Hi Leif
What are your settings in photomatix ?
Did you  do there all images with the same settings (batch job) ?

leifs wrote:

Then I chose "Merge into 32-bit HDR file".

What was your reason to choose this option?

best, Klaus

klausesser wrote:

What was your reason to choose this option?
best, Klaus

I started out, like I have done some times before, with Photomatix. Merging and tonemapping the stacks. This time the sky is without clouds, it's clean.
After stitching the tonemapped images the sky has ugly issues, as shown in the image above. I gave it a couple of tries and then looked for an alternative path.
That led me to try case F:  .hdr to .hdr

Leif

leifs wrote:

klausesser wrote:

What was your reason to choose this option?
best, Klaus

I started out, like I have done some times before, with Photomatix. Merging and tonemapping the stacks. This time the sky is without clouds, it's clean.
After stitching the tonemapped images the sky has ugly issues, as shown in the image above. I gave it a couple of tries and then looked for an alternative path.
That led me to try case F:  .hdr to .hdr

Leif

Hi Leif!

I mean: why .hdr out? What do you need .hdr for? Usually you would only need it for
the use in 3D applications for Image Based Lighting or Global Ilumination.

APG doesn´t have tonemapping ability. So i suggest to do the tonemapping in Photomatix
and export the mapped images as 16bit or 8 bit TIFFs.
I never had any issue doing so.

Another way would be to give bracketet stacks into APG and use Fusioning instead of HDR/tonemapping.
Then you can export the equirectangular rendereing as .hdr or .exr - for what ever you might need it . .

best, Klaus

leifs wrote:

plan A, process the stacks in Photomatix to LDR, gives me a ugly sky
if APG stitch the .hdr files and give me a .hdr pano I can tonemap it in Photomatix.
maybe that will uncover new problems, like a visible seam. as is I will not get there to see.

Leif

Processing bracketed images in Photomatix to 16bit or 8 bit TIFs or JPGs definitely
doesn´t do anything to the images that could cause APG to do ugly things in the sky - but it can
happen with the wrong settings while tonemapping.

What i see in your example is a problem-zone in the sky which
seems to come from a Halo. That´s an issue caused by a wrong setting for the blending-type in the tone-mapper.

I definitely suggest to HDR and tonemap the bracketed sets in Photomatix first by selecting more than one
set and save the presets for running all sets as batch.

Or use the fusion-option in APG by stacking the sets - I prefer to use Photomatix FIRST and process the images to
TIF or JPG before stitching.

best, Klaus

Last edited by klausesser (2013-02-03 01:03:17)

klausesser wrote:

I definitely suggest to HDR and tonemap the bracketed sets in Photomatix first by selecting more than one
set and save the presets for running all sets as batch.

best, Klaus

Hi Klaus, you always says you do tonemapping first in Photomatix, export as TIFF or JPEG as needed, and import those tonemapped file in APG but... I don't understand how this is possible.
I mean, I tried many times this way, always without success. You should know why: a series of bracketed sets of images after tonemapping doesn't look the same anymore (even applying the same preset). I mean... the bracketed set of images that contains a window gets processed a different way than the set of images immediately next, which doesn't contain the window anymore, when the preset is applied. The resulting difference in Hue, Saturation, Brightness and Contrast between each set, most of the times, makes very hard, if not impossible to get a reasonable colormatch without visible color seams in the final panorama.

I'm sure you know your method is possible only with exposure fusion, never with tonemapping. If not, what am I missing?

So, my question: how can you do that way without color issues?

Best Regards,
Marco

I've done some research, churning out 3 sets of images from Photomatix. The settings and the results is shown below.
The detected previews speaks for themselves.
If anybody can point out "wrong settings" I would appreciate that. Otherwise the verdict for now is that neither "details enhancer" nor "tone compressor" can be used for a highres  sphere with clear blue sky.

The stitch from "fusion natural" looks OK at first glance. Further inspection reveals some small issues in the sky, not so smooth transitions.
Next I will revisit APG fusion (I was not happy with the result at first try)

Leif

leifs wrote:

I've done some research, churning out 3 sets of images from Photomatix. The settings and the results is shown below.
The detected previews speaks for themselves.
If anybody can point out "wrong settings" I would appreciate that. Otherwise the verdict for now is that neither "details enhancer" nor "tone compressor" can be used for a highres  sphere with clear blue sky.

The stitch from "fusion natural" looks OK at first glance. Further inspection reveals some small issues in the sky, not so smooth transitions.
Next I will revisit APG fusion (I was not happy with the result at first try)

Leif

Your issue results from false "smooth highlights" settings. Set it to 25, 50 or 75% and look what happens.
I usually have it @50-75%.

Low "smooth highlights" results in too much blending which produces Halos.

"Shadow smoothness" i use at min. 75% most of the time - depends on what´s in the images of course.

best, Klaus

Last edited by klausesser (2013-02-03 20:57:10)

I've now given APG fusion another try. Somewhere in the back of my mind I have the idea that increasing the multiband value would result in a smoother result. So I made 2 renderings:  -2 and 0.
The results are shown below, and -2 is ugly, 0 is not as bad but still not a pano you would print or present for anybody.

I really want APG to do the tricks.
If anybody can tell me how to produce a smoth clear blue sky from a bracketed sphere using APG nothing would please me more

Leif

I've had similar issues with Photomatix.  If you look at this 15 gigapixel panorama (stitched with Gigapan's stitcher) that I put together this fall:

http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/114571

you will notice that the sky especially on the right side is all wonky.  The difference in tonality comes from the frames that include the mountain and those that do not.  All it takes is just a tiny corner of the mountain to throw off the tone of the blue and make the sky darker.

All the frames were processed in Photomatix using the batch mode.

The frames that are all mountain or all sky came out just fine.

-Art
Note, I did have some focusing issues when I shot this as it was a bit of a learning excercise with my Gigapan head.  If I can figure out the problem/s with Photomatix , I'd love to reshoot this and then HDR and focus stack as appropriate.

lumelix wrote:

Your settings are ok.

No - sorry

The setting for light smoothing is completely unusable. THIS causes an overdone damping
of the highlights and so cause halos. And that causes the un-natural overexaggerated "HDR"-look.

best, Klaus

PS: i stated that now several times - this is the last time . .

PS2: leif - 3 steps bracketing is not enough when you shoot "into the light". Take 7 or 9 steps with one step difference, better 0,5 or 0,75.

Last edited by klausesser (2013-02-04 13:07:23)

klausesser wrote:

The setting for light smoothing is completely unusable. THIS causes an overdone damping
of the highlights and so cause halos. And that causes the un-natural overexaggerated "HDR"-look.

"light smoothing" ??
you mean "Smooth highlights" in details enhancer ? Micro-smoothing ?

klausesser wrote:

PS2: leif - 3 steps bracketing is not enough when you shoot "into the light". Take 7 or 9 steps with one step difference, better 0,5 or 0,75.

It's part of a 5-bracket set. I tried it in APG but was not happy with the result. To try out several paths I made a 3-bracket set out of it, to reduce the time per cycle.

Leif