Is there an internal way to temporarily lighten dark HDR images just for the CP generator?

[twalp]

I have recently been shooting spherical panos with the DJI Air 3s using the 70mm camera. The resulting gigapixel images are awesome.

IMO, the Air 3s does a good job of capturing a wide dynamic range when I expose for the highlights (zebras appear only in the very bright areas on the display). After stitching I use PTGui's Tone mapping to open up the underexposed areas (brightness=35 instead of the default 45). A brief pass through Pixelmator Pro makes the equirectangular pop.

But it's my understanding that the Control Point Generator would benefit from a brighter image to work with, and the only solution I have found on the web is to batch process the original files to brighten them, process the resulting TIFFs in PTG CP Generator, then apply those CPs to the original HDR images.

Have I overlooked a way to temporarily lighten the original images in PTG, run the CP Generator, then undo the temp exposure adjustment and continue as I have been with Tone mapping?

The latest PTGui is a joy to use!

[PTGui Support]

Hi,

I'm sorry, there's no way to do that currently. But could you share a
set of images with me (sup...@ptgui.com) so I can investigate?

Kind regards,

Joost Nieuwenhuijse
www.ptgui.com

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[twalp]

did you receive my email with the link to the files?

[PTGui Support]

Hi,

Apologies, I forgot!

I just downloaded the files you sent me and took a look. To me the
images don't seem too dark for the control point generator. In fact
PTGui generated control points for all i?ages except those containing
only water surface. The latter is to be expected, there is no
recognizable detail in those images and the water ripples are moving. I
don't think that brightening would help here.

Kind regards,

Joost Nieuwenhuijse
www.ptgui.com

On 10/16/25 01:42, twalp wrote:
> did you receive my email with the link to the files?
>
> On Saturday, October 4, 2025 at 2:55:49 AM UTC-7 PTGui Support wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm sorry, there's no way to do that currently. But could you share a
> set of images with me (sup...@ptgui.com) so I can investigate?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Joost Nieuwenhuijse

> www.ptgui.com <http://www.ptgui.com>

> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/>
> > ptgui/663b08f4-73fa-40cb-8dcd-e4297034254en%40googlegroups.com
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> > e4297034254en%40googlegroups.com?
> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer <http://40googlegroups.com?
> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>>.

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