Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: Justan on March 16, 2010, 04:01:59 pm
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I recently bought this program, and while it offers much more control for stitching than does CS3, it does not appear to offer a lot of control for vignetting correction. But I could be missing something.
I found a reference for the control it does offer here: http://www.ptgui.com/examples/vigntutorial.html (http://www.ptgui.com/examples/vigntutorial.html)
I've followed the procedure above but it doesn’t do the job and definitely doesn’t do as well as does CS3.
This shortcoming appears compounded because PTGui doesn’t read ACR’s “sidecar” files. Due to this I perform vignetting correction in ACR then open and save the files as psd, then import them into PTGui. This is workable but adds PITA to the process.
What am I missing?
TIA!
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I use the Pro version but never us those exposure correction things.
I do all the vignetting correction in ACR. Since I almost always use F8 I have simple presets for each lens that include vignetting correction, chromatic correction, camera profiles, etc. Then I export the pre-stitched panels as 16 bit TIF (not PSD).
In theory it's best to do as much correction as possible in the RAW conversion because that's where you have the most pristine image data. I do as much contrast and color correction as possible in ACR. If you toggle quickly from panel to panel while watching how the ACR histogram animates it's easy to equalize the panels, just keep on out that the histograms trend logically as you toggle between panels.
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I use Autopano Pro rather than PTGui so I can't really help you there, but like Bill, I do my correcting in Lightroom before collecting the images for making the panorama.
Mike.
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Hi,
Same here. But I seldom feel a need for correcting vignetting. In my view it is more important to fix chromatic aberration.Many lenses have some and it cannot be removed from the assembled panorama.
I have some write up on my technique here: http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.ph...a-and-stitching (http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles/panorama-and-stitching) (needs an update)
Best regards
Erik
I use Autopano Pro rather than PTGui so I can't really help you there, but like Bill, I do my correcting in Lightroom before collecting the images for making the panorama.
Mike.
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Thanks Bill,
I looked into ACR presets for the first time after reading your note. That appears to be the key to simplifying the process.
> I do all the vignetting correction in ACR. Since I almost always use F8 I have simple presets for each lens that include vignetting correction, chromatic correction, camera profiles, etc.
Where or how do you get the information for correction, profiles…?
> I do as much contrast and color correction as possible in ACR.
That has to be a fairly evolved skill to do with pre-stitched panos. Unless I took a lot of notes along the way I’d have a hard time doing this with a dozen raw files and getting consistent results.
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I use Autopano Pro rather than PTGui so I can't really help you there, but like Bill, I do my correcting in Lightroom before collecting the images for making the panorama.
Mike.
Thanks Mike!
Okay how does one make corrections to pre-pano images and get uniform results?
I tried Autopano Pro but went with the other guys.
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Thank you Erik!
The article you referenced was a good one and I'm gonna have to get an L bracket. The article you referenced in your write up was excellent and I'm duplicating the link here for future readers on the topic: http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....=36973&st=0 (http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=36973&st=0)
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You get correction settings for vignetting by first photographing a perfectly flat, perfectly evenly lighted surface. Some use the north sky on a clear day.
In ACR go to the Lens Correction tab which is the picture of the cutaway lenses. Adjust the Amount and Midpoint sliders until when you run the cursor from corner to corner, the RGB numbers displayed by ACR change the least, or not at all. Hint...for my old Nikon D2X APS sensor, Amount was almost always 12, and Midpoint 0. For fullframe sensors expect larger numbers. It just might be the case that the best vignetting numbers are where the Midpoint slider has the smallest possible number that works.
On to Chromatic. Pick a raw file shot on a contrasty day with lots of contrast or texture near the corners. If you can find a disgusting white cigarette butt near the edge of the image, that's almost the perfect Chromatic Aberration target. Note that you will probably see red or cyan halos around bright objects. Adjust the Fix Red/Cyan Fringe slider to minimize the halos, noting that you can shift the halo from one side to the other. Balance out the Red and Cyan halos as best you can. Then go on to Fix Blue/Yello Fringe the same way. Check some areas more towards the center as well, you may have to compromise slightly between best correction on the edge and midpoints. Hint...for my wackiest wide angle its -28 or Red/Cyan, and -20 on Blue/Yellow. But my hyper-wonderful 55 Micro needs no adjustment.
Camera Profiles is a whole other thing, but lacking a specific profile for you camera just pick "Camera Standard" instead of the default "Adobe Standard." It's really a matter of taste, "Camera Standard" is prettier and I like pretty things.
LOTS of correction is possible in ACR. And since you are working as close to the original camera data as possible, you will do the least damage to image quality by making your big changes here, rather than later on when the data has already been scrambled a bit by RAW to TIF conversion.
Now the thing with panos is, you are covering very wide angles of view and one side of the image is almost always going to be brighter than the other. So I just load all the pano panels in ACR, pick one towards the center, get my basic "look" down, then work out towards either edge fudging the controls around to more or less make the outlying panels play nice with the look of the central panel, but without clipping. This means every panel may wind up having the different values.
For instance on Exposure, the central panel may be "0.0", but moving towards the brightest side of the image I have brightnesses of -0.1, -0.2, -0.2, -0.25, -0.3...that kind of stuff. For a newbie, just get that central image balanced, copy those settings to all the panels, then start moving out towards the sides trying to concentrate mostly only on Exposure. When the exposures on all the panels looks about as good as you can get it, then you can go back and mess with the other settings. An important concept is to make sure that as you adjust any of the sliders, that adjustment probably wants to "trend into" the same setting for the adjacent panels.
When evening things outs, it is helpful to watch how the histogram animates as you flip from panel to panel. Rather than making huge morphs, it's change should subtly change when going between adjacent panels (unless the actual contents of adjacent panels changes radically). Helps give you an idea how you're doing. Also ACR displays RGB values, it is helpful to compare the RGB values of pieces of sky that will overlap in adjacent channels.
Or you can just forget the last few paragraphs and shoot all your panos facing north at noon.
OK, so there you are. Gotta coat some prints.
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Thanks Mike!
Okay how does one make corrections to pre-pano images and get uniform results?
I tried Autopano Pro but went with the other guys.
I use Lightroom's 'AutoSync' function, so any changes made to one images are automatically made to all selected.
Mike.
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> In ACR go to the Lens Correction tab which is the picture of the cutaway lenses. Adjust the Amount and Midpoint sliders until when you run the cursor from corner to corner, the RGB numbers displayed by ACR change the least, or not at all….
Thanks very much for taking the time to detail the steps!!! I did some tests using a clear post sunset sky (looking east) with 2 lenses at minimum aperture and found that 12 0 and 9 0 removes the vignetting for both, at least as ACR reads them.
I still have to do the workup for chromatic adjustments.
I’ll refer back to this great tutorial when working up my next pano.
One more question: is this kind of correction (vignetting, chroma) suitable for a zoom lens at all focal lengths or just one?
I understand that vignetting will change depending on the aperture, and am guessing it will also change as the focal length increases. Is that correct?
Thanks again!
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I use Lightroom's 'AutoSync' function, so any changes made to one images are automatically made to all selected.
Mike.
That is clearly a very useful feature!
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One more question: is this kind of correction (vignetting, chroma) suitable for a zoom lens at all focal lengths or just one?
I understand that vignetting will change depending on the aperture, and am guessing it will also change as the focal length increases. Is that correct?
Vignetting and chromatic aberration and every other optical annoyance will change over the range of a zoom lens. And also with aperture. Zoom lenses are wonderful teaching aids for those wishing to understand optical aberrations. No biggie, if you slap down those aberrations in one frame of your pano set, you can use the ACR "Select All" and "Synchronize" buttons to copy the fix to all the panels.
It's no big deal to work up new aberration settings for each pano. Presets should not be viewed as a holy grail worthy of struggle. I have presets for all my primes, but sometimes have to fudge them for scenes that are especially brilliant or have especially prominent specular highlights. Oh, and in low contrast scenes chromatic can show up as very subtle off-color blushes around bright to dark transitions, don't let those slip by.
So you're shooting panos with a zoom, eh? That's just wonderful.
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In PTGui switch to "Advance" and to the tab "Exposure / HDR" to open the automatic exposure and color adjustment. However, I prefer to correct with the raw conversion.
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> Vignetting and chromatic aberration and every other optical annoyance will change over the range of a zoom lens. And also with aperture.
Thanks.
> Zoom lenses are wonderful teaching aids for those wishing to understand optical aberrations.
All right then….. once I start printing the projects at bigger than 23.5” on the long side, I'm sure I have a cornucopia of new horrors waiting. But on my single non-pano frames, s’not so bad at the limit of the printer.
> No biggie, if you slap down those aberrations in one frame of your pano set, you can use the ACR "Select All" and "Synchronize" buttons to copy the fix to all the panels.
Ding! Ding! Dingngngng!! We have a winner! THAT is how you do common work on pano frames in ACR without taking notes on every step of every frame. D’oh! It wasn’t until yesterday that I opened more than one frame in ACR at the same time….. so the light goes on however low wattage. Now I understand how to do common work in ACR. Oy for the delight! The giddy sense of climbing above another ridge line!!
> It's no big deal to work up new aberration settings for each pano.
Now that I have a sense of it, I agree
> Oh, and in low contrast scenes chromatic can show up as very subtle off-color blushes around bright to dark transitions, don't let those slip by.
I've seen this in forest shots. A lot. It is so cool to have stumbled upon a solution!
> So you're shooting panos with a zoom, eh?
Okay there smart fella, what do you do? I mean other than taking a crew with you? Do you do studies where you decide what FL to use, then come back with the closest prime to that? The alternative is to schlep a bunch of fixed length lenses everywhere….
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In PTGui switch to "Advance" and to the tab "Exposure / HDR" to open the automatic exposure and color adjustment. However, I prefer to correct with the raw conversion.
Thanks. I'm familiar with that adjustment. But it didn’t do the job.
From what I've learned in this thread using ACR or LR is the only way to accomplish the task. Unfortunately.
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Thanks. I'm familiar with that adjustment. But it didn’t do the job.
From what I've learned in this thread using ACR or LR is the only way to accomplish the task. Unfortunately.
The automatic equalization is intended for point & shoot jpeggers with cameras stuck in AUTO mode. It works about as well as Russian->English translation software. Equalizing panos may be last thing in photography that still requires the intervention a human mind.
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Okay well I must be missing something obvious in the use of PTGui.
I followed Bill’s excellent tutorial and used ACR to correct for vignetting. The results were a vast improvement – not perfect but a vast improvement. I then used another part of my newly learned skill set to make the same changes on every image in the pano (select all and syncronize). After that I used ACR to create tif files out of these nicely improved images.
After that I did 2 tests with these tif files.
In one test I imported the files into CS3 and did a photo-merge. No other changes. a jpg of the result is below
(http://explore-greenwater.com/pix/JE/SeattlePanMadeWithACRandCS3-1%20copy.jpg)
Next I imported the exact same tif files into PTGui. I walked PTGui through it’s default steps. In other words I made no modifications. After the stitch completed I had PTGui create a tif of the merged files.
I opened this file in Photoshop and made a jpg identical to the first one. Again no modifications were made.
The result is below.
(http://explore-greenwater.com/pix/JE/SeattlePanMadeWithTiffFilesFromACRStitchedInPTGuiCopy.jpg)
PTGui appears to be is doing something to ?exaggerate? the effect of vignetting….
what the ???
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Any sensible panographer wannabee would shoot his first pano on a sunny day looking north. But Nooooo....
Lots of things going on.
That's just bad blending, made worse by a set of pano panels that have naturally huge sky variations. What version of PTGui are you using? The PTGui blender improved radically a few versions back, but was not so hot before that. OTOH the Photoshop blender is one of the best, although the stitcher is still not quite there. One option is to work the images a lot more in ACR, then export from PTGui as a LAYERED .psd or .psb and let Photoshop to the blending, then flatten. Did you use Smartblend, which is no longer the best choice.
OK, so it's a really tough shot, the left side is a lot brighter than the right, partly because of sun direction. And it just got darker while you were shooting, Magic hour panographers must be quick like a bunny.
Try to equalize the images a lot more in ACR. Get the center panel looking great, then working meticulously outward from that, make the other panels look more like the central panel, while possibly keeping some sense of the scene being a little brighter on one side. Right now your image-to-image sky variations are little too challenging for the blender, try to minimize variations in the sky. This means you would have to force the left side panels to look darker, and the right side panels to look lighter, but don't over-homogenize. You need to effectively time compress the scene a bit.
Or if a lazy panographer could get the sky nicely selected, he could replace the ugly sky with a nice, even gradation using representative bright and dark samples from the existing sky. Partial transparency can sometimes help with credibility in these cases. A cloudless sky invites Photoshop mischief.
Best remedy...shoot it again when the light is changing at a slower rate, which would be a little earlier or a little later. Looks like you shot during peak rate of change, which happens just before and after sunset. And shoot faster. When I shoot panos like this I start shooting a few minutes before sunset, then keep going for several minutes after. Same pano, over and over, HDR and all. Out of the 1000+ exposures will emerge one set that is Just Right.
To verify...you are exporting 16 bit .TIF's from ACR, loading them into PTGui, then outputting a .psd from PTGui. In PTGui you probably want to select PTGui Blending on a single layer, or an unblended set of layers (one layer per original camera file) for blending in PS.
Another quick thought...balancing out heavily saturated skies like that is very difficult, almost any change in scene contrast will produce exaggerated affects in the sky. You could think about processing each of the panels twice, one for the ground, and once for the sky, then using masks in Photoshop pick out the best parts of each. You would first need to process each of those two sets in PTGui using the Template function made from the first set to get the second set to line up exactly. Don't create a new set of control points for the second set, use the template from the first which will use those original control points and guarantee a good overlay.
If I had received advice like this when I first started doing panos, I wouldn't have understood a word of it. Sorry. I'm trying.
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Even so I would expect PTGuil to do a better job of blending than Photoshop. You should be able to get a better result from PTGui. Try using a different blender, or if you used any of the exposure correction options turn those off.
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Wow, I've never had such a bad output from PtGUI. As mentioned smartblend used to be the good blender but not enymore. Make sure you don't have it on accidentally.
What is the overlap between frames? Maybe the blender can do a better job with a more generous overlap? I normally overlap between 20% and 40% depending on the conditions and the scene.
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> What version of PTGui are you using?
8.3.7
> One option is to work the images a lot more in ACR, then export from PTGui as a LAYERED .psd or .psb and let Photoshop to the blending, then flatten.
Interesting. you are suggesting letting PTGui do the stitch and PS do the blending. Cool.
> Did you use Smartblend, which is no longer the best choice.
I don’t know where Smartblend is. I made no adjustments in PTGui. For Photoshop I used Bridge and did a photo-merge from there.
> OK, so it's a really tough shot, the left side is a lot brighter than the right, partly because of sun direction. And it just got darker while you were shooting, Magic hour panographers must be quick like a bunny.
I may not have a sense of “quick” for the circumstances. I did 3 exposures at each position then moved on to the next position. I would guess a max of about 15 seconds per click (10 second timer). The original pan was 13 frames (I only used 12). The exposures weren’t that long and the goal was to capture the darkening of the sky through the pan. So the total time was about 9-10 minutes from the first to last snap.
> Try to equalize the images a lot more in ACR. Get the center panel looking great, then working meticulously outward from that, make the other panels look more like the central panel, while possibly keeping some sense of the scene being a little brighter on one side. Right now your image-to-image sky variations are little too challenging for the blender, try to minimize variations in the sky. This means you would have to force the left side panels to look darker, and the right side panels to look lighter, but don't over-homogenize. You need to effectively time compress the scene a bit.
This looks like the technique to use….and a reason to get a book on ACR.
> Or if a lazy panographer could get the sky nicely selected, he could replace the ugly sky with a nice, even gradation using representative bright and dark samples from the existing sky. Partial transparency can sometimes help with credibility in these cases. A cloudless sky invites Photoshop mischief.
Never tried this with a sky. Haven’t used gradients except to darken. I will look into this.
> Best remedy...shoot it again when the light is changing at a slower rate, which would be a little earlier or a little later. Looks like you shot during peak rate of change, which happens just before and after sunset. And shoot faster. When I shoot panos like this I start shooting a few minutes before sunset, then keep going for several minutes after. Same pano, over and over, HDR and all. Out of the 1000+ exposures will emerge one set that is Just Right.
Where is the fun in that? Really you appear to be saying that the results will be more predictable by fudging the light end in PS. That’s cool. It’s always better to know. Well usually always. Anyway, the blend shown above that was done in PS is almost there. I could darken a bit which I’d planned to do anyway, it would be okay but for the most discerning eye.
But I will do a re-shoot. I'm thinking a pre sunrise series will be pretty cool too. Except there probably won’t be as many lights on.
> To verify...you are exporting 16 bit .TIF's from ACR, loading them into PTGui, then outputting a .psd from PTGui.
Tried that and outputting tiff from ptgui.
> In PTGui you probably want to select PTGui Blending on a single layer, or an unblended set of layers (one layer per original camera file) for blending in PS.
This echoes your comments from above. You appear to be suggesting decoupling the stitch from the blend. I’ll definitely have to try that.
> Another quick thought...balancing out heavily saturated skies like that is very difficult, almost any change in scene contrast will produce exaggerated affects in the sky. You could think about processing each of the panels twice, one for the ground, and once for the sky, then using masks in Photoshop pick out the best parts of each. You would first need to process each of those two sets in PTGui using the Template function made from the first set to get the second set to line up exactly. Don't create a new set of control points for the second set, use the template from the first which will use those original control points and guarantee a good overlay.
I saw another reference to doing this. Ironically I understand this except I haven’t worked with layer masks very much. Only when incidental to other controls. I’ll look into gradients and masks this weekend. These sound like the core tools for fixing this kind of problem.
> If I had received advice like this when I first started doing panos, I wouldn't have understood a word of it. Sorry. I'm trying.
No problems here! I've been studying panos since December and a lot of details are coming together.
Also of note in a recent thread several said that different stitchers are suitable for differing circumstances. I think this qualifies as officially rubbing my over sized proboscis in one reason why that is….
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Even so I would expect PTGuil to do a better job of blending than Photoshop. You should be able to get a better result from PTGui. Try using a different blender, or if you used any of the exposure correction options turn those off.
i used PTGui outta the box. I expected vastly superior results too, but by all accounts that was an unreasonable expectation
I have only used this program for 5 panos so far (bought the sw last week) and other than this stitch, the others have been fine.
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Wow, I've never had such a bad output from PtGUI. As mentioned smartblend used to be the good blender but not enymore. Make sure you don't have it on accidentally.
What is the overlap between frames? Maybe the blender can do a better job with a more generous overlap? I normally overlap between 20% and 40% depending on the conditions and the scene.
I don't know where smartblend is or if it's on by default....
> What is the overlap between frames?
varied slightly but between 20% and 30%
What is most odd is that were you to look at the individual images, they have very very little of the vignetting that shows up. When measured with ACR the difference between the center portion of the image's sky and the sides was only about 5 points of blue - and that was before vignetting correction.
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Hi,
Same here. But I seldom feel a need for correcting vignetting. In my view it is more important to fix chromatic aberration.Many lenses have some and it cannot be removed from the assembled panorama.
I have some write up on my technique here: http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.ph...a-and-stitching (http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles/panorama-and-stitching) (needs an update)
Best regards
Erik
Erik,
I looked at your tutorial and found your setup interesting. I have the RRS PCL-1 panning clamp with a nodal slider and was considering another PCL-1 clamp with the accompanying bars for multi-row panos, but that would be expensive. For landscapes parallax would be minimal and all that might be needed is a tilt adapter such as your Manfrotto tilt adapter. I don't see it listed in the current Manfrotto catalog, but there is a monopod tilt head that is good for up to 5 pounds (2.75 kilos). That might be all I need. What do you think? Thanks for the information.
For correction of lateral chromatic aberration with Nikon cameras, Capture NX might come in handy since it automatically corrects chromatic aberration as well as light falloff. DXO offers even more lens corrections, but only for a limited number of lenses in its database.
Bill
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I stitch a lot, handheld/tripod etc. I use a manfrotto 303 SPH and yes it has some sag to it but it seems to work well with the Contax 645 & lightphase back plus any of the Nikon gear that I use. Today was photo micrometry day in a blizzard.
I have always found shooting in raw and using the native converter eg. Capture One or Capture NX for my conversions. As pointed out earlier CA/distortion etc is easily corrected. Since I shoot almost exclusively in aperture priority I adjust luminosity after I have a look at my first preview in PTGui. This whole thought process follows my work flow where RAW images names are carried through to the stitcher. If I need to replace a image I can over write the original tiff and PTGui will update the image in real time, kinda handy.
I have found that 16 bit tiffs are overkill and I can end up with 28 gig layered PSD’s which are a pain to clean and process. 8 bit I found works fine even when printing native resolution. Even 8 bit files can lead to 2 and 3 gig PSD files. I have found that jpg files cooked out of the RAW work very well.
Joost has worked hard on PTGui and if you don’t like smartblend which is the blending aspect of Joost’s stitcher engine then you can in the options panel add in Endblend or any of the other blender programs.
Max Lyons PTAssembler newest release has the ability to set the masks before you stitch which in this image would have saved a week of masking in PS.
(http://inandaimages.com/images/Panoramas/2010/Music/2010-02-21FrostBiteV2.jpg)
My experience is shoot raw, render/cook in native converter though I will say I haven’t mastered jpgs in Capture One, daily use does help. Use the preview window in PTGui to check your sky on the blend, adjust raw file and replace file check again. Use the blended and individual frame buttons to see how the preview stitch will look.
Remember to select the output options so that the file is output in tiff format in PS (matching input format), ensure none of the repair or color corrections are set. There is some difference in choosing the different stitching engines in stitching speed, I tend to leave these options alone.
I output blended & layers especially if there are moving objects or blend errors. Sometimes I get away lucky but most of the time there is always something to repair.
Skies are one of the most difficult aspects of my panoramas and this is what I use right now for my work flow. Hope this helps.
Mark Prins
Inanda Images
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Hi Mark,
Thank you very much for the detailed reply! I pay close attention to the educated comments provided by yourself and others and am hugely appreciative of them. A valid comment *always* saves hours or more of research and experimentation!!!
As I've gone deeper into the realm of panos I'm finding that the file sizes become h*u*g*e. They have already caused me to abandon network storage for work files and I'm about ready to step away from PSD files to the bigger TIFF, but only because doing so ultimately streamlines the process.
I'm still just cracking the proverbial book on PTGui. It has let me solve problems with 2 stitches that I wasn’t able to using CS3. If it only does that, due in part to the excellent guidance I've receive here, PTGui will still have an honored place in my tool set.
Joost has generously offered to look at my source files to see if he can help identify and eliminate the problem. And due to this I'm going to send him the output tiff files. Speaking of a lot of storage, the tiffs are over 500 mb.
From what I've learned here and at his site, the problem I had is pretty rare. I often find myself with this kind of problem to solve
I definitely have to learn more about masks, blending and gradients.
Thanks again!
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Bill T:
You indicated that Smartblend is no longer the best choice for blending. I am curious as to why and what you'd recommend (I also use PTGUI) and why. I have been using Smartblend but if PTGUI or Enblend are better choices then I would certainly make the change.
Regards,
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Bill T:
You indicated that Smartblend is no longer the best choice for blending. I am curious as to why and what you'd recommend (I also use PTGUI) and why. I have been using Smartblend but if PTGUI or Enblend are better choices then I would certainly make the change.
Regards,
Smartblend is still king when it comes to blending together panels that don't 100% overlap correctly, as for instance adjacent panels with parallax errors that were shot from different camera positions or with a handheld camera. Smartblend may also produce fewer bizarre stitching artifacts on scenes containing moving objects like people and cars.
But for ordinary sky blending, recent versions of the PTGui blender have been giving me better results that hold up even when I boost the sky contrast. I used to output layered files to CS4's excellent blender, but don't see the need anymore. Of course I spend a lot of time equalizing for pano sets in ACR, maybe if I wasn't doing that my blender choice would be different.
Since you have Smartblend installed would be easy to test a few of the kind of panos you do. FWIW Smartblend has an input parameter list that impact the results quite a bit.
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Bill,
Thanks for comments.
I don't do much of multirow panos. The idea is interesting but I don't really feel the need. Any tilt head would do. I added a RRS QR on top and bottom for quick work.
Regarding light fall off it was never a problem for me. I normally adjust CA in Lightroom, have presets for my usual focal lengths. I prefer to stay in Lightroom as I'm much in favor of a parametric workflow. I'm more like an engineer than an artist.
Best regards
Erik
Erik,
I looked at your tutorial and found your setup interesting. I have the RRS PCL-1 panning clamp with a nodal slider and was considering another PCL-1 clamp with the accompanying bars for multi-row panos, but that would be expensive. For landscapes parallax would be minimal and all that might be needed is a tilt adapter such as your Manfrotto tilt adapter. I don't see it listed in the current Manfrotto catalog, but there is a monopod tilt head that is good for up to 5 pounds (2.75 kilos). That might be all I need. What do you think? Thanks for the information.
For correction of lateral chromatic aberration with Nikon cameras, Capture NX might come in handy since it automatically corrects chromatic aberration as well as light falloff. DXO offers even more lens corrections, but only for a limited number of lenses in its database.
Bill
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I have the RRS PCL-1 panning clamp with a nodal slider and was considering another PCL-1 clamp with the accompanying bars for multi-row panos, but that would be expensive. For landscapes parallax would be minimal and all that might be needed is a tilt adapter such as your Manfrotto tilt adapter. I don't see it listed in the current Manfrotto catalog, but there is a monopod tilt head that is good for up to 5 pounds (2.75 kilos). That might be all I need. What do you think? Thanks for the information.
Hi Bill,
You could get away with the PCL-1 plus MPR and a tilt head although tilting will introduce some foreground parallax (especially vertical). However, 2.75 Kg is not much, given that the center of gravity can be quite a bit of distance away torque and vibration will build up. RRS has a very nice tilt head (MH-01 High Capacity Monopod Head (http://reallyrightstuff.com/tripods/04.html)) with B2 Pro II Clamp which I use on my monopod, and it has a 75 pounds load capacity. One of the interesting features is that it has combined Arca Swiss style grooves and 3/8" Female threads in its base. That would allow to mount it on the leveled PCL-1 and add a row (or rows) while maintaining (almost) the same axis of rotation. Of course it all adds up, and RRS stuff is not cheap, but you're unlikely to ever need and replace it for something better.
Cheers,
Bart
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Hi Bill,
You could get away with the PCL-1 plus MPR and a tilt head although tilting will introduce some foreground parallax (especially vertical). However, 2.75 Kg is not much, given that the center of gravity can be quite a bit of distance away torque and vibration will build up. RRS has a very nice tilt head (MH-01 High Capacity Monopod Head (http://reallyrightstuff.com/tripods/04.html)) with B2 Pro II Clamp which I use on my monopod, and it has a 75 pounds load capacity. One of the interesting features is that it has combined Arca Swiss style grooves and 3/8" Female threads in its base. That would allow to mount it on the leveled PCL-1 and add a row (or rows) while maintaining (almost) the same axis of rotation. Of course it all adds up, and RRS stuff is not cheap, but you're unlikely to ever need and replace it for something better.
Cheers,
Bart
Modern stitching programs are so good that pano heads are unnecessary for most landscape work. I shoot my panos with a Manfrotto ballhead, and I've shot several multi-row panos handheld with foreground elements which stitched perfectly.
For architectural and shots having foreground elements they might be necessary. But you can easily save a thousand plus euro and several kilos of gear in your camera bag investing in a good stitcher.
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Feppe,
you usually give good and sound advise here, but I am struggling with this one. Shooting pano's handheld, is something you can get away with, but not something you recommend to someone who is inexperienced. Its true, that on many occasions we (you/I/and others here) have all gotten successful stitchs from handheld pano's, but I have certainly also had many unsucessful pano made handheld. Ofcourse if you panos are just to be displayed on the web, then your tolerence may vary, from someone one who needs to print >100x300cm.
But as a general rule, it shouldn't be said that a tripod is not needed for panoramic work, for almost anything. A tripod is recommended for all applications within Multi-imaging, but with some exception, you may be able to produce acceptable result handheld, depending on situation and equipment used, and desired output.
Maybe this is the difference between the professionel and the keen amateaur photographer.
To the OP, i use PTGui Pro, AutopanoPro Giga, Hugin and an old version of stitcher which is getting really dusty.
To me, PTGui Pro, is the best tool, though I wished it had masking like the stitcher has. To me, for what I do, PTGui, produces the best results. Autopano is great to run through a folder of panos and make them up if it can, but often I get rubbish lately, where I in PTGui get a successful stitch, but with a few errors that I fix easily and I have a pano.
Currently PTGui also has better HDR support, but I am sure the boys at Kolor isn't resting, but working away to get this implemented in their great program, it just that PTGui is better for me at the moment.
Smartblend, you will need to download it and tell PTGui where it is located for it to properly work.
Good luck
Henrik
PS: I will have to have a look at Max's program again, it sounds promising :-)
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Feppe,
you usually give good and sound advise here, but I am struggling with this one. Shooting pano's handheld, is something you can get away with, but not something you recommend to someone who is inexperienced. Its true, that on many occasions we (you/I/and others here) have all gotten successful stitchs from handheld pano's, but I have certainly also had many unsucessful pano made handheld. Ofcourse if you panos are just to be displayed on the web, then your tolerence may vary, from someone one who needs to print >100x300cm.
But as a general rule, it shouldn't be said that a tripod is not needed for panoramic work, for almost anything. A tripod is recommended for all applications within Multi-imaging, but with some exception, you may be able to produce acceptable result handheld, depending on situation and equipment used, and desired output.
Maybe this is the difference between the professionel and the keen amateaur photographer.
Perhaps I wasn't clear; I was in no way advocating handheld over tripod use, I was merely pointing out that one can make perfectly sound panos handheld given the stars are right. Tripods should be used when available, and pano heads as well - but most applications the latter is optional and the money better spent on a photography trip, for example.
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Perhaps I wasn't clear; I was in no way advocating handheld over tripod use, I was merely pointing out that one can make perfectly sound panos handheld given the stars are right. Tripods should be used when available, and pano heads as well - but most applications the latter is optional and the money better spent on a photography trip, for example.
ok, i think we agree
thanks
henrik
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I have often wondered that if I studied Tai Chi for a couple years, would I be able to harmoniously rotate my lens around a perfectly consistent rotational axis. The body moves are about right. Fledgling handholding panographers might do well to spend a few hours watching Tai Chi on Youtube.
For now I'm gonna stick to the tripod, or at least a string loop attached to the lens and held in place by my unmoving feet.
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Why study Tai Chi when you’ve already made the world’s coolest and probably least expensive pano tool??
WRT Smartblend - For those who are interested, if one were to go into PTGui, change the GUI to Advanced, then go to the Create Panorama tab. There you will find an option called “Blend Using:” and within this option are options to blend using 1) PTGui; 2) Enblend plugin and 3) Smartblend plugin.
In answer to Bill’s question, no, I was not using Smartblend and don’t have the plugin.
Having wandered thought this vast UI it offers a wide array of controls. It would take a couple of years to learn all the capabilities it offers.
But I’d appreciate an answer to one more question:
Under this same “Create Panorama” tab, the default option is set to JPG. How does one change the default to tiff – lossless, etc?
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Under this same “Create Panorama” tab, the default option is set to JPG. How does one change the default to tiff – lossless, etc?
That would really be asking too much. Be happy with what you've got, which will add years to your life. And don't be a troublemaker.
Also if you output .psd or .psb you will not lose anything but have smaller files than .TIF.
OK, here's a handheld pano snapshot from a few years ago. I was doing my TaiChi-like best. Note the breaks in the wires and issues in the building. Neither Smartblend nor Enblend nor any other ...blend could fix those breaks. If you wanna spend a few extra hours in Photoshop per pano, hand hold panos with wires in them. And don't use 18mm lenses tilted up.
(http://www.unit16.net/forums/image_g_test.jpg)
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Hi Bill,
You could get away with the PCL-1 plus MPR and a tilt head although tilting will introduce some foreground parallax (especially vertical). However, 2.75 Kg is not much, given that the center of gravity can be quite a bit of distance away torque and vibration will build up. RRS has a very nice tilt head (MH-01 High Capacity Monopod Head (http://reallyrightstuff.com/tripods/04.html)) with B2 Pro II Clamp which I use on my monopod, and it has a 75 pounds load capacity. One of the interesting features is that it has combined Arca Swiss style grooves and 3/8" Female threads in its base. That would allow to mount it on the leveled PCL-1 and add a row (or rows) while maintaining (almost) the same axis of rotation. Of course it all adds up, and RRS stuff is not cheap, but you're unlikely to ever need and replace it for something better.
Cheers,
Bart
Bart,
The RSS tilt head looks very attractive, especially since I already use the Arca type clamps and support. While it would be less expensive than going with the RSS multi-row pano setup, it would not eliminate parallax in the vertical direction. I could use my existing Manfrotto tilt with my other existing equipment. Since double row panos would likely be all that I would need and hopefully the parallax could be taken into account by the stitching software.
My current approach will be to try what I have and go from there. My setup is similar to Erik's:
[attachment=20994:Pano_0022.jpg]
Regards,
Bill
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ggggg
Why study Tai Chi when you've already made the world's coolest and probably least expensive pano tool??
WRT Smartblend - For those who are interested, if one were to go into PTGui, change the GUI to Advanced, then go to the Create Panorama tab. There you will find an option called "Blend Using:" and within this option are options to blend using 1) PTGui; 2) Enblend plugin and 3) Smartblend plugin.
In answer to Bill's question, no, I was not using Smartblend and don't have the plugin.
Having wandered thought this vast UI it offers a wide array of controls. It would take a couple of years to learn all the capabilities it offers.
But I'd appreciate an answer to one more question:
Under this same "Create Panorama" tab, the default option is set to JPG. How does one change the default to tiff – lossless, etc?
Make the changes to the settings on each page as you would like them to default, so on create panorama tab that would be changing your output file to TIFF (or psd/psb), 8 or 16 bit, any other settings you wish to have as default, then under the file tab (upper left corner of the window, select make as default (CTRL-SHFT-M) and then each time you run the program those should be the default settings.
I do the CTRL-SHFT-M thing on each advanced tab setting page after I make the changes which may be overkill.
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Since double row panos would likely be all that I would need and hopefully the parallax could be taken into account by the stitching software.
Keep in mind that whatever magic is invoked to correct vertical axis parallax errors in a double row pano will manifest its strongest artifacts near the vertical center of the image.
I am very skeptical of the notion that software can somehow "fix" significant parallax errors. All "stretch" functions create geometric distortions, valuing connectivity over correct geometry. That's OK for trees, but bad for architecture. Something has always got to give. In most cases you would be better off shooting a technically perfect single row, than a geometrically challenged double row.
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That would really be asking too much. Be happy with what you've got, which will add years to your life. And don't be a troublemaker.
Bill,
I have no idea what you mean by this comment. But I will neither disparage or patronize you in reply.
I will once again extend my sincere thinks to you - and to all - for your generous contributions not only of your knowledge but of your time.
Working with panos, so I'm learning, is a formal study familiar only to a small group. The study has lead me to tools such as PTGui that have considerable ability but are not without their quirks.
The willingness of yourselves to help with work arounds and to help fill out my admittedly thin knowledge in this area – and to share experiences is, simply stated, invaluable.
You have helped both myself and I hope anyone else who wanders into this specialty who may come across this and other threads covering the many aspects of stitching. The kinds of contribution provided are the purest form of synergy and reflects the highest goals of this web site, if not the highest goals of any group committed to education.
Due to your assistance I've been able to get past some of the program’s quirks and more importantly to me, have been able to take advantage of this complex tool to help achieve some pretty good results. All here have helped to further my knowledge of stitching.
Again, my thanks!
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I have no idea what you mean by this comment. But I will neither disparage or patronize you in reply.
I forgot the happy face! And there is no symbol for a ceremonial slap on the back.
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Thanks Bill. I'm gonna do a reshoot of the series that started the thread and another that I posted in UC. I also ordered a book on using ACR and once it arrives, will try to rescure this one a bit more.
Locking down the color balance at the shoot will, I hope, help eliminate some of the variables as will being able to tweak more with ACR.
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Locking down the color balance at the shoot will, I hope, help eliminate some of the variables as will being able to tweak more with ACR.
When you shoot Raw, there is no need to nail the color balance at the shoot itself. You may even want to change the White balance for certain areas of the image and let the blender make it a gradual change. Here (http://www.xs4all.nl/~bvdwolf/temp/OPF/615-617_S1.jpg) is an example where it is impossible to have a single color balance, since the image spans 244 degrees, one part backlit, and another part front lit. Here (http://www.xs4all.nl/~bvdwolf/temp/OPF/3041-3045_S.jpg) is another example where it would be possible to have a single color balance, because it is front lit.
Cheers,
Bart
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Lovely Images, Bart.
Justan, even after many years of trying to make pano's I am still finding that I have more to learn, better processes to impliment. Just keep trying and learn from your mistake.
Keep things level, work out the overlap unless you have a rotator, and if so, work out which number corraspond to your particular lens.
The better you can get things in camera the better your pano will be. - shooting digital is not different to shooting film, as in you get it right in the camera and move on, then you have less work to do when you get home. Keeping time and cost down.
Raw is very flexible, which is great, but the closer you can get it right, the better the file. Just my $.02
have fun
Henrik
PS: its when things starts to move it becomes challenging, anything static is kids play
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When you shoot Raw, there is no need to nail the color balance at the shoot itself. You may even want to change the White balance for certain areas of the image and let the blender make it a gradual change. Here (http://www.xs4all.nl/~bvdwolf/temp/OPF/615-617_S1.jpg) is an example where it is impossible to have a single color balance, since the image spans 244 degrees, one part backlit, and another part front lit. Here (http://www.xs4all.nl/~bvdwolf/temp/OPF/3041-3045_S.jpg) is another example where it would be possible to have a single color balance, because it is front lit.
Cheers,
Bart
Hi Bart,
The fotos you linked are splendid!
The comment about locking the white balance was in reference to an image I posted in another thread (http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=42423).
In that case much of the shadow area has a blue cast. My theory is that by locking the white balance I may be able to eliminate the blue cast. But it is just a theory. While I can get rid of the cast by changing the color temperature, changing the color temp also removes much of the blue from the night time sky leading to example 2 in the thread referenced above. If there is a better way to do this, I'm interested in hearing about it.
In the example at the top of this thread I think the suggestion to shoot a little later and change the color temp with ACR will be the practical solution and my next go from this particular vantage point.
Your examples further my education (Thanks!) and provide more evidence that eventually I’ll figure out how to resolve these kinds of issues.
Oh yeah, and I do shoot raw.
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Lovely Images, Bart.
Justan, even after many years of trying to make pano's I am still finding that I have more to learn, better processes to impliment. Just keep trying and learn from your mistake.
Keep things level, work out the overlap unless you have a rotator, and if so, work out which number corraspond to your particular lens.
The better you can get things in camera the better your pano will be. - shooting digital is not different to shooting film, as in you get it right in the camera and move on, then you have less work to do when you get home. Keeping time and cost down.
Raw is very flexible, which is great, but the closer you can get it right, the better the file. Just my $.02
Hi Henrik,
Thanks for the encouraging words. I agree that getting it right in the camera is all important. One of the many interesting things about panos is that they present different requirements of the ways needed to get things right in the camera than shooting single frames, and are a lot more complex in general.
But I've always enjoyed learning complex things and that is part of the enjoyment of panos. The results are well worth the experiments and time required to get it right in the camera.
Later today I'm off for about a 200 mile trip to hopefully catch a sunset across a canal. My last study (http://explore-greenwater.com/pix/JE/HoodCanal2.jpg) was mostly good except for the tide being in at the time of the shoot. That lead to the revelation that tide charts can be your friend! So again, the complexity goes up a notch.
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Hi Bart,
The fotos you linked are splendid!
Hi Justan (and Henrik),
Thanks for the kind words.
My theory is that by locking the white balance I may be able to eliminate the blue cast. But it is just a theory. While I can get rid of the cast by changing the color temperature, changing the color temp also removes much of the blue from the night time sky leading to example 2 in the thread referenced above. If there is a better way to do this, I'm interested in hearing about it.
One of the nice things about stitching is, although similar things can be done with multiple Raw conversions with different WB, that one can use the blender functionality to blend between different White Balances and even exposure levels in the different tiles of the mosaic. The best effects can be achieved when one uses a liberal amount of overlap between the tiles, say 50%. That allows to do the blending automatically.
Taking the blue cast out of shadows, or leveling the exposure differences across a wide field of view, are good candidates for such a blended leveling of differences.
Shooting Raw gives us those possibilities with a smaller risk of introducing posterization caused by excessive postprocessing.
Cheers,
Bart
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And the beat goes on. Here's what might be the best to way fix Justan's existing panorama.
Even if you do your absolute best to create a smoothly transitioning set of pano->TIF raw conversions, there is still going to be some panel to panel inconsistency.
So as a final ring of defense against blending errors, from your stitcher output the panels as a layered 16 bit psd or psb. When using PTGui each layer will also have a mask. One image layer at a time, CTRL-click on the image's mask to create a selection. Then click the yin-yang symbol at the bottom of the Layers panel create a Levels or Curves control layer just above each image layer. Individually Alt-click on each of the new control layers to make them clipping layers that will only affect the image layer right underneath it.
Then have at it with the control layers until the hard edge wall between images becomes near-seamlessly invisible. Then flatten the individual control layer + image pairs (not the whole image!) which in the example would leave 4 layers. Then select all the layers and unleash CS4's Edit->Auto Blend function. Then flatten the image.
This technique is also good if your pano was shot it in .jpg's by some poorly informed panographer. But no real panographer will ever rely on this technique as his major pre-blending strategy, without first suffering through trying to obtain best possible equalization in his raw converter. The problem with the dang raw converters is you can't see your images butted up against each other, with the above technique you can. So maybe the extra post processing is justified.
And yes yes, the clipping gizmo is not stricly needed on the bottom-most layer.
[attachment=21032:Bill_T_WarmOatmeal.JPG]
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Same here. But I seldom feel a need for correcting vignetting. In my view it is more important to fix chromatic aberration.Many lenses have some and it cannot be removed from the assembled panorama.
Doesn't AutoPano Pro automatically remove vingetting and distortion? I thought it did ...
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Hi Justan (and Henrik),
Thanks for the kind words.
One of the nice things about stitching is, although similar things can be done with multiple Raw conversions with different WB, that one can use the blender functionality to blend between different White Balances and even exposure levels in the different tiles of the mosaic. The best effects can be achieved when one uses a liberal amount of overlap between the tiles, say 50%. That allows to do the blending automatically.
Taking the blue cast out of shadows, or leveling the exposure differences across a wide field of view, are good candidates for such a blended leveling of differences.
Shooting Raw gives us those possibilities with a smaller risk of introducing posterization caused by excessive postprocessing.
Cheers,
Bart
Thanks!
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And the beat goes on. Here's what might be the best to way fix Justan's existing panorama.
Even if you do your absolute best to create a smoothly transitioning set of pano->TIF raw conversions, there is still going to be some panel to panel inconsistency.
So as a final ring of defense against blending errors, from your stitcher output the panels as a layered 16 bit psd or psb. When using PTGui each layer will also have a mask. One image layer at a time, CTRL-click on the image's mask to create a selection. Then click the yin-yang symbol at the bottom of the Layers panel create a Levels or Curves control layer just above each image layer. Individually Alt-click on each of the new control layers to make them clipping layers that will only affect the image layer right underneath it.
Then have at it with the control layers until the hard edge wall between images becomes near-seamlessly invisible. Then flatten the individual control layer + image pairs (not the whole image!) which in the example would leave 4 layers. Then select all the layers and unleash CS4's Edit->Auto Blend function. Then flatten the image.
This technique is also good if your pano was shot it in .jpg's by some poorly informed panographer. But no real panographer will ever rely on this technique as his major pre-blending strategy, without first suffering through trying to obtain best possible equalization in his raw converter. The problem with the dang raw converters is you can't see your images butted up against each other, with the above technique you can. So maybe the extra post processing is justified.
And yes yes, the clipping gizmo is not stricly needed on the bottom-most layer.
[attachment=21032:Bill_T_WarmOatmeal.JPG]
(http://www.theabeforum.com/images/emoticons/New/bow.gif) (http://www.theabeforum.com/images/emoticons/New/bow.gif) (http://www.theabeforum.com/images/emoticons/New/bow.gif)
It will probably take me a month or so to figure out how to accomplish what you wrote above but i understand enough to know you’ve saved me months of screwing around!
I think that’s dinner #2 or #3 that I owe you for your professorial generosity!
*Thank you* *Thank you* *Thank you*
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Doesn't AutoPano Pro automatically remove vingetting and distortion? I thought it did ...
I'm surprised that Autopano Pro hasn't been mentioned more in this thread. Although I haven't used PTGui, I do use APP and I think it would handle the blending problems that Justan is having quite well. Rendering with Smartblend in APP is pretty amazing IMO, but Smartblend does have problems with very large files. I had no problems stitching 50 images (5 rows of 10) but if Smartblend can't do it, there are other blend modes that will. One of the things that Smartblend does so well is getting rid of ghosting
Its worth downloading the free trial just to check it out.
It seems that quite a few people are using both programs. The next version of APP is supposedly going to address HDR, I can't wait.
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Hi,
I use Autopano Pro, too and I agree with all Bill says.
I have some info here: http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.ph...a-and-stitching (http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles/panorama-and-stitching)
Best regards
Erik
I'm surprised that Autopano Pro hasn't been mentioned more in this thread. Although I haven't used PTGui, I do use APP and I think it would handle the blending problems that Justan is having quite well. Rendering with Smartblend in APP is pretty amazing IMO, but Smartblend does have problems with very large files. I had no problems stitching 50 images (5 rows of 10) but if Smartblend can't do it, there are other blend modes that will. One of the things that Smartblend does so well is getting rid of ghosting
Its worth downloading the free trial just to check it out.
It seems that quite a few people are using both programs. The next version of APP is supposedly going to address HDR, I can't wait.
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Autopano lacks some very useful projections such as Verdutismo, which I can not live without. Or am I just not finding it?
It has some nice features such as full size panel views etc. But IMHO most of the features in Autopano are things that would best be done in Photoshop, such as contrast adjustment and cropping. Blending is neither better nor worse that in PTGui, and of course third part blenders like Smartblend run from any program will produce the same results for the same command lines. And I miss the ability to manipulate the geometry of the preview image directly with the mouse, which is somethe PTGui does very well. So lacking Photoshop I might prefer Autopano for its built-in basic image editing features. But for now I personally like the lean and to-the-point nature of PTGui as a solid link in the workflow from camera to Photoshop to printed pano.
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Autopano lacks some very useful projections such as Verdutismo, which I can not live without. Or am I just not finding it?
It has some nice features such as full size panel views etc. But IMHO most of the features in Autopano are things that would best be done in Photoshop, such as contrast adjustment and cropping. Blending is neither better nor worse that in PTGui, and of course third part blenders like Smartblend run from any program will produce the same results for the same command lines. And I miss the ability to manipulate the geometry of the preview image directly with the mouse, which is somethe PTGui does very well. So lacking Photoshop I might prefer Autopano for its built-in basic image editing features. But for now I personally like the lean and to-the-point nature of PTGui as a solid link in the workflow from camera to Photoshop to printed pano.
You're correct that Autopano Pro doesn't have the Vedutismo projection, AFAIK PTGui is the only one that has it. This is my preferred projection mode for most landscapes moderately wide to wide FOV's. PTGui also has Exposure Fusion support for exposure blending. These two features are the reason that I use PTGui for the majority of my stitching. Another thing Autopano lacks is the ability to manually create control points, which I occasionally find necessary (not often though).
Autopano does have some nice features though. I find it to be more reliable at detecting the vanishing point and leveling the pano. I also really like the crop tool in Autopano and wish PTGui had it. Since I prefer specific aspect ratios for my panos, it's nice to be able to see what the composition will look like for those ratios without having to stitch first.
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Autopano does have some nice features though. I find it to be more reliable at detecting the vanishing point and leveling the pano. I also really like the crop tool in Autopano and wish PTGui had it. Since I prefer specific aspect ratios for my panos, it's nice to be able to see what the composition will look like for those ratios without having to stitch first.
You can crop panos in PTGUI by dragging the edges. It's entirely non-intuitive and not apparent, though.
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You can crop panos in PTGUI by dragging the edges. It's entirely non-intuitive and not apparent, though.
Yes, that is helpful for reducing the overall size of the stitched result and getting rid of empty space. But it doesn't let you crop to exactly a 3:1 ratio, for example.
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Yes, that is helpful for reducing the overall size of the stitched result and getting rid of empty space. But it doesn't let you crop to exactly a 3:1 ratio, for example.
Ah, correct, you have to eyeball the AR.
The problem with the two programs is that neither of them have all the features. APP has much better UI and is simpler to use, but PTGUI has more features - and does exposure blending and has more robust layer alignment for bracketed shots. APP had some pretty serious problems with stability on my older rig with only 4 gigs of memory, haven't used the latest versions, though.
On the other hand since neither of them is the solution it means competition to stay ahead of the curve, ie. better products and cheaper prices for us!
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My two cents... As to the original question about whether PT Gui Pro can correct for vignetting, I'm pretty sure it can. One trick is to give it a full 360 degree row of pictures to work on so that it can figure out the corrections needed for a successful blend, and then you can apply those corrections to the original files. Otherwise, I believe, you have to enter figures numerically as you would with its ancestor, Pano Tools. Check this tutorial for more and better information:
http://www.ptgui.com/examples/vigntutorial.html (http://www.ptgui.com/examples/vigntutorial.html)
I should add that I do not practise what I just preached. If I need to make corrections to an individual file, I find it much easier to use ACR or a Photoshop plug-in like PT Lens ( http://epaperpress.com/ptlens/ (http://epaperpress.com/ptlens/) )
Regarding a later posting showing blending problems with PT Gui, I was surprised to see it. PT Gui has always impressed me with its ability to smoothly blend seemingly impossible variations in the density of joined edges. (I'll propose a radical notion about that in a moment.)
I have tried AutoPano Pro and PT Gui Pro, but now use PT Gui almost exclusively. First, because it runs on my Windows machine easily five times faster than the other, even when using the Smartblend plug-in. Second, I was just never able to figure out how to manipulate the control points in AutoPano. I'm sure that's more my fault than the software's--I need to read the directions better. But the program takes a very long time to redraw previews after corrections are entered, and I lose track of how my entries affect the result.
AutoPano strongly markets its ability to find relevant files in a folder and organize them for stitching. But even that process, fun as it is to watch, is terribly time-consuming. It's really not a big deal to drag and drop your files right out of Bridge or other browser into PT Gui.
Regarding hardware, I am a big fan of Nodal Ninja. The price is reasonable, the quality is high, and the manufacturers are very helpful. I'm sure the RRS devices are very good too, like their other products. But the Nodal Ninja is cheaper and fits into one small elegant case. It's dedicated to the one purpose of panorama shooting, so you can set it once for your body-and-lens combination and (almost) forget about it.
If you've stuck with me this far, well that's your own fault, but here's my ridiculous idea. The premise: exposure settings for panoramics are supposed to be locked on manual, shot in raw, and widely bracketed to help with brightness differences or, shudder, HDR. (I shudder at HDR only because I still can't make any sense of it. But that's my burden and a story for another day.) The proposition: if we're going to bracket raw files anyway, why not shoot with the camera set on aperture-priority automatic? Ignoring new-fangled settings like evaluative metering and such for the moment, plain old auto exposure will create a series of files of middle value tonality. They will very likely be too light or dark for certain parts of our scene, but because they are putting our subjects into the middle of the tonal range, they should be very "editable". (I really need to find out if that's a real word.) We still have bracketing to cover our back, and we still have the option of raw editing to help us even more. Then we have what I mentioned earlier, the observation that got me started on this idea: the nearly supernatural ability of current stitching programs to smooth out exposure variations.
You'd think I would just go out and test my own idea, but I only thought of it the other day and haven't shot any panoramics since. So I will rephrase it in the form of a question: Have any of you shot your panoramics on automatic exposure, and how did it work compared to fixed-manual?
Oh, one last thing. The best information I have found online about this whole area has been in tutorials written by John Houghton.
http://www.johnhpanos.com/ (http://www.johnhpanos.com/)
He uses PT Gui, but I bet you'll find plenty of good information even if you don't.
If you want to see stuff I've been doing: http://www.michaelbaileyphoto.com/panos.htm (http://www.michaelbaileyphoto.com/panos.htm)
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Absolutely, John is The Man when it comes to explaining panos. Highest recommendation.
Have shot many panos with why automatic Fuji F31 point & shoot. The basic problem is that while you would hope the autoexposures would gradually trend this way or that from frame to frame, in fact whatever heuristics are involved tend to generate big jumps from frame to frame. The exposure stack I mentioned in post #49 of this thread is about the only way to deal with that, when you are dealing with the usual .jpg's from the P&S's or even fairly thorough raw conversions on autoexposed originals.
In practice even with the DSLR's I sometimes fudge the frame to frame exposure time slightly when shooting in manual mode as the as the scene brightness changes with sun angle and overall contrast.
Here's a personal pano I shot in autoexposure with the F31. It shows the basic kind of sky blending problems you get from autoexposure, and a somewhat paint- brushed solution. That camera sure has a lot of depth of field!
[attachment=21258:Tondreau_Sky_Blend.jpg]
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Hey, Bill T., don't go messing up my perfectly sound theory with grubby reality! How can I hope to become an internet blowhard if you mess me up with empirical evidence?
Now let me tell you about how the Nikon Corporation is in league with the Trilateral Commission to create an international pixel tax...
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Hey, Bill T., don't go messing up my perfectly sound theory with grubby reality!
Dont feel bad!
You had some good points there. While in theory pano purists like to hold a constant exposure from frame to frame, that can lead to badly exposed panels on panos where some parts of the scene are a lot brighter or darker than the rest. The argument for autoexposure is that while you may get a wild and crazy bunch of jumping-around exposures, you at least will not get really awful exposures. You can equalize wild exposures in the layer stack as long you don't have too much clipping, but you can't satisfactorily rescue badly clipped areas except for sky reconstructions.
The best procedure on exposure-challenged panos is usually to shoot HDR, which is my choice in those cases. But if you don't like HDR, then please feel free to either nudge the exposure around from panel to panel by keeping an eye on the histograms at shooting time, or just shoot autoexposure if that's all the camera allows.
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Yes, of course you're right about checking histograms and getting exposure right at the source. To avoid the dive into HDR, here's how I've been approaching exposure:
shoot raw, as all people of virtue and kindness will agree
bracket (why oh why do the Nikon D-300 and D-700 only bracket in 1 stop increments while the D-90 will allow variation of 1.5 stop and more?)
---and, yes, if part of the scene is definitely brighter or darker, cheat the base exposure
in processing, use ACR (or other) to fudge the exposures from frame to frame a little more
---they don't have to all be perfect exposure matches--the stitching software may surprise you with how well it blends
---process the files so their values fall more to the mid range, even if it makes the pictures look a bit flat
--- ---you don't want to throw away highlight and shadow information yet if you don't have to
---of course, don't feel obligated to choose the same bracket from each set
---also, alter individual color balance settings if the color varies across the scene
---CS-4 also has the nice adjustment brush feature to help with smaller local corrections
work in 16 bit color
---16 bit makes my 13 D-90 files twice as big but PT Gui can still process them fairly quickly
---that last inevitable bit of Photoshop tweaking will look smoother in 16 bit, as will the whole file when you apply the adjustment layer to goose the contrast back to normal
the Shadow-Highlight tool is a great help, too
---duplicate the final Photoshop layer, run S-H on the duplicate, then use a layer mask to make it disappear in the places you don't want to see it
So, to control the tonal range of very wide scenery, here's a list of tools that I see so far:
- shoot raw
- vary base exposure from frame to frame, if necessary
- bracket
- refine individual exposures and color balance in raw processing
- do some "dodging and burning" with the adjustment brush
- rely on stitching software's ability to blend edges of differing brightness
- 16 bit color for better manipulation of details and tonal range in finished pano
- shadow-highlight
Is this a complete list?
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