I agree with much of what Bart has said. But I'm also a bit confused as to your workflow and intended end result. You say you are working with 'stitching' images but also say you're using HDR software. Are you trying to do an HDR merge on stitched images (or vice versa) or are you trying to use HDR software to do stitching? If you can clarify, I may have a couple ideas.
Hi Bob,
Until Justan responds, there are two possible approaches one could take for the creation of HDR panoramas (or higher resolution normal FOV images).
1. Stitch several panoramas of the same scene with different exposures for each pano, and blend or HDR composite and tonemap those complete panos.
2. Blend or HDR composite and tonemap the individual tiles of the pano first, then stitch the tonemapped tiles to a complete pano.
IMHO, the second approach is superior.
The main benefits of the second method are:
a. Blending/compositing full size pano's will require a lot of memory for processing, while blending tiles is much faster with a lower memory footprint.
b. One can adjust the White-balance and exposure/brightness and micro-contrast of each tonemapped tile individually, which is much more accurate and adjustable. The stitching program will blend between the tiles to make the transitions unnoticeable.
I only use method 2., for those reasons.
Cheers,
Bart