PTGui and Fuji

[armand]

More like a heads-up, it doesn't recognize the raf files. I bough it without testing in that much and that's one big limitation for me.

Results wise also I'm not that impressed yet, I hope it will do beter if I feed it some HDR panoramas. In a couple of instances both LR and PTGui couldn't stitch some files but Photoshop had no issues. In one of them the problem was one of shots was blurred but Photoshop was still able to get it through.

[BernardLanguillier]

The best option by far for “low contrast” images is autopano giga.

Now, I usually consider the pano as unusable if one image is blurred.

Cheers,
Bernard

[armand]

The best option by far for “low contrast” images is autopano giga.

Now, I usually consider the pano as unusable if one image is blurred.

Cheers,
Bernard

Contrast was not the problem. That particular pano went into trash, the idea that I got from it is that Photoshop is able to deal with more difficult shots.

Now just after my initial post I tried one in both Photoshop and PTGui and the PTGui got it much faster while Photoshop struggled. Unfortunately I exported the PTGui as jpeg while the Photoshop stayed as tiff and at pixel level Photoshop was much sharper. I'll test them again side by side and see how much it's worth going through the trouble of exporting the Fuji files, if at all.

[armand]

Maybe I spoke too soon. A "quick" stress test, 37 images for a pano. LR, Photoshop and PTGui. For PTGui I had to export the files as tiff first.

LR did ok but couldn't accept a perspective projection, only spherical or cylindrical. I went with cylindrical and had to use the warp at 50, possibly explaining the loss in sharpness.
Photoshop took the longest and you cannot preview the projection so I went with auto.
PTGui was the fastest by far, and it has many projections that you can visualize real time. For this one I went with mercator.

Overall the PTGui was much sharper, possibly related to the projection.

The the full pano from PTGui and crops from all.

PS. I see the PTGui has a smaller files, further explaining some of the sharpness

[Alan Smallbone]

Try converting the RAF to DNG using Iridient X -Transformer. I have used ptgui for a lot of years, for me it has always been the best program and very reliable.

Alan

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

PS. I see the PTGui has a smaller files, further explaining some of the sharpness

Hi Armand,

You can set the output size to 'optimum size', which retains the original combined tile sizes as much as possible, and you can choose from several resampling methods, more suited for rotated and distorted/warped image content than the straightforward resampling in e.g. PS.

In my long experience, PTGUI usually produces superior quality. It also offers the most flexibility, and workflow benefits (like working with templates, storing lens distortion and actual focal length parameters, etc.). It also uses memory resources very efficiently. I'm currently using the PTGUI Pro version 11 Beta, and that has again been improved a lot (and with a modernized GUI) over the already good Version 10.

Cheers,
Bart

[rdonson]

Stunning pano, Armand.

[armand]

Hi Armand,

You can set the output size to 'optimum size', which retains the original combined tile sizes as much as possible, and you can choose from several resampling methods, more suited for rotated and distorted/warped image content than the straightforward resampling in e.g. PS.

In my long experience, PTGUI usually produces superior quality. It also offers the most flexibility, and workflow benefits (like working with templates, storing lens distortion and actual focal length parameters, etc.). It also uses memory resources very efficiently. I'm currently using the PTGUI Pro version 11 Beta, and that has again been improved a lot (and with a modernized GUI) over the already good Version 10.

Cheers,
Bart

Thank you. I did set an optimum size to my first attempt, I was wondering what it means. It is the fastest by far and very flexible in the projection settings.
I still have this mistrust as it couldn't cope with a shot that Photoshop could.
The big bummer is that it doesn't natively support my Fuji, only the Olympus and Nikon. With LR doing a pretty good job it has to be a really nice pano to worth the effort.

Stunning pano, Armand.

Thank you

Try converting the RAF to DNG using Iridient X -Transformer. I have used ptgui for a lot of years, for me it has always been the best program and very reliable.

Alan

Trialed Iridient a long time ago and while detail was better it was messing up the colors. Even as LR's film simulations are not entirely as jpegs they are a good starting point that I don't want to lose. I might give it another try, I'm not hopeful though.



All in all the current pano software is very good. Because of this a I can afford to bypass many steps for panoramas. The above is 37 shots handheld, 39 initially. I overlap around 50-60% each shot so there is still around 20-30% overlap between every other shot. This way I can discard almost half of the shots if they are subpar as long as they are not consecutive. Also because the software is so good many times I reexpose and refocus each shot if it's something at a longer distance, such as this particular pano which was shot at around 96 mm equiv.

[armand]

Few more high ratio panoramas that I played with. Doubt will be able to print them not to mention have the room for them.

[kers]

I like ptgui very much- very well designed software....

use it almost as much as photoshop and lightroom...

and a redesign is on its way ( ptgui.com/beta )

some high high res examples here: www.beeld.nu/beeld

[rdonson]

Pieter, absolutely amazing very high resolution panos!!!!

Thanks for sharing!

[kers]

Pieter, absolutely amazing very high resolution panos!!!!

Thanks for sharing!

thanks... i have become a fan of ptGui - one of the things you can do is change perspective afterwards...
Some people have pointed out to me ( they make laser scans) a new way of making photographs is making a scan and choose a section- you can do that in some occasions if the quality is good enough. Also distortion is ruled out by the stitch. Some of the pano's took me week to make..and contain 500 necessary photographs ( d810)