Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: henrikolsen on January 06, 2018, 03:51:19 pm

Title: Problem with HDR panorama in LR Classic CC 7.1
Post by: henrikolsen on January 06, 2018, 03:51:19 pm
Having issues with HDR panoramas in latest LR Classic CC 7.1.

I first merge bracketed shots to HDR, then merge those to panorama. The resulting panorama has less highlight detail available than individual HDR shots. I assumed it would be preserved into the panorama DNG - one of the otherwise excellent points in this workflow.

But notice the highlight details available in the attached screenshots. The individual one has way more than the panorama, with exposure dropped to comparable look at rest of tones (dropped heavily for illustration purpose). The panorama DNG seems to have some quite aggressive highlight clipping that gives very rough transitions - not at all similar to individual HDR file used for sticking panorama.

Anyone sharing this experience? Suggestions?
Title: Re: Problem with HDR panorama in LR Classic CC 7.1
Post by: RikkFlohr on January 07, 2018, 08:50:04 am
Take one of your merged HDR shots and send it to Photoshop as a Smart Object - Double click on the Smart Object in PS. Does Camera Raw report it as 16 Bit or 32 Bit?
Next, take your Pano merge of the HDR shots and send it to Photoshop as a Smart Object - Double click on the Smart Object in PS. Does Camera Raw report it as 16 or 32 bit.

I am guessing you will see 32 bit on the first and 16 bit on the second which might account for the difference in dynamic range on the files.  I am guessing that would fall into the as-designed category.

If you are seeing the same bit depth on both, then I would say it is bug worthy with Adobe.
Title: Re: Problem with HDR panorama in LR Classic CC 7.1
Post by: henrikolsen on January 08, 2018, 05:49:54 am
Take one of your merged HDR shots and send it to Photoshop as a Smart Object - Double click on the Smart Object in PS. Does Camera Raw report it as 16 Bit or 32 Bit?
Next, take your Pano merge of the HDR shots and send it to Photoshop as a Smart Object - Double click on the Smart Object in PS. Does Camera Raw report it as 16 or 32 bit.

I am guessing you will see 32 bit on the first and 16 bit on the second which might account for the difference in dynamic range on the files.  I am guessing that would fall into the as-designed category.

If you are seeing the same bit depth on both, then I would say it is bug worthy with Adobe.

Thanks for the possible explanation. Have tried to open in PS as Smart Object, but don't know where in Camera Raw I see it reporting bit depth. I can see under Workflow Options (buttom line) what it is about to render/export to (8 or 16 bit, color space etc).
Title: Re: Problem with HDR panorama in LR Classic CC 7.1
Post by: Redcrown on January 08, 2018, 02:29:15 pm
I'm a little confused on your workflow since both images you posted say they are DNG.

But try this. First do your HDR merges, which creates new DNGs. Then adjust those DNG as desired. Then EXPORT those DNGs as TIFs. Then feed those TIFs to your panorama stitch.

The TIFs will have the HDR work baked in. I suspect you are feeding the HDR DNG files straight to the panorama stitch. Not sure, but the panorama process is probably ignoring the HDR settings.
Title: Re: Problem with HDR panorama in LR Classic CC 7.1
Post by: Frodo on January 09, 2018, 12:58:07 pm
I would merge the panos first using consistent exposures to avoid the risk of seeing joins when merging different HDR exposures. Then merge the different panos as an HDR. Not sure if this would solve your highlight issues.
Title: Re: Problem with HDR panorama in LR Classic CC 7.1
Post by: henrikolsen on January 11, 2018, 02:57:43 am
@Redcrown and Frodo

I think an important point with the DNG-panorama-support in LR is to not have to "bake in" any development beforehand, but keep the raw file data available from the individual shots, only then to develop after stitching.

I have been stock on the need to export parts as tiff before stitching when using 3rd party pano tools like Autopano, as it's raw support wasn't to my liking, but avoiding this temporary rendering step in the new(wish) LR DNG pano support has been a great benefit, delaying developing until after stitching. But... As reported, I've run into some highlight clipping issues recently that I hadn't expected. If this could be sorted, and an ability to rotate pano / align horizon, it would take care of most of my stitching needs.