wolfnowl Posted May 3, 2020 Posted May 3, 2020 Hi There: Making HDR panoramas is a part of my photography workflow, and there are a few things in AP that would make this better. As it currently stands (1.83), one CAN combine all of the images into one panorama directly but this yields results that are distinctly lacking. The better way is to make the HDRs of each sequence first and then merge them into the panorama. There are two issues here. One is that while one can save the merged HDR files as .aphoto files, those files cannot be used to make panoramas. They're invisible in the selection window for the panorama. The next best way is to export each HDR merge into something like a 32-bit .tif file, and then gather those .tif files into the panorama. The second thing is that it's vital to do some tonemapping for each of the HDR merges before exporting them. Since (if one does this properly and used manual exposure control during capture) the exposures are all the same, the tonemapping choices for each set of merged images should also be the same. The simplest thing to do would be to create a macro before tonemapping the first HDR merge, and then run the same macro for each of the following sets. That's not possible. The best option I can come up with right now is to use Notepad to record the slider values I set for the first HDR merge, and then manually apply those values to each subsequent set before exporting them to .tif. Thanks! Mike. Fixx 1 Quote
wolfnowl Posted May 19, 2020 Author Posted May 19, 2020 I’ll be the first to admit there’s a lot about colour I don’t know, so feel free to correct me if I mis-step. I have a Sony A7RIII, Capture One Pro for Sony 20.1 and Affinity Photo 1.8.3. NB: I can’t see what you’re seeing because your monitor is different. Also, these are sRGB .jpg screen captures of what I’m seeing. Still, there’s value in comparing them to each other. 1) In Affinity/Preferences/Colour I have the default set to ProPhoto RGB: 2) If I select some raw files and make a panorama out of them, Affinity stacks them and renders them as a panorama. At that point I click on the Develop module, go down to Profiles and set the profile to ProPhoto RGB and click Apply. Once you click Apply it sets the rendered file as a pixel layer. Now, if you go to Document/ Convert Format / ICC Profile you’ll see that Affinity has set it to ProPhoto. It appears to default to sRGB but I haven’t tested it extensively. 3) Now, Lightroom works with Melissa RGB as a default colour space. Capture One doesn’t say, but I presume it’s similar. No matter. When I imported these raw files into C1 I used the Sony A7RIII generic profile, and the standard curve. No other adjustments have been made. 4) I exported the three raw files from C1 as .tif files using the ProPhoto RGB colour space, imported them into Affinity Photo and made another panorama. I exported the panoramas made with the raw files using an sRGB Document profile and a ProPhoto RGB document profile (both exported using a ProPhoto RGB profile), and I exported the panorama made using the .tif files, again using a ProPhoto RGB profile. I imported those three panorama files into C1. Quote
wolfnowl Posted May 19, 2020 Author Posted May 19, 2020 Here’s the comparison: The top three images are the raw files in C1. Bottom left is the panorama made from the C1 .tif exports. The other two images are the panoramas made from the raw files, using an sRGB Document profile and a PhotoPhoto RGB Document profile. The last two are almost indistinguishable, but there’s a small difference with the other four. Quote
wolfnowl Posted May 19, 2020 Author Posted May 19, 2020 Here’s another example: This is an overlay with two of three raw files in C1 on the left, and the panorama made from them in Affinity Photo on the right. Again, I exported the three raw files as .tif files and made a panorama out of them: Again, quite a difference. It seems that while Affinity can make panoramas, I need to create .tif files first rather than simply using the raw files. Mike. Quote
fr34ky Posted February 2, 2022 Posted February 2, 2022 Let me add to that: I'd be happy if I could load RAW files to merge into a panorama, that are loaded with 32bit color depth. I've tried merging RAW photos of my R5 into a panorama but the clouds next to the sun get clipped. I've exposed the RAW files accordingly such that there is no clipping whatsoever and I can bring back the detail when opening the file separately but no matter how I combine them (directly, via EXR, via TIFF) highlight detail is irreversibly lost. So: I'd like a method of combining the RAW photos into a panorama, without loss of information that I can develop afterwards, such that I don't need to develop a myriad of photos to then combine them. Quote
walt.farrell Posted February 2, 2022 Posted February 2, 2022 1 minute ago, fr34ky said: but no matter how I combine them (directly, via EXR, via TIFF) highlight detail is irreversibly lost. When you try it with TIFF, what format do you Develop to? RGB/16 or RGB/32. I would expect it to work if you Develop to RGB/32 then export as TIFF. Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.2.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1
fr34ky Posted February 2, 2022 Posted February 2, 2022 RGB/32. But EXR should also work theoretically, as you cannot overexpose an EXR. I use the batch-processor to "develop" the files, I don't do it manually. Quote
fr34ky Posted February 2, 2022 Posted February 2, 2022 (edited) 14 minutes ago, walt.farrell said: When you try it with TIFF, what format do you Develop to? RGB/16 or RGB/32. I would expect it to work if you Develop to RGB/32 then export as TIFF. Here's the example. One is the RAW file developed with -100% in the highlights. The other is exported as 32bit tiff, then the highlights brought down 100%. Edited February 2, 2022 by fr34ky Quote
fr34ky Posted April 18, 2022 Posted April 18, 2022 On 2/2/2022 at 5:10 PM, walt.farrell said: When you try it with TIFF, what format do you Develop to? RGB/16 or RGB/32. I would expect it to work if you Develop to RGB/32 then export as TIFF. On 2/2/2022 at 5:12 PM, fr34ky said: RGB/32. But EXR should also work theoretically, as you cannot overexpose an EXR. I use the batch-processor to "develop" the files, I don't do it manually. Update: The problem is almost solved: In the development persona, the assistant is set to develop to 32bit and then the process aborted (the settings are saved regardless) and then the RAW files are batch processed to 32bit TIFF, then stitched. Now it works, right up to the stage where the pano is rendered. Before the info in the highlights is there (and visible in the preview) but afterwards it gets pushed into oblivion and the result is the same as in the beginning when done in 16bit, even though the panorama is correctly opened in 32bit HDR. F_Kal 1 Quote
F_Kal Posted November 22, 2024 Posted November 22, 2024 seems this issue hasn't been fixed so far - I realized that no matter what the source of the images, (raw, tiff, exr, 32bit-png) the panorama tool will rasterize them to SDR and clip any information that exceeds the range, crushing in the process highlights that exist in the source images (AP 2.5.5 and 2.6 beta). Quote
GFS Posted January 2 Posted January 2 In case it may be of help: I've just been trying to make a pano in vs1 of AFP and have come across this issue and consequently, this thread. 😊 I've been able to (laboriously) work around it by making 2 panos. 1st with normal exposure and the 2nd with considerably reduced exposure of ~ -1. I then Stacked these in AFP, which has enabled me to work the mix as I want. It's a bit of a pain.. but it works. It took quite a lot of trials to see how and when AFP squishes the highlights. It all seems ok, you try a bit less dark, then wooops ... 255 all round. The dark areas required to maintain the highlights in the final image are relatively small/delicate/blended so there's not really any concerns about image quality dropping. Quote Grumpy, but faithful (watch out all you cats)
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