the next images. Don't optimise the remains of the earlier panorama. String all parts together in your image editor.

Cheers,
Carl

[Michel Thoby]

Hi Carl,

I regret that Apple indeed fully ceased QTVR support;(

As a pitiful minimal compensation, Mac users can however fortunately still install and use QuickTime Player 7 and QuickTime 7 Pro on recent Mac OS X (Mavericks included).

Thanks for the tip. I had indeed tried workarounds resembling your suggestion: for instance, to get a 720° source image, two 360° cylindrical images (of identical pixel dimensions and same VFOV) were assembled in Photoshop. Despite being mostly a Mac user, I then used the venerable Pano2QTVR associated with QT7.6.6 (both installed on virtual Windows XP) to convert the cylinder into a 720° QTVR panorama movie viewable in the QT7 Viewer.

Greetings,

Michel