System Requirements for Making 360 Panorama From RAW Using HDR

[Pano]

Hi,

Stitching a 360 panorama seems to be taking a long time (around 35 minutes) and I was wondering what the limiting factor is here and why it might be taking as long as it does.

The Process:

1. Shoot 324 RAW photos on a 24mm for 36 angles of view (9 bracketed photos per angle of view)

2. Upload RAW directly to PTGui and enable HDR

3. Align images automatically

4. Stitch panoramic image as 95% quality JPG, at 40202 × 20101 (final file size 250MB)

The Hardware:

CPU/GPU: M1 Ultra

Memory: 128gb memory

Some questions to consider:

1. Is the limiting factor the hardware? If so, which part of it would be the limiting factor?
2. Or is there something inefficient about the process (e.g. too many bracketed shots per angle of view or uploading RAW instead of TIF).
3. Is this amount of time expected when doing HDR at this resolution?

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!

[Erik Krause]

Am 26.07.2023 um 00:11 schrieb Pano:

> 9 bracketed photos per angle of view

At what EV spacing?

9 brackets at 2 EV spacing would give you a total dynamic range of about
28 EV, which is far higher than the usual dynamic range of an outdoor
scene in bright sunlight with clear blue sky and dark shadows (around 21
EV). 2 EV spacing is pretty sufficient for modern cameras, even 3 EV
would do.

And this large dynamic range is only necessary for image-based lighting.
For normal imaging, a far lower dynamic range would do. And for standard
image-based lighting, you don't need such a high resolution.

So perhaps you could simply reduce the number of images...

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

[PTGui Support]

Hi,

The RAW conversion will take significant time; you might try batch
converting your images to 16 bit uncompressed TIFF first.

As Erik says, 9 brackets is excessive if you are just creating a jpg.
With this large number of brackets it may be helpful to switch PTGui to
'HDR Workflow: Merge bracketed images to HDR, then blend' (see the
exposure/HDR tab).

Kind regards,

Joost Nieuwenhuijse
www.ptgui.com

On 26-07-2023 00:11, Pano wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Stitching a 360 panorama seems to be taking a long time (around 35
> minutes) and I was wondering what the limiting factor is here and why it
> might be taking as long as it does.
>

> _The Process:_

> 1. Shoot 324 RAW photos on a 24mm for 36 angles of view (9 bracketed
> photos per angle of view)
> 2. Upload RAW directly to PTGui and enable HDR
> 3. Align images automatically
> 4. Stitch panoramic image as 95% quality JPG, at 40202 × 20101 (final
> file size 250MB)
>

> _The Hardware:_

> CPU/GPU: M1 Ultra
> Memory: 128gb memory
>

> _Some questions to consider:_
>
> 1. Is the limiting factor the hardware? If so, which part of it would
> be the limiting factor?
> 2. Or is there something inefficient about the process (e.g. too many

> bracketed shots per angle of view or uploading RAW instead of TIF).

> 3. Is this amount of time expected when doing HDR at this resolution?

>
> Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!
>

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[Pano]

Thanks for the feedback, y'all!