Masking and HDR/Enfuse in PTGui Pro 9
ishpuini
I've just upgraded to version 9.0.1 of PTGui Pro. I haven't installed
it yet, but after looking through the new features, I have one
question I would like to ask before I tackle the first panoramas this
evening after work (on my lunch break now).
I'm hoping the new masking feature will save me a lot of time. Prior
to this version I spent a lot of time in Photoshop painting people in
and out of my images. Perspective problems are getting fewer as my
approach to panoramic photography gets better, so thanks to masking
I'm hoping to no longer require Photoshop to finish my images. This
should also save considerable disk space as the intermediate
multilayer images are obviously many times larger than single layer
images.
Comes the question. Many of my panoramas are done from photographs
taken in exposure steps so I can use Enfuse to enlarge the dynamic
range of the end result. Moving people between images is much more
complicated esp when they also move between different exposures of the
same frame. I manage to deal with this in Photoshop by mimicking the
Enfuse effect on a single layer (by manipulating brightness and
contrast mostly), and though it's not perfect it's good enough. My
question: can the masking feature also be used to select an object in
one of the exposures only and eliminate it from the others? And will
the result still be OK? If so, what would be the best approach? Any
tips?
Tx!!
Wim
Sacha
It would be amazing to be able to use masking to calculate an adjusted
exposure fill space for a non-masked linked exposure to enblend
against to eliminate ghosts.
Not sure why are you doing exactly your workflow. I think it might be
better to equalize exposure only during your raw conversion. But
brightness / contrast is probably quick and dirty enough to get the
job done.
Or perhaps some automated de-ghosting procedure by calculating the
difference against two normalized exposures, but this would probably
be pretty hard to do I imagine due to the intrinsic normalized
differences overall. Additionally, single exposure fill area sometimes
needs some noise reduction to make it match well.
ishpuini
1) Take pictures at 3 or 5 exposure levels for each frame intended for
the panorama
2) Make very basic corrections on the RAW files in Lightroom (lens
corrections because LR knows the exact lens and synchronize white
balance as I always use AWB) and export the images as 16-bit TIFF.
3) Import the TIFF in PTGui and stitch the panorama with Enfuse
activated. Setting the output to a PSD file with both the blended
layer and the individually corrected images as separate layers.
4) Go into Photoshop and for each ghosted object search the layer that
shows the best complete representation of that object. Then roughly
paint in that object, adjust brightness/contrast of that layer to try
to match the brightness/contrast of the blended image, and then refine
the painting.
5) When I'm happy I flatten the image and import the resulting PSD
back into my Lightroom Library for final adjustments.
This kinda works, and the individual objects mostly sitting in a
relatively small part of the overall dynamic range of the entire image
makes that the result is in line with the rest of the image more or
less most of the time. For objects that have a dynamic range larger
than one exposure the result will not be ideal however (darker shadow
or less well defined highlights than the rest of the image).
It would be great if I could identify trouble objects by using the
masking in PTGui on the best exposure for the particular objects, as
such not having to generate multilayer PSDs, not having to edit these
in Photoshop, and being able to import a PTGui generated TIFF straight
back into Lightroom.
I might test this this evening...
Wim
Erik Krause
> My question: can the masking feature also be used to select an object
> in one of the exposures only and eliminate it from the others?
If your bracketed sets are linked the mask is propagated to the other
exposure steps. So you will need to unlink them. PTGui sometimes has
difficulties aligning unlinked brackets, but this could be worked around
if you first stitch them linked until the result is satisfactory, then
unlink them and then paint masks. By no means optimize after that step -
this will spoil alignment for all images
The result might or might not be good. I made some tests where it came
out well, but this means nothing. The problem is, that PTGui places the
seam lines differently for each exposure steps which might lead to new
alignment problems.
A better approach would be to first fuse all image stacks and mask the
problematic images in this stage. Then stitch the results of exposure
fusion.
Unfortunately PTGui has no instant preview of exposure fused images, but
you can use EnfuseGUI (f.e.) load the images there and use photoshop for
masking (save as TIFF with mask in alpha channel). If you keep both
programs open you only need to press "Preview" in EnfuseGUI in order to
see the effect of the mask.
--
Erik Krause
http://www.erik-krause.de
Roger D. Williams
wrote:
> Excellent question.
> It would be amazing to be able to use masking to calculate an adjusted
> exposure fill space for a non-masked linked exposure to enblend
> against to eliminate ghosts.
> On Jan 18, 6:59 am, ishpuini <ishpu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Comes the question. Many of my panoramas are done from photographs
>> taken in exposure steps so I can use Enfuse to enlarge the dynamic
>> range of the end result. Moving people between images is much more
>> complicated esp when they also move between different exposures of the
>> same frame. I manage to deal with this in Photoshop by mimicking the
>> Enfuse effect on a single layer (by manipulating brightness and
>> contrast mostly), and though it's not perfect it's good enough. My
>> question: can the masking feature also be used to select an object in
>> one of the exposures only and eliminate it from the others? And will
>> the result still be OK? If so, what would be the best approach? Any
>> tips?
I agree this is an excellent suggestion. Maybe it can be added to the
PTgui "wish list" for future features? Erik's later post shows that
the present mask function would be rather complex to use in this way.
It does seem that this is something that could be fairly easily
automated--at least in principle, especially if the user masks IN the
object to be preserved and masks OUT any partial views of it that are
unwanted. The software would know what to use and NOT use in synthesizing
the final image. Doing it from a single "use this" mask would be more
difficult, but might also be made automatic using a process of comparison
and elimination. But much easier if the user gives all needed guidance.
I find the masking function to be a great time saver. I never use HDR
(something I sometimes regret) because of the hard work needed to
eliminate ghosts caused by people who move within a single exposure
burst.
Roger W.
--
Business: www.adex-japan.com
Pleasure: www.usefilm.com/member/roger
ishpuini
unfortunately I didn't have any files ready to test the case presented
in this thread specifically. Many other series were waiting on my
drive however that required processing urgently...
After working with the new features, I'm amazed at the amount of time
the masking feature is saving me!! The huge multilayer files that
needed to be written to my drive (if I had space enough), then opened
very slowly in Photoshop, edited and flattened even more slowly and
then saved are all operations of the past! I processed all images I
had earlier exported from Lightroom for stitching, whereas with an
earlier version it would have cost me three times more time for sure!
From the further feedback I gather that using the masking on a HDR/
Enfuse panorama wouldn't work well. I'll try the suggested approach,
but I suspect I will continue doing it the same way for these cases.
Fortunately cameras' dynamic range keeps improving (my new camera is
almost 3 stops better than my previous!), so bracketing is becoming
increasingly less needed as technology advances. In many cases I might
now more often choose to process low contrast images in PTGui for more
post processing than before. But there will still be circumstances
that required exposure bracketing and subsequent Enfusing.
Tx! Wim