Recently I have found what I consider a major issue with LR and the photomerge feature. When LR first came out with the HDR and Pano features, I was very impressed as now it was possible with single row stitching to keep the work all in LR and LR's ability to keep the output in a DNG format was a plus to me.
I have worked up hundreds of image combinations, but recently have started to notice an issue when merging multiple HDR files within LR.
I have attached a lot of screen shots, but they will be all at the bottom of the post as I don't have the editing skill to place them where I want.
Example, I have a 5 segment series of a sunset. The series was taken with a Nikon D810 and 14-24 lens, with the lens @ 24mm. I was set as close to the nodal point as I could determine and was level. I took the series in 5 vertical shots, each segment was at least 3 bracketed exposures, except the shot which contained the sun, where I took a total of 5 shots to keep from totally blowing out the highlights.
Workflow:
1. Create a HDR within LR of each of the 5 segments
2. Take the 5 HDR dng files and then create a pano.
Sounds simple, but in reality, LR fails terribly here. LR is grossly overexposing the process, such that there is no recovery for the are around the sun. As I am sure most know, the HDR output from LR is very neutral, and has the highlights and shadows sliders, maxed out, Highlights all the way down and shadows all the way up. This tends to create a very flat looking file, but there is plenty of image left to work on. However when you take a HDR and then try to create a pano, it's like LR totally redoes the process over and thus blows out the end result. You can see this in my screen shots below.
You can of course export the individual HDR dngs and tif and run them in Ptgui, CC or Kolor and you get a fine result. But that is not what I am wanting to do.
HOWEVER IF YOU EXPORT THE HDR DNGS AS TIFF AND THEN IMPORT THEM INTO LR TO CREATE A PANO, LR FAILS AND GIVES THE ERROR MESSAGE "UNABLE TO MERGE THE PHOTOS" even though LR just processed out the same darn files as HDR dng's within LR, albeit grossly overexposed.
I also took the 5 HDR's and exported them directly to CC from the LR dialog box and CC runs them fine. No gross overexposure.
The other problem I see almost every time, even if the exposure works, is the message "This image appears to be damaged", however you can still work on the file and export it with no problems. Not sure why the message comes up at all.
To the people closer to Adobe, I pose this question, was LR never designed to take a series of HDR dngs created in LR and then create a pano?
To me this is a gross oversight by Adobe and hopefully can be fixed in a later version, but I hold small hope for that as LR doesn't ever seem to change or modify a process once it's in place. The movement of the dehaze from a main adjustment to also being available in a local adjustment is an exception.
LR/Adobe has done a lot of positive work on the both HDR and panorama stitching, but this issue to me a pretty much a limiting factor to allow full production for creation of HDR, to pano.
I have had the same issue with Fuji raw, Canon Raw and Nikon raw files.
Paul C