HDR and panorama issues

One idea would be to go back and combine each sub-set of 3 images making
up the 45 total (for a grand total of 135 images), but then I'd end up
with 45 HDR images that would have to then be combined into a panorama.
I don't like doing it this way because I have far less control over HDR
settings per image.

Thanks for any help.

Bill

Can you crop the photos in each stack so that they align?

On Wed, 28 Sep 2016 13:47:40 -0400, Bill Stormer
wrote:

I was to a well known photogenic place recently and decided beforehand
that I would try to do an HDR panorama of the area. However, I lost my
camera remote beforehand and was forced to manually press the shutter
button each time I needed a different exposure for HDR. Unfortunately,
this seemed to offset alignment slightly between successive frames.
While I can easily create a panorama from one set of equally exposed
images, I am unable to combine the under and over exposed panoramas with
the normally exposed without misalignment. I've tried Photoshop and
several HDR programs. I even attempted to use Microsoft ICE just to
align and then save the layers, but there is still misalignment.
Unfortunately, I can't go back and shoot these. I can and have
processed just the normal exposure panorama and can live with that if I
have to, but I had hoped to get the HDR benefits as well.

Any ideas would be welcome. Each panorama is a set of 45, 12 MB images,
so the resulting panorama from each exposure setting is huge and I'm
running into memory issues.

One idea would be to go back and combine each sub-set of 3 images making
up the 45 total (for a grand total of 135 images), but then I'd end up
with 45 HDR images that would have to then be combined into a panorama.
I don't like doing it this way because I have far less control over HDR
settings per image.

Thanks for any help.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31088803/LR--.jpg is an HDR shot
made some years ago with the Nik HDR software embedded in Corel
photopaint. It was constructed from 5 hand held bracketed shots with a
D300. Never mind the colours (which actually are not too bad) but the
software aligned and centered each shot. I don't know whether or not
this software is still available as it was only shortly after that
that Nik was swallowed by Google.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On 2016-09-29 03:53:09 +0000, Eric Stevens said:

On Wed, 28 Sep 2016 13:47:40 -0400, Bill Stormer
wrote:

I was to a well known photogenic place recently and decided beforehand
that I would try to do an HDR panorama of the area. However, I lost my
camera remote beforehand and was forced to manually press the shutter
button each time I needed a different exposure for HDR. Unfortunately,
this seemed to offset alignment slightly between successive frames.
While I can easily create a panorama from one set of equally exposed
images, I am unable to combine the under and over exposed panoramas with
the normally exposed without misalignment. I've tried Photoshop and
several HDR programs. I even attempted to use Microsoft ICE just to
align and then save the layers, but there is still misalignment.
Unfortunately, I can't go back and shoot these. I can and have
processed just the normal exposure panorama and can live with that if I
have to, but I had hoped to get the HDR benefits as well.

Any ideas would be welcome. Each panorama is a set of 45, 12 MB images,
so the resulting panorama from each exposure setting is huge and I'm
running into memory issues.

One idea would be to go back and combine each sub-set of 3 images making
up the 45 total (for a grand total of 135 images), but then I'd end up
with 45 HDR images that would have to then be combined into a panorama.
I don't like doing it this way because I have far less control over HDR
settings per image.

Thanks for any help.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31088803/LR--.jpg is an HDR shot
made some years ago with the Nik HDR software embedded in Corel
photopaint. It was constructed from 5 hand held bracketed shots with a
D300. Never mind the colours (which actually are not too bad) but the
software aligned and centered each shot. I don't know whether or not
this software is still available as it was only shortly after that
that Nik was swallowed by Google.

The entire Google NIK collection is now free, but there are rumors that
it is on life support and set to die on the vine with no updates or
refinements and zero support in the last 2+ years.
https://www.google.com/nikcollection/

--
Regards,

Savageduck

In article 2016092821203569970-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom,
Savageduck wrote:

On 2016-09-29 03:53:09 +0000, Eric Stevens said:

On Wed, 28 Sep 2016 13:47:40 -0400, Bill Stormer
wrote:

I was to a well known photogenic place recently and decided beforehand
that I would try to do an HDR panorama of the area. However, I lost my
camera remote beforehand and was forced to manually press the shutter
button each time I needed a different exposure for HDR. Unfortunately,
this seemed to offset alignment slightly between successive frames.
While I can easily create a panorama from one set of equally exposed
images, I am unable to combine the under and over exposed panoramas with
the normally exposed without misalignment. I've tried Photoshop and
several HDR programs. I even attempted to use Microsoft ICE just to
align and then save the layers, but there is still misalignment.
Unfortunately, I can't go back and shoot these. I can and have
processed just the normal exposure panorama and can live with that if I
have to, but I had hoped to get the HDR benefits as well.

Any ideas would be welcome. Each panorama is a set of 45, 12 MB images,
so the resulting panorama from each exposure setting is huge and I'm
running into memory issues.

One idea would be to go back and combine each sub-set of 3 images making
up the 45 total (for a grand total of 135 images), but then I'd end up
with 45 HDR images that would have to then be combined into a panorama.
I don't like doing it this way because I have far less control over HDR
settings per image.

Thanks for any help.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31088803/LR--.jpg is an HDR shot
made some years ago with the Nik HDR software embedded in Corel
photopaint. It was constructed from 5 hand held bracketed shots with a
D300. Never mind the colours (which actually are not too bad) but the
software aligned and centered each shot. I don't know whether or not
this software is still available as it was only shortly after that
that Nik was swallowed by Google.

The entire Google NIK collection is now free, but there are rumors that
it is on life support and set to die on the vine with no updates or
refinements and zero support in the last 2+ years.
https://www.google.com/nikcollection/

Youpp... It was bought and de facto killed as a gift from the Goog to
the Adobe. That was a goood bow. :-ppp
--
teleportation kills

On 09/28/2016 04:19 PM, Savageduck wrote:
On 2016-09-28 19:48:52 +0000, Bill Stormer said:

On 09/28/2016 02:35 PM, Savageduck wrote:
On 2016-09-28 17:47:40 +0000, Bill Stormer
said:

I was to a well known photogenic place recently and decided beforehand
that I would try to do an HDR panorama of the area. However, I lost
my camera remote beforehand and was forced to manually press the
shutter button each time I needed a different exposure for HDR.
Unfortunately, this seemed to offset alignment slightly between
successive frames. While I can easily create a panorama from one set
of equally exposed images, I am unable to combine the under and over
exposed panoramas with the normally exposed without misalignment.
I've tried Photoshop and several HDR programs. I even attempted to
use Microsoft ICE just to align and then save the layers, but there is
still misalignment. Unfortunately, I can't go back and shoot these. I
can and have processed just the normal exposure panorama and can live
with that if I have to, but I had hoped to get the HDR benefits as
well.

Any ideas would be welcome. Each panorama is a set of 45, 12 MB
images, so the resulting panorama from each exposure setting is huge
and I'm running into memory issues.

One idea would be to go back and combine each sub-set of 3 images
making up the 45 total (for a grand total of 135 images), but then I'd
end up with 45 HDR images that would have to then be combined into a
panorama. I don't like doing it this way because I have far less
control over HDR settings per image.

Thanks for any help.

Bill

I am going to start by making the assumption that you used a tripod.

Yes, I did, correct.

OK! I hope it was level.

Are these JPEG or RAW files, and what is the actual 3-shot HDR bracket
(+2:0:-2)?

RAW (DNG) from a Pentax Kx, 12 Mb size. My in camera metering wasn't
working on the day of the pano for some reason, so I did my best to
estimate at least +1, 0, -1 but it does vary since I had to guesstimate.

It seems odd that the camera metering wasn't working. That alone is
going to make things tough.

What camera were you using, and what software other than Photoshop (tell
us which edition) are you using?

I have the very latest addition of Photoshop and Lightroom. Other
software tried has been SNS HDRpro and Photomatrix Pro. I even tried
using the latest Microsoft ICE just to align and then save as a PSD as
layers, but I still end up with the same "warped" misalignment.

If you are using PS CS6 + LR6, or PS CC + LR CC, the merge to panorama
and the merge to HDR are both very effective, especially with RAW(DNG)
files, and with LR there is a very powerful method of working HDR with
single RAW files.

Well, one thing I did try in LR was creating an HDR from each 3 exposure
set. This seemed ideal because a new RAW HDR was made with no
characteristics other than the full histogram plot combined and I just
had to go through every exposure set to make the HDR's ending up with 45
HDR's. I then recreated a panorama from those HDR's. Sadly, my
guesstimate for capturing the exposure range wasn't enough to really see
the benefits of HDR in the panorama. What I could try though is
altering the high/low exposure RAWs in LR by curve adjustment, then
recombining into the HDR. Not sure if it would be worth the effort
though.



Did your camera have the capability of shooting an exposure bracket, or
did you have to reset for each shot?

Without the remote, I had to reset each exposure manually and this was
sure tedious.

I just checked your camera's manual and on page 109 (of the online PDF)
it outlines using three exposure bracketing. No remote needed.


For what you have already shot, I would run the HDR processing on a
single 3 shot set, and apply the same settings as a preset to the others
rather than trying to deal with them individually. Then I would attempt
to build the panorama.

I'm afraid I might have to do this, but I have far less control than
over an HDR panorama.


If the problem lies with the alignment in the individual HDR bracket
sets, it might be best to abandon stitching the finished HDRs and use
the "0" EV set to build a pano, and if you still want to go the HDR
route use whatever HDR software you are using to tonemap from a single
pano image. Since you are using Windows, the now free NIK collection
(NIK HDR EfexPro) might do this job for you.

Your final option is to build three panos from each of the exposure
bracket shots, and then process the three exposure panos as an HDR.

...and finally consider why an HDR is even needed.

On 09/29/2016 07:31 AM, Bill Stormer wrote:
On 09/28/2016 04:19 PM, Savageduck wrote:
On 2016-09-28 19:48:52 +0000, Bill Stormer
said:

On 09/28/2016 02:35 PM, Savageduck wrote:
On 2016-09-28 17:47:40 +0000, Bill Stormer
said:

I was to a well known photogenic place recently and decided beforehand
that I would try to do an HDR panorama of the area. However, I lost
my camera remote beforehand and was forced to manually press the
shutter button each time I needed a different exposure for HDR.
Unfortunately, this seemed to offset alignment slightly between
successive frames. While I can easily create a panorama from one set
of equally exposed images, I am unable to combine the under and over
exposed panoramas with the normally exposed without misalignment.
I've tried Photoshop and several HDR programs. I even attempted to
use Microsoft ICE just to align and then save the layers, but there is
still misalignment. Unfortunately, I can't go back and shoot these. I
can and have processed just the normal exposure panorama and can live
with that if I have to, but I had hoped to get the HDR benefits as
well.

Any ideas would be welcome. Each panorama is a set of 45, 12 MB
images, so the resulting panorama from each exposure setting is huge
and I'm running into memory issues.

One idea would be to go back and combine each sub-set of 3 images
making up the 45 total (for a grand total of 135 images), but then I'd
end up with 45 HDR images that would have to then be combined into a
panorama. I don't like doing it this way because I have far less
control over HDR settings per image.

Thanks for any help.

Bill

I am going to start by making the assumption that you used a tripod.

Yes, I did, correct.

OK! I hope it was level.

Are these JPEG or RAW files, and what is the actual 3-shot HDR bracket
(+2:0:-2)?

RAW (DNG) from a Pentax Kx, 12 Mb size. My in camera metering wasn't
working on the day of the pano for some reason, so I did my best to
estimate at least +1, 0, -1 but it does vary since I had to guesstimate.

It seems odd that the camera metering wasn't working. That alone is
going to make things tough.

What camera were you using, and what software other than Photoshop
(tell
us which edition) are you using?

I have the very latest addition of Photoshop and Lightroom. Other
software tried has been SNS HDRpro and Photomatrix Pro. I even tried
using the latest Microsoft ICE just to align and then save as a PSD as
layers, but I still end up with the same "warped" misalignment.

If you are using PS CS6 + LR6, or PS CC + LR CC, the merge to panorama
and the merge to HDR are both very effective, especially with RAW(DNG)
files, and with LR there is a very powerful method of working HDR with
single RAW files.

Well, one thing I did try in LR was creating an HDR from each 3 exposure
set. This seemed ideal because a new RAW HDR was made with no
characteristics other than the full histogram plot combined and I just
had to go through every exposure set to make the HDR's ending up with 45
HDR's. I then recreated a panorama from those HDR's. Sadly, my
guesstimate for capturing the exposure range wasn't enough to really see
the benefits of HDR in the panorama. What I could try though is
altering the high/low exposure RAWs in LR by curve adjustment, then
recombining into the HDR. Not sure if it would be worth the effort though.


Sadly, unless I'm missing an adjustment somehow, if I apply say a +2
stop curve to one image and a -2 to the other while leaving one neutral
and then do the HDR combo in LR, LR doesn't seem to apply the curve
across the entire histogram plot as a regular HDR program would. If I
could get around this, LR would be the way to go, otherwise not. I can
do "auto tone" as one of the HDR preview options, but all I get is an
image with worse contrast than if I don't apply it.




Did your camera have the capability of shooting an exposure bracket, or
did you have to reset for each shot?

Without the remote, I had to reset each exposure manually and this was
sure tedious.

I just checked your camera's manual and on page 109 (of the online PDF)
it outlines using three exposure bracketing. No remote needed.


For what you have already shot, I would run the HDR processing on a
single 3 shot set, and apply the same settings as a preset to the
others
rather than trying to deal with them individually. Then I would attempt
to build the panorama.

I'm afraid I might have to do this, but I have far less control than
over an HDR panorama.


If the problem lies with the alignment in the individual HDR bracket
sets, it might be best to abandon stitching the finished HDRs and use
the "0" EV set to build a pano, and if you still want to go the HDR
route use whatever HDR software you are using to tonemap from a single
pano image. Since you are using Windows, the now free NIK collection
(NIK HDR EfexPro) might do this job for you.

Your final option is to build three panos from each of the exposure
bracket shots, and then process the three exposure panos as an HDR.

...and finally consider why an HDR is even needed.

Just a final update here and probably the most progress I made regarding
the topic at hand. I was able to use Photomatrix Pro to batch process
each set of three images into a 32 bit HDR. The program had an option
to just skip HDR processing, which was what I wanted in order to be able
to process the entire panorama later. Much to my surprise, Microsoft
ICE was able to read these 32 bit HDR's and create a panorama from them.
I found two hitches though: 1) the HDR's Photomatrix made could not be
properly displayed/ read by ICE and I had to use Photoshop to do "auto
tone" on each image first, which I set up as a Photoshop action. For
some reason, these 32 bit images histogram are severely compressed
toward the extreme left of the histogram (any idea why this is?) and
have to be stretched by auto tone. 2) the resulting panorama made by
ICE can only be saved as 16 bit. For all this extra effort, I can't see
the benefit of HDR in the case of this particular panorama as I didn't
capture enough dynamic range to begin with, but it was a good experiment
in any case.