Question about workflow

[Arnaud Cam Guyomard]

I am exporting a 32-bit TIFF from PTGui Pro and performing tone mapping in Affinity. The problem is that a visible seam appears in the viewer after the HDR processing. This line does not appear in the PTGui Pro viewer, so I suspect Affinity's tone mapping is causing the issue. I have included an image to illustrate the problem.

Thanks for your advice.

[Paul Bourke]

I don't use Affinity but this looks like the standard problem when
non-local (wider than 1 pixel) processing is performed without taking
into account the 360 wrapping. Errors are also occurring towards the
poles but they tend to be less obvious.

Does Affinity know about 360 images? If not then the solution is to
usually extend the image canvas, perhaps by a factor of 2, copy/paste
to fill in the extra empty space with the appropriate part of the
original image, perform the non-local operation, then crop image back
to original width.

If Affinity is supposed to know about 360 images ... then either it's
turned off, or something else is going on.

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[Paul Bourke]

Seems you need to use equirectangular option in the "live projection", see
   https://www.affinity.studio/help/live-projection-equirectangular/
But I'm not an Affiinity user so don't actually know if it works for tone mapping.

[Arnaud Cam Guyomard]

Hi Paul,

Yes, I just checked the Affinity documentation; you need to go to "Equirectangular Dynamic Projection" (under the Pixel menu), but the option is greyed out in 32-bit mode... Does Photoshop handle this issue better than Affinity?

Thanks. Best regards.

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[Paul Bourke]

I don't believe PS has support any more, at least my work-around described earlier is what I normally do when I need to use PS (not very often). But even then, non-local filters aren't doing the right thing at the poles.

The various Topaz tools used to be quite good with a 360 switch, but they seem to have recently knobbled their software for high resolution images.

All very disappointing really.

[PTGui Support]

The usual trick is to extend the panorama at the left and right hand
sides before tone mapping, so that you have more than 360 degrees field
of view. Copy a part from the left side and attach it at the right hand
side, and vice versa.

After tone mapping, crop the panorama again.

Kind regards,

Joost Nieuwenhuijse
www.ptgui.com

On 8/30/26 10:17, Arnaud Cam Guyomard wrote:
> Hi Paul,
>
> Yes, I just checked the Affinity documentation; you need to go to
> "Equirectangular Dynamic Projection" (under the Pixel menu), but the
> option is greyed out in 32-bit mode... Does Photoshop handle this issue
> better than Affinity?
>
> Thanks. Best regards.
>
> Le dim. 30 août 2026 à 10:13, Paul Bourke <paul....@gmail.com

> <mailto:paul....@gmail.com>> a écrit :

> b82a-493a-8942-7b66dc999719n%40googlegroups.com <https://
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> b82a-493a-8942-7b66dc999719n%40googlegroups.com>.
>
>
>
> --
> Paul Bourke
> paulbourke.net <http://paulbourke.net>
> paul....@gmail.com
> +61 433338325 <tel:+61%20433%20338%20325>

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[Philip Chong]

Very common problem.  Because all these software are not seams aware. If you know of any software that are seams aware, let me know.

If this is one shot 360 photo, edit in the two fisheyes, tone map it(I never use this), then PTGui stitch and it works wonder. I guess PTGui does a good job blending the seams.

If this photo is already stitch like this one is, I just use the healing brush. I turn the photos to where the healing brush works best. Of course you dont want the seams line in the middle of the sun to use that brush!  

I believe Josh's extend the area of the seams is the same as healing brush.

[Philip Chong]

I use the healing brush.  Any good photo editor will have this.

[Matthew Rogers]

Hi,

The problem is MOST photo editors are NOT seam aware. Also the tone mapping in Affinity is really poor. You’d get much better results using the HDR merger feature in the NON cloud version of Lightroom. I know most people hate Lightroom but the HDR merge feature is incredibly good. You can then tone map the HDR DNGs. Another really cool feature is the HDR tone map masking feature.

Matt

On 30 Aug 2026, at 08:52, Arnaud Cam Guyomard <parmen...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am exporting a 32-bit TIFF from PTGui Pro and performing tone mapping in Affinity. The problem is that a visible seam appears in the viewer after the HDR processing. This line does not appear in the PTGui Pro viewer, so I suspect Affinity's tone mapping is causing the issue. I have included an image to illustrate the problem.

Thanks for your advice.

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<Capture d’écran 2026-08-30 à 08.22.09.png>

[Arnaud Cam Guyomard]

Hi Matthew,

Yes, that’s what I’m realizing. I tried Paul and Joost’s technique without success. I don’t have experience with other software to judge the quality of HDR in Affinity, but I’ll take your word for it. So, if I understand correctly, it’s better to do the HDR merge beforehand in Lightroom, synchronize the settings, and then move to PTGUI PRO for the stitching ?

Thanks for the advice.

Arnaud

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[Matthew Rogers]

Hi Arnaud,

Absolutely, trust me, I’ve tried every variation of every workflow. The reason I use the OLDER non-cloud version of Lightroom is you can batch process entire projects at once. For some reason the new cloud version will not let you do that.

I used that process in this tour:

https://lillehammer.above.guide/tour/kjells-house

Matt

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[John Houghton]

On Sunday, August 30, 2026 at 4:06:58 PM UTC+1 Arnaud Cam Guyomard wrote:

. . . . . I tried Paul and Joost’s technique without success.

Arnaud, I have used this technique many times and never known it to fail (though there's a chance that the poles might not be quite perfect).  Perhaps the reason for your failure was to follow Paul's instructions to the letter.  Where he says "perform the non-local operation, then crop image back to original width",  this can be misinterpreted!  To be absolutely clear, he should have said "crop the central part of the image back to the original width".  For the orientation to be preserved, you would follow the cropping by using the offset filter to perform a cyclic shift to right or left by half the width.

Note:  Erik Krause produced Photoshop actions (Auto Blend 360) to do the canvas expansion and contraction conveniently (at www.erik-krause.de/ttt/index.htm). 

John

[Arnaud Cam Guyomard]

Great work, Matt. I’m going to try Photomatix Pro on Mac; it seems to yield good results, and the technique looks clearer to me.

John, thanks for the clarification, but I’m not really sure which tool to use in Affinity to fix the issue. For now, I want to avoid Photoshop; I’m not working professionally yet, and the software is too expensive for my needs as an amateur.

Best regards.

Arnaud

[Matthew Rogers]

Hi Arnaud,

You can get the older version of Lightroom for £10/month I think :) So it’s not that expensive.

Matt

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