Best balance Quality/size for a panorama

[Camilo Infante]

Hi all,

I'm recently having some problems as I don't want to loose much quality but I want to keep them under 10 MB. I'm exporting on PTGUI my panoramas as following:

Width:6000

Height:3000

File format: JPEG

Quality: 95% or 100%

The results are 5 up to 8 MB panoramas. I think I'm loosing a lot of quality there and I want to improve that. Here some of my examples:

http://perspektiva360.com/Pedrogomez/ArrayanesIndex.html

round.me/@perspektiva360

They are mostly shot with a Nikon D3100 or D5200 using a Rokinon 8mm Fisheye or a Nikon 10.5mm Fisheye, ISO 100 and Aperture 16. 

Is there any suggestion about my export settings or what else could I do to improve quality?

Thank you!

Juan

[Marco Lanciani]

Just go on the "Create Panorama" Tab and click on "Set Optimum Size" this will give you the Max resolution available.

You can also choose TIFF as the file format: I'd use 16 Bit if you want to do some post processing. Otherwise 8 Bit should be fine.

I don't understand why you choose JPEG: every time you save a JPEG file you get a degradation of the image.

[Camilo Infante]

Hi Marco,

Thanks. Well u are right, an 8 bits TIFF panorama would be much better but the result is very large(aprox 27 MB). And As I will after create a vortual tour for web purposes having several 27MB panoramas would cause the website to be too slow. That's why i'm concerned about this

[John Houghton]

On Thursday, February 26, 2015 at 10:28:52 PM UTC, Camilo Infante wrote:

Thanks. Well u are right, an 8 bits TIFF panorama would be much better but the result is very large(aprox 27 MB). And As I will after create a vortual tour for web purposes having several 27MB panoramas would cause the website to be too slow. That's why i'm concerned about this

It is usual to generate your stitched panorama at maximum size in 16 bit tiff and then edit in Photoshop to correct any glitches, patch nadir, adjust colour/brightness etc before resizing down to the final size (8 bit tiff) and sharpening.  You do not need a jpeg quality setting as high as 95% for good quality.  You will see very little difference, if any, between 75% and 95%, but the file may be half the size.  Some subjects will tolerate lower quality settings, but banding in blue sky areas becomes more likely. So use the minimum quality setting that just avoids visible compression artifacts.

John

[RoyReed]

One extra thing apart from what others have said. I would only stop the lens down to f11. At f16 (on the Nikon 10.5mm and probably on the other lens as well) you will be past the optimum aperture for sharpness. You start to see the drop off due to diffraction at f16.

[JPS]

Hi Camillo !

I don't understand why it is a problem to get a very large EQUIRECTANGULAR image ? What you will share in the end is the VR file (Quicktime, Flash or HTML5), and this is WHERE you should try to find the best quality vs file size ratio !

On this end, I use a D800 (36 MP) and I make 12000x6000 equirectangular images, which end-up as ~206 MP *,TIF files. THEN, after post-process, I convert it into VR files, using PTGui or better, Pano2VR, and AT THIS POINT, I choose the file-size !!

Best regards,
J-P.

[Michael Rieth]

Hi to all,

Does Pano2VR support tiff 16bit? Or do I have to convert to 8bit, before import? If I get it right, I can choose the balance size-quality afterwards.

Have a nice weekend,

Michael

PS: I shoot with Sigma 15mm on Canon fullframe @ f/11 @ ISO 100 (daylight) @ 1m distance, which works quite well.

[JPS]

Hi Michael !

I just checked ! I used the same files I had converted in 12000x6000 pixels in 8 bits TIF, no compression, no alpha channel (206 MB), and created another 12000x6000 pixels in 16 bits, no compression, no alpha channel ! I got a 412 MB file ! I pasted it in Pano2VR and it accepted it without problem !

But I don't see why using 16 bits files to create the VR image..... Is there an advantage ?

;-)
J-P.

[Marco Lanciani]

Hi Camilo,

I just wanted to say, get the best output from PTGui; do your post processing or whatever you want; ... now you can convert at the resolution of your like, for example in Ps.

Have a look at the following link: it's not a spherical pano, it's just a hi res image, but in the end it's the same.

I use KRPano to do the VR conversion and my suggestion is to use it. KRPano can support 16 Bit PSB files.

The image you're going to see is a 12+ GB 16 Bit ProPhoto PSB File and as you can see it doesn't hurt web browsing at all. In the end, to make it simple, you get only JPEG tiles of the whole, which are very light on the web. You can also see this image from Android and iOS Smartphones.

Here's the link:

http://www.fotozones.com/live/index.php/topic/57949-colosseo-hi-res/

[Camilo Infante]

Hi all,

Thank you for all your help. I got it: I will export my panos with the best possible quality patch the nadir or do whatever I need to do to the images and then compress them. Now my question is: After all the editing, which would be a nice final file size for the web? Which format? Tiff? I know Tiff isn't a lossy format but I often compress them as JPEG. I usually compress images using Photoshop or Lightrrom. When Tiff, I make them 8 bits LZW.

I export images from lightroom using AbodeRGB, I used before ProPhoto but it seems like PTgui does not recognize the post processing  I have made in lightroom. Does someone have the same problem?

@RoyReed: Thank you for the tipp on aperture

@marco: that image is impressing. Which is the size of the whole image?

Juan

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[Camilo Infante]

Hi all,

Thank you for all your help. I got it: I will export my panos with the best possible quality patch the nadir or do whatever I need to do to the images and then compress them. Now my question is: After all the editing, which would be a nice final file size for the web? Which format? Tiff? I know Tiff isn't a lossy format but I often compress them as JPEG. I usually compress images using Photoshop or Lightrrom. When Tiff, I make them 8 bits LZW.

I export images from lightroom using AbodeRGB, I used before ProPhoto but it seems like PTgui does not recognize the post processing  I have made in lightroom. Does someone have the same problem?

@RoyReed: Thank you for the tipp on aperture

@marco: that image is impressing. Which is the size of the whole image?

Juan

[Marco Lanciani]

If you export TIFFs, from Lr, you won't have problems and all the Lr adjustments will be there.

Exporting in ProPhoto you will notice then a change in hue inside PTGui, but the output will be fine and with the right profile.

Before to import in KRPano it's always better to convert the profile to sRGB. I don't know if KRPano also keeps the right colors with images that use Adobe RGB as the Profile. 

Yet, you don't need actually to compress or resize, even after all the editing. Obviously you can if you like so.

KRPano will generate all the JPEG Tiles for you and the VR will be light to navigate.

I think there's an option also to choose at which compression KRPano have to generate each Tile: the more you compress the more you lose. Usually this is not necessary.