The second biggest problem making panos, especially gigapanos , is vignetting. Even prime lenses at f8.0 has vignetting, which makes repeating patterns in the sky and water a problem.
I have bought DXO and Lightroom 4 to try fix this and are still struggling. And, yes, I have made my "Adobe lens profile". But it is not very good at vignetting. As a user of a mirrorless camera this problem is bigger than for a loyal Canon or Nikon user:
The beauty of mirrorless houses is the possibility to use any lens on the planet. If I was a loyal user of a camera-brand, the house and the lens is from the same wellknown maker, the vignetting will be corrected in-camera before the raw-file is saved to the memorycard. This is not the case when I use a Zeiss lens on my Olympus E-M5 house. This combination is maybe rare, and I don't expect it in DXO soon. I can do it myself with "Adobe lens profile", but my experience on this profile on vignetting is not good.

Kolor has made a fine Neutralhazer plugin for APG.
Which was not the most prominent problem for the AGP-users, but we appreciate it

My wish is:
Kolor should make a "Vignetting plugin" for APG, ASAP !

leifs

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Olympus OM-D E-M1, Panasonic 8mm f3.5 fisheye, Leica 25mm f1.4, Olympus 75mm f1.8, Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L
Seitz VRdrive2
Intel i7 980X, 48GB RAM, Win7 64bit, SSD RAIDs

I totally agree with you

Hi Alexandre, hi leifs!

I don´t think so. Using prime-lenses @f:11 produces a minimum amount of vignetting. Remaining vignetting issues should be easily compensated by the color-correction.
Here in my opinion is a problem: i mean it worked better in earlier versions - at least i never had a big issue with vignetting before like i have now.

I ran tests last month: the very same set of images made no problems in terms of vignetting in PTGui. NO - not the slightest - problem. Absolutely even sky.

In APG there definitely ARE issues.

Sorry - but i still believe there is something which needs to be fixed. Maybe the anchor-system.

best, Klaus

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Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance. Coco Chanel

It may be a false memory but I seem to recall that PTGui 'borrowed' and incorporated some vignetting correction code from the Hugin project quite a while back.

This info seems to date from about 2007?:

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/tech/

I see that the Gigapan Stitch.Efx software also now claims specifically to address and automatically correct vignetting:

http://www.gigapan.com/cms/shop/software/gigapan-stitch-efx

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Andrew Stephens
Nikon D40, Nikkor 10.5mm fisheye, Sigma 8mm f3.5 fisheye, Nikkor 18-55/50/35mm lenses, Nodal Ninja 5 Lite, Nodal Ninja 4 with R-D16, Agno's MrotatorTCS short.
Nikon P5100, CP5000, CP995, FC-E8, WC-E63,WC-E68, TC-E2, Kaidan Kiwi 995, Bophoto pano bracket, Agno's MrotatorA.
Merlin/Orion robotic pano head + Papywizard on Nokia 770/N800/N810 and Windows 8/XP/2K.

I have tried to figure out why you wrote this piece.
If you wrote on this forum that you want Kolor to do this or that, would I write: "No, don't do it. I don't need it" ?
I would not ! That is torpedoing other folks wishes. Bad style.

If you read what I wrote you would have recognized yourself as a loyal Canon-user, and the vignetting you don't see is in most cases removed in-camera before the image is saved to the card. This is also the case for me when I use Olympus lenses on my Olympus camera. But when I use lenses from other brands the vignetting is there. Even the Zeiss Planar 50mm f1.4 has vignetting at f11. Maybe only 0.1 stop, but it's there.

If you don't need this plugin just keep silent !

leifs

_________________
Olympus OM-D E-M1, Panasonic 8mm f3.5 fisheye, Leica 25mm f1.4, Olympus 75mm f1.8, Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L
Seitz VRdrive2
Intel i7 980X, 48GB RAM, Win7 64bit, SSD RAIDs

I don´t understand your very agressive attitude, leifs.

You said: "The second biggest problem making panos, especially gigapanos , is vignetting."

I said: "I don´t think so". And then i explained what i meant in detail. That´s definitely discussable - no question.

But does that justify your behavior? I mean: no. Definitely not. I didn´t oppose in any way against any plug-in. I just have other experiences related to vignetting - working for years with some dozens of lenses.
That´s what i said.

And: i will not "keep silent", no way - i´m used to say what i mean. Period.

Klaus

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Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance. Coco Chanel

There are more than 100 threads in this forum talking about vignetting, so I guess I'm not the only one wishing for a tool to remedy this problem.
If you have no problems whatsoever with vignetting, why are you writing in this thread under the heading "Vignetting" ? When I read a post that isn't of interest I keep silent.

leifs

_________________
Olympus OM-D E-M1, Panasonic 8mm f3.5 fisheye, Leica 25mm f1.4, Olympus 75mm f1.8, Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L
Seitz VRdrive2
Intel i7 980X, 48GB RAM, Win7 64bit, SSD RAIDs

Vignetting definitely is worth being dicussed- Bu i don´t think that vignetting is "The second biggest problem making panos, especially gigapanos , is vignetting." (leifs).

The point is, no question, that vignetting always exists - that´s optics - but i also wrote it´s in APG´s capabiities to handle that. And it usually works well - sometimes not so well.

And when the same lens!! sometimes doesn´t show vgnetting and sometimes it does . . . than the question rises: why.

When one application makes issues with vignetting and anoter application doesn´t - with the very same images - then questions also rise. I have about 16 lenses actually - in the range from 8x10" large format, digital and analog mid format and 35mm format from Schneider, Rodenstock, Fuji, Hasselblad/Zeiss, Leica, Canon, Nikon . . . believe me: i know about vignetting. And i also know how to handle it.

One ofthe first items which impressed me from the beginning with APP/G - i started using it around 2006/7 - was the ability to compensate vignetting and familiar issues by the color-correction.
It still has this ability - but it´s more complicated to use because of the anchor-structure as i mean . . don´t know wether i´m right or wrong. I never opposed a plugin. But "the second biggest problem"?
I don´t see it this way. No problem when you see it this way. I can stand contrary opinions . .

Thinking a bit more differentiated and deeper about vignetting instead of just complaining about it doesen´t justify your agressive behavior, sorry.

Klaus

_________________
Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance. Coco Chanel

I couldn't agree more. Vignetting is often the bane of the panoramas.

The other major problem is a better way of blending textures: things like grass, or small waves on a lake. AutoPano needs to learn to use ragged edges or use some pattern stamping/repair algorithm to blend images together, because the algorithms it uses now just don't do it for these sort of surfaces. Short of lots of very tedious post-processing in Photoshop, this can't be dealt with properly right now.

The vignetting is definitively high on the todo list. It won't be on 3.0 release, but probably on a small release after that one.

Hey - wait a moment!

"Vignetting" can mean several things. Let´s pinpoint, what we are talking over here in detail:
1) "natural" vignetting which is produced by any lens and usually compensated to some degree by stopping down.
2) vignetting which results from a lens-shade or a filter-ring.
3) "vignetting" which results from blending in a stitcher.

In my eyes the main-issue here is the kind of blending. I tested a lens which definitely is 100% free of lens vignetting because of it´s very huge image-circle on 35mm: a Zeiss 2,8/80mm Planar Hasselblad-V lens with an adaptor on the 5D2.

With this lens there CAN NOT be ANY vignetting. But: i shot in a very hard sunlight and an even blue but a bit hazy sky.

90% of the 214 pictures showed gradients in the blue because of the hazy light. That´s NOT what i would call "vignetting".

These gradients produced blendings which reminded of lens-vigentting: a pattern of lighter and darker areas in the sky.

Other users reported it also here and showed images of bright light-areas in skies which produced issues - i think it´s the blending.

Years ago i had a lens which definitely produced vignetting - it was compensated completly by the color-correction of the AutoPano version
i used at that time. Also completely compensated were shots done with automatic setting - around 1/2-1 stop were compensated perfectly.

I the actual versions there seem to work different algos or different lens-models or whatever - it seems to no more compensating issues that way.

best, Klaus

_________________
Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance. Coco Chanel

hohoho. 1), 2) ok, but in no way, the blending can generate vignetting ( case 3 ).
It highlights what was already present because you are putting together two zones where vignetting where already present but barrel noticeable.

Just make this small test on any stitching case :
- render any panorama by enabling input images too in the rendering output.
- look at any location in the blended panorama : if vignetting is present there, then look at input images => You'll find it there too.

With that test, you can check the fact : blending doesn't generate vignetting, it shows it ( it doesn't renforce it either, because you'll see the same amount of vignetting on individuals images too ).
If you find a case where there is not vignetting in input image and still some in blended panorama, I'm so interested, but we don't do any operation that could cause vignetting.

That´s why i wrote "vignetting" and not vignetting :cool:

best to you, Klaus


P.S.:
Of course blending CAN NOT generate vignetting. But it can handle areas with tonal grading in a way it looks like it.

Of course i checked all my lenses after experiencing the mess with my "oper" pano some months ago - we argued about that - in terms of vignetting.

Despite of all lenses basically vignette - even it you can´t see it - there was no relevant (!) vignetting. But there was tonal grading in each picture - and in each picture in different strenghts. That was caused by the very critical light situation: extremely hard sunlight (March) and a hazy sky.

Usually i refuse to shoot then - but i had to shoot this time.

The lens i used was a Nikon 85mm @f11. I used this lens many times over the years - and never had this issue, never had "vignetting".

Again: i know basically there ALWAYS is vignetting with EACH lens. That´s optics and depends on the lenses image-circle as well as it can be caused by filers or sunshades.
But usually vignetting is very low and barely visible with good lenses - and my experiences show it´s completely compensated by APG usually. As i feel the compensation of uneven exposed areas in images - that´s what is it all about - worked better in earlier versions.

Besides: pictures which i shot using the very same lens but stitched with PTGui didn´t show any issues at all which one would call "vignetting".

P.S.2:

I have a feel that it has something to do with the hard-linking of non-cp linked images . . maybe blending does a not so good job here.
The issue comes ONLY with sky-images after being hard-linked together.

Look here:

http://www.360impressions.de/Oper/

This is a more worked-over version: http://www.360impressions.de/KBogen3/ The node "Koenigsallee2" i did using PTGui.
"Schadowstrasse" was done with the 85mm, the rest was done using 35mm.

i managed to compensate the uneven sky in Photoshop a bit.

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Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance. Coco Chanel

Without fanning any flames hopefully, here is my 2 cents. Vignetting is my main problem. I gigapan. I own DXO - which by the way does not fully correct my vignetting issue even though my camera and lens is in their database.

I used to use Hugin and loved its ability to correct vignetting - but I can't use it for lots of reasons, not the least is I do gigapans for which hugin is useless. i currently us photoshop camera raw to manually tweak vignetting, then AGP. so it works for me, i just wish there was an auto-vignette-optimise or even a manual-preview-slider option so I didn't have to do the tweak in PS ACR -see how it stitches, go back to PS routine.

tnx
mgg