Strange lines HDR merge with auto remove ghosts ON

[Arachnida]

When trying to do an HDR merge with these 3 photos I get vertical blue lines like shown in the screenshot. This only happens when Automatically Remove Ghosts is ON. I included the 3 files with bracketed exposures. It is best visible before Tone Mapping.

Edited January 25, 2023 by Arachnida
typo

[NotMyFault]

Such issues are often caused by certain buggy GPU driver versions. If you deactivate OpenCL hardware acceleration in settings/preferences/performance, does it solve the issue?

[NotMyFault]

Just a question: the „middle“ exposed image is perfectly exposed, and the dynamic range in the scene is small so even jpeg can handle in one image. 
 

If you want to utilize the capabilities of HDR stacking, you would require images from a scene which actually has more dynamic range than your camera can handle in one exposure, visible by an histogram having peaks on the left or right edges and covering the full witdh.

E.g. Sun or bright lights directly to the lens.

[Arachnida]

31 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Such issues are often caused by certain buggy GPU driver versions. If you deactivate OpenCL hardware acceleration in settings/preferences/performance, does it solve the issue?

No, the lines are still there but this time, with or without HW acceleration there are only lines to the left of the tower, no more lines at the right side. Strange as I tested this >5x and I always got the same result, now the behaviour is different.

Edited January 25, 2023 by Arachnida
Swapped L&R

[Arachnida]

Also when using WARP as renderer the issue is there.

[NotMyFault]

What is the exact sequence of steps you are doing?
do you use CR2 or jpeg files for stacking?

[NotMyFault]

on Mac and iPad, looks perfect. Maybe a windows specific issue.

[Arachnida]

The files that are in the first post of this thread, all jpeg.

[Arachnida]

1 minute ago, NotMyFault said:

on Mac and iPad, looks perfect. Maybe a windows specific issue.

I will try to install an older driver for the GPU and get back here with the result. I also will try the same files on my iPad, good idea!

[NotMyFault]

What I can spot are actually de-ghosting artefacts when comparing certain areas of the images while clone tool is active, and switching between weghopsten version on HDR version. The roof area of the cathedral gets moved down which makes no sense at all. 

The ghost remove can work well in certain images, but you have absolutely no control. The only option is to use clone tool and source panel to manually correct areas where ghost removal got wrong. 

Actually, I prefer to do ghost removal full manual, meaning uncheck the option when stacking. If you spot an area containing ghosts, use the clone tool and do it manually. This gives far better control.

 

[NotMyFault]

Actually, when inspected the 3 source images, they look totally different wrt to noise removal. The brightest image has the lowest noise, which looks strange for me.

Which method did you use for exposure bracketing?

• ISO
• Aperture
• Exposure time

This information is normally stored as exif data in the files. If you have the RAW files, the would be the best option.

The only good option capturing images intended for any stacking, including HDR, is exposure time. All other will led to subpar results. If you use aperture, this can lead to focus issues (blurriness and distortions) which cannot be compensated. Bracketing over ISO mainly adds noise, which you normally want to avoid.

 

For me the JPEG images seems to be heavily pre-processed (e.g. noise reduction), making them less usable for stacking, and irritating the alignment function. I would recommend to deactivate all "auto" optimisations, and use the RAW files. Convert them to TIFF/16 using 100% exact same settings in RAW development. This gives a great basis for HDR stacking.

[Arachnida]

12 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Actually, when inspected the 3 source images, they look totally different wrt to noise removal. The brightest image has the lowest noise, which looks strange for me.

Which method did you use for exposure bracketing?

• ISO
• Aperture
• Exposure time

This information is normally stored as exif data in the files. If you have the RAW files, the would be the best option.

The only good option capturing images intended for any stacking, including HDR, is exposure time. All other will led to subpar results. If you use aperture, this can lead to focus issues (blurriness and distortions) which cannot be compensated. Bracketing over ISO mainly adds noise, which you normally want to avoid.

 

For me the JPEG images seems to be heavily pre-processed (e.g. noise reduction), making them less usable for stacking, and irritating the alignment function.

To be honest I don't remember anymore, these are old photos (2009) I've taken without a tripod and certainly no RAW. I will do some more tests with my newer Fuji X-S10 in RAW. I guess I used the auto bracketing feature of the camera, so Exposure compensation. EXIF tells me +/-1.3 stops.

[Arachnida]

I tested this on my iPad, that seems to work fine but the iPad version doesn’t have the remove ghost feature and that is what causes the problem in the PC version. Until this is fixed I’ll have to merge HDR without the ghostbusters help.

[Chris B]

I am unable to reproduce this on Windows. I've tried your images and a bunch of my own - I'm not entirely sure what's going wrong. For now, they should be easy to correct but I would very much like to reproduce this.

On 1/27/2023 at 11:02 AM, Arachnida said:

the iPad version doesn’t have the remove ghost feature and that is what causes the problem in the PC version

I've logged this - thank you.