HDR Panorama Woes

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jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org

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Oct 30, 2015, 6:33:15 AM10/30/15
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So I thought my HDR pano was coming together nicely, and it was.  Thanks to the people on this forum, my stitching troubles were solved and everything now fits together perfectly.  Unfortunately, the exposure is somehow awry and I have a zebra pano with each respective HDR "slice" slightly brighter or darker than its neighbours. I don't know why this is and I can only guess it's because I had my camera set to center-weighted average metering and as the moon is in one of the slices, the camera is reacting differently. I've tried a number of things now, to no avail.
Finally I decided to take my brightest exposure (3.2 seconds) and just stitch just the horizontal exposures together from that range.  And this actually looks okay.  It's evenly exposed and is a good starting point.
I now plan to take my zenith-facing shots and, using the same exposure bracket, stitch the sky together.  And ditto the nadir row of shots (same exposure bracket) and stitch that together.  And finally, with 3 perfectly exposed pieces of my pano, stitch it all together at once to have a final product.
And then repeat the whole process for the fastest exposure (2 seconds).
And then repeat for the medium exposure (2.5 seconds).
And then pull all 3 into Photoshop and merge them into a final HDR. And voila. Hopefully that will solve it.
But before I spend another several hours doing all of this, I'd appreciate some feedback:
1. Does this sound like a workable "work around" to my exposure issues?
2. Should I save my horizontal pano as its own file and then pull it back into PTGui and add the zenith shots to that?
3. Or should I just add my zenith shots to the currently well-aligned horizontal pano that I have in my current PTGui project and re-align them all together?
My zebra pano came from my merging each of the 3 exposures into an HDR in Photoshop and then pulling those TIFF files into PTGui, btw.  I was having some problems with PTGui and the multiple exposures for some reason.  Possibly because of camera shake or something. So I "pre-made" HDR sets in Photoshop. This gave PTGui less images to have to deal with and I was hoping it would give me even exposure.  Not so.  Even these HDRs viewed side by side before entering PTGui look differently exposed, despite my camera being in Manual everything and each bracket at the exact same exposures (shutter speed and aperture).
I realize this sounds circuitous and you advanced vets are probably wondering what on earth I'm doing it's so complicated.  But there you go.  I figure you're on this forum of your own free will and are willing to direct those with limited experience.  Like me.
Thanks in advance.

Jon

PTGui Support

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Oct 30, 2015, 7:53:20 AM10/30/15
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> Even these
> HDRs viewed side by side before entering PTGui look differently exposed,
> despite my camera being in Manual everything and each bracket at the
> exact same exposures (shutter speed and aperture).

Obviously that's the underlying reason for the problem.

Are your 'HDRs' true hdr files, or are they tone mapped? If the latter,
then try merging your files to HDR (.hdr, .exr) but don't tone map them
yet. Stitch those images in PTGui. If the HDRs have different exposure
levels, you can correct this in PTGui:
Exposure/HDR -> Automatic exposure and color adjustment -> Settings ->
Optimize Exposure -> Enabled (full).

This will not work for tone mapped images. In general I would not
recommend stitching tone mapped images; tone mapping algorithms will
adjust images differently based on the contents. If the sun is in one
frame and not in the other, those images will be tone mapped differently.

But I get the impression you are making things more difficult that
necessary. Why not use PTGui's built in HDR functionality?

Also, 2s - 3.2s can hardly be called exposure bracketing, you can get
almost the same result by using just the 2s or 2.5s exposures. Enable
'tone map stitched panorama' to boost the shadows a bit.

Kind regards,

New House Internet Services BV
Joost Nieuwenhuijse

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PTGui - Photo Stitching Software

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John Houghton

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Oct 30, 2015, 10:31:57 AM10/30/15
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On Friday, October 30, 2015 at 6:33:15 AM UTC, jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org wrote:

1. Does this sound like a workable "work around" to my exposure issues?
2. Should I save my horizontal pano as its own file and then pull it back into PTGui and add the zenith shots to that?
3. Or should I just add my zenith shots to the currently well-aligned horizontal pano that I have in my current PTGui project and re-align them all together?

Do (3), and likewise for the nadir shots. but avoiding control points on the sky.

To stitch the other exposure sets, you can add them to the same project.  Sort them on the Source Images tab and them link them to the already aligned images. For this to work without manually rerordering the list of images, the already aligned images need to be the first images that were output in the individual bracketed sets.  Alternatively, you can load one exposure set into a new project and apply the aligned project file as a template.  No control points or optimization is then required before generating the panorama.  Repeat for the remaining exposure sets.

John

jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org

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Oct 30, 2015, 9:35:59 PM10/30/15
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Joost - Thanks and that's interesting.  To be clear, my images are CR2 files with 3 exposures as I mentioned. As I was having trouble with just pulling the CR2s into PTGui, I "merged them to HDR" in Photoshop (File > Automate > Merge to HDR Pro...), applied a saturation filter to them in the HDR window that pops up (which is where the tonemapping came into play I am assuming) and then output them as 16-bit TIFF files.  I then pulled those TIFFs into PTGui and attempted my pano again. And the rest is zebra...
But I see where I went wrong now.  You're saying that if I do want to go this Photoshop route, to just merge the various exposures to HDR as I have been doing but apply NO filter and just save them out as .HDR files and then pull them into PTGui as you say.
But better yet, just pull the CR2s into PTGui and let the program take care of the whole lot.
Sorry to repeat back to you what you probably just got done saying to me, but I want to make sure that I'm duplicating your instructions and  not missing anything.
And finally, why do you say that these 3 exposures (2, 2.5 and 3.2 seconds) could hardly be considered a bracketed set?  Because the exposures are so close to one another or because 3 is really bare minimum when it comes to calling a set of exposures "bracketed?"  No offense taken by your question - I'm simply curious.
Thanks again.

Jon

jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org

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Oct 30, 2015, 9:42:49 PM10/30/15
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John, Tracking.  I tried this and ran into an interesting anomaly that actually helps things.  I loaded my horizontal exposures (just one, not the whole set) and spent some time linking and lining them up until I had a very nice pano, even though it had no sky and no floor.  But so far, so good.  I then brought in my sky shots (same thing - just one exposure, the same as the horizontal set that I had brought in) and then I brought in my nadir shots.  I didn't add a single control point and did NOT run the optimizer (even though I was prompted to) and when I previewed my now complete pano, it was almost perfect.  The only issue I had was with some slightly odd exposure between one image and another.  In other words, everything lined up with no intervention from me.  To see what would happen, I then ran the optimizer... It returned an "very bad" report on my pano in red and mixed up all the shots!  I undid it and am happily now just adding the final touches to this my first pano in 3 days.... but I was wondering why this is.

John Houghton

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Oct 31, 2015, 9:00:51 AM10/31/15
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On Friday, October 30, 2015 at 9:42:49 PM UTC, jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org wrote:
John, Tracking.  I tried this and ran into an interesting anomaly that actually helps things.  I loaded my horizontal exposures (just one, not the whole set) and spent some time linking and lining them up until I had a very nice pano, even though it had no sky and no floor.  But so far, so good.  I then brought in my sky shots (same thing - just one exposure, the same as the horizontal set that I had brought in) and then I brought in my nadir shots.  I didn't add a single control point and did NOT run the optimizer (even though I was prompted to) and when I previewed my now complete pano, it was almost perfect.

Well, if you didn't add any control points or run the optimizer after adding in the top and bottom row images, they would all be located at the centre of the panorama like a pack of cards.  What did you actually do after adding in the images?
 
  The only issue I had was with some slightly odd exposure between one image and another.

Have you tried running the Automatic exposure and colour adjustment  option on the Exposure/HDR tab?  Note that you can also tweak the Exposure Offset of an individual image on the Image Parameters tab to match the images better.  Do this with the blending mode in the Panorama Editor window set to Overlay mode, so that you get sharp edges between the images.
 
  In other words, everything lined up with no intervention from me.  To see what would happen, I then ran the optimizer... It returned an "very bad" report on my pano in red and mixed up all the shots! 

Always remember that if the y,p,r boxes of an image on the Optimizer tab are unchecked, the optimizer will not move it.  So if you uncheck those boxes for the nicely aligned horizontal row, those images at least cannot get "all mixed up".  The only reason the other images become mixed up is that their control points have not been assigned correctly.  One (albeit slow) way to proceed would be to align the horizontal row with the optimizer and fix it in position by unchecking all the y,p,r boxes.  Then add the first image of the top row and assign control points to connect it to the horizontal row.  Optimize.  Then add in the next image and assign control points between it and the horizontal row and its horizontal neighbour. Optimize.  Continue in this way with all the remaining images.  If at any time the optimizer returns a bad result, investigate the bad points and correct.
 
I undid it and am happily now just adding the final touches to this my first pano in 3 days.... but I was wondering why this is.

It's difficult to diagnose why things go wrong without some evidence to investigate.  Supplying a copy of the errant project file would help in the first instance.

John

Erik Krause

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Oct 31, 2015, 9:47:58 AM10/31/15
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Am 30.10.2015 um 22:35 schrieb jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org:
> But better yet, just pull the CR2s into PTGui and let the program
> take care of the whole lot.

No, this is far worse. You loose almost any benefit of shooting raw if
you do it. Process your image in a decent raw converter (f.e. ACR),
adjust white balance, correct for chromatic aberration there, reduce
noise, but don't do any lens corrections (PTGui has better means).
Output to 16bit TIFF in order to loose no dynamic range and input those
to PTGui.

> And finally, why do you say that these 3 exposures (2, 2.5 and 3.2
> seconds) could hardly be considered a bracketed set? Because the
> exposures are so close to one another

Indeed. Modern cameras capture a dynamic range of 10 to 13 EV. 1 EV is
the doubling of the exposure time f.e. So if you bracket -2 0 +2 EV
(f.e. 1, 4 and 16 seconds) you get 4 EV dynamic range increase and you
still have sufficient overlap between images to get smooth tonal values.
Your actual bracketed sequence gains less than 1 EV of DR.

Erik Krause

jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org

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Oct 31, 2015, 5:30:49 PM10/31/15
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John, Thank you very much.  You have been super helpful here.  After I posted my last reply, I actually did what you ended up laying out for me, pretty much. I started from scratch and loaded my horizontal set and got that aligned and linked perfectly.  Then I brought in my zenith shots and did the same, being very careful to add only as many control points on moving objects as needed (I.e. stars) to get my horizontal and zenith shots to align and link properly. And then I brought in my nadir pass, unchecked "viewpoint" in the Optimizer tab on those that were shot "off-axis" (to get the tripod footprint) and did the same.  It was time-consuming and I am sure that I will speed up at this and learn this program so well that it's second-nature but in the end I had a terrific looking pano that will work very nicely when used as IBL in the studio.  People like you who sit on these forums make a huge difference to people like me and you are delivering what I consider a very valuable service.  So my hat is off to you! Thanks again.

Jon

jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org

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Oct 31, 2015, 5:45:32 PM10/31/15
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Erik, Okay.  Fascinating.  So, in the case of an HDR pano, how does this sound as a workflow:
1. Shoot the bracketed exposures ensuring that I am capturing as much dynamic range as possible.
2. Correct these images in ACR to handle noise (which I have a lot of at ISO 1600 on a 50D, exposing for 3 seconds in the dark), adjust white balance, etc.  BUT APPLY THE SAME SETTINGS TO ALL IMAGES, right?
3. Using "Merge to HDR Pro" merge my bracketed exposures into 16-bit TIFF files and bring THOSE into PTGui.
4. OR, save each of my bracketed exposures as a 16-bit TIFF file after this ACR processing step (giving me what could be upwards of 100 images, depending on the coverage of my lens) and bring those into PTGui.
(Of course, investing in a fisheye lens would reduce time spent on this to almost zero.  But with a 12mm rectilinear lens which requires 8 rotations on my Ninja at 40 degrees each, this is time-consuming).
5. Stitch to my heart's content!
Btw: Were you shooting an HDR pano at day break, and your "base" exposure was 2.5 seconds, how would you have bracketed?  Would you have taken more than 3 images and how many stops apart would you have set your camera?

Erik Krause

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Oct 31, 2015, 6:16:01 PM10/31/15
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Am 31.10.2015 um 18:45 schrieb jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org:
> 3. Using "Merge to HDR Pro" merge my bracketed exposures into 16-bit
> TIFF files and bring THOSE into PTGui.

I don't know "Merge to HDR Pro", but 16bit TIFF implies tone mapping,
which would give you color brightness differences most likely. If
possible output in a true HDR format like .hdr or .exr

> Btw: Were you shooting an HDR pano at day break, and your "base"
> exposure was 2.5 seconds, how would you have bracketed? Would you have
> taken more than 3 images and how many stops apart would you have set
> your camera?

My camera does natively +/-2EV bracketing at most, so I simply would
have done this. If there are both brighter and darker areas I would want
to catch, the camera would expose 0.6, 2.5 and 10 seconds. IIRC this is
almost what I used for
http://www.360cities.net/de/image/baden-baden-vom-battert-germany

If the 'base' exposure doesn't overexpose the highlights and there are
darker shadows, the sequence would be 2.5, 10 and 40 seconds. Similarly
if your 'base' exposure doesn't underexpose shadows but clips the
brighter highlights I would go for 1/6, 0.6 and 2.5 seconds.

Erik Krause

Keith Martin

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Oct 31, 2015, 6:29:48 PM10/31/15
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On 31 Oct 2015, at 17:45, jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org wrote:

  1. OR, save each of my bracketed exposures as a 16-bit TIFF file after this ACR processing step (giving me what could be upwards of 100 images, depending on the coverage of my lens) and bring those into PTGui.

Definitely try this. PTGui can do really excellent work with bracketed input and high dynamic range output if you give it the right raw materials. Yes, you'll be dealing with a lot of files, but do try it and see what the output is like.

k

jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org

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Oct 31, 2015, 6:58:47 PM10/31/15
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Hey Keith, Thanks for chiming in.  And what you recommended is actually what I ended up doing (can't always wait for a reply to a post before you just gotta get back to work...) and it seems to be working fine.  PTGui seems to be blending the exposures nicely, even though (as Erik pointed out) I don't really have much of any DR in my bracketed exposure sets.  But oh well.  I am tending toward starting with my horizontal plane of images and getting them nailed first and then adding my sky and floor in.  Maybe it's just me but one step at a time seems to work and I'm not in a real rush right now.

Jon

jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org

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Oct 31, 2015, 7:05:16 PM10/31/15
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Well, let me start by saying that you've got some beautiful pieces of art there!  Wow!
Please tell me:
1. Are those images all .hdr files? I ask because I am assuming that my final output from PTGui SHOULD be a .hdr file, at least if it's to be used for Image Based Lighting in a 3D scene.
2. From the time you started setting up the shoot to the time you had a pano that you were proud to display on your website, how much time elapsed?  Meaning, how long should it take to produce a blow-away, technically perfect panorama, given that one has to stop and eat and maybe sleep and even travel and all that?
I know: a lot of tedious questions.  But bear with me: the best way to learn is to ask people who can do what it is that you're trying to learn.
Thanks in advance.

Jon

Keith Martin

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Oct 31, 2015, 9:24:21 PM10/31/15
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On 31 Oct 2015, at 18:58, jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org wrote:

> PTGui seems to be blending the exposures nicely, even though (as Erik
> pointed out) I don't really have much of any DR in my bracketed
> exposure sets.

He's right in that you didn't actually gain much and you'd definitely
benefit from following his notes next time, but you did gain some at
least. You could also consider processing your RAW files to push the
darker exposures down further to gain more in the highlights and do the
opposite for the lighter exposures, 'pushing' them further apart. It's
not as good as exposing to the right range in the first place, but RAW
files do have some latitude; you could gain a little more detail in the
range like this.

> I am tending toward starting with my horizontal plane of images and
> getting them nailed first and then adding my sky and floor in.  Maybe
> it's just me but one step at a time seems to work

Always good when exploring new techniques!

k

Erik Krause

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Oct 31, 2015, 9:27:08 PM10/31/15
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Am 31.10.2015 um 20:05 schrieb jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org:
> 1. Are those images all .hdr files? I ask because I am assuming that my
> final output from PTGui SHOULD be a .hdr file, at least if it's to be
> used for Image Based Lighting in a 3D scene.

No HDR files, but I could easily create them. My workflow doesn't use
HDR as intermediate step, since I prefer the natural look exposure
fusion gives. The difference would be to merge images to HDR instead of
exposure fuse them.

> 2. From the time you started setting up the shoot to the time you had a
> pano that you were proud to display on your website, how much time
> elapsed? Meaning, how long should it take to produce a blow-away,
> technically perfect panorama, given that one has to stop and eat and
> maybe sleep and even travel and all that?

The most tedious was to hurry to the parking and get the tripod and
camera and hurry back before it got too dark after a day climbing in
those rocks. At home I spent may be one or two hours to finish the
panorama. Batch raw conversion took some twenty minutes but I don't
care, since I can do something else in the meantime. The fast changing
light was bit of a problem, since the last images where much darker than
the first ones and even after adjusting that the white balance was
different. That required a bit manual work, PTGui did a wonderful job
equalizing most of the remaining differences and last but not least
photoshop autoblend layers eliminated the rest.

> I know: a lot of tedious questions. But bear with me: the best way to
> learn is to ask people who can do what it is that you're trying to learn.

That's why I'm here. I learned the same way...

Erik

jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org

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Nov 1, 2015, 9:50:26 PM11/1/15
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Yeah - I don't know why it didn't dawn on me at the time that I was only getting 2 stops of DR with a one-stop over and one-stop under exposure bracket.  But next time you can be sure that I'll be pushing it to two stops and getting a bit more bang for my buck.  And that Photoshop technique that you mentioned sounds like it might work as well.
I wrapped my pano last night based on all of the advice and techniques that I've learned from people like yourself on this forum and I must say that I'm quite impressed with my work!  A week ago I hadn't a clue how PTGui really worked but now I feel like I've got a valuable new skill under my belt.  So thank you very much for your time and advice.  Very appreciated.

Jon

jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org

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Nov 1, 2015, 9:55:48 PM11/1/15
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Well, in case no one else ever thanks you, I'd like to say that your assistance is very much appreciated.  Thanks to you and the other gentlemen on this forum I'm mastering something that a week ago seemed a bit beyond my grasp!

Keith Martin

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Nov 1, 2015, 9:58:03 PM11/1/15
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On 1 Nov 2015, at 21:50, jstu...@goldeneraproductions.org wrote:

> A week ago I hadn't a clue how PTGui really worked but now I feel like
> I've got a valuable new skill under my belt.

I know the feeling. What's both daunting and exciting about PTGui is
that there's SO much depth to it. There's so much that can be done with
it, and there are so many different things that can be controlled. Happy
trails!

k
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