Merging series of bracketed shots to bring together for a panoramic scene

Hi there,

I frequently shoot panoramic shots shooting the scene in portrait and stitching these to create a final result. I recently decided to try exposure bracketing these shots to ideally produce a more balanced image with five panoramic shots. I.e. 5 panoramic shots making up the scene each bracketed high & low so a total of 15 images I wish to use.

I've a few problems: If I try to stitch each exposure type together the algorithm will work differently on each panoramic exposure meaning that they don't line up.

The solution in my mind would be to use the merge to HDR to apply to each 'section' of the panoramic series before then stitching these together. I can't however seem to get balanced results - I want the image to remain neutral. I wanted to get a single RAW image of each section that I could then use to stitch together where I can create a few layers with for my exposures to blend with luminosity masks.

Any help or ideas would be much appreciated. I'm on CS6 and am not all that familiar with the 'merge to HDR' feature or how to get an output with minimal 'HDRness'

Thanks,

I think it's going to be very difficult to maintain the same exposure across multiple HDRed images. You are probably better off creating your bracketed images keeping the center image constant across the pano, then creating 3~5 different panos using the various bracketed shots. For instance, first pano are all of the center shots, second pano are all the +1 shots, and thrid pano all of the -1 shots, then HDR the three panos. More work but better results I think.

gjl711 wrote in post #18827711
.. You are probably better off creating your bracketed images keeping the center image constant across the pano, then creating 3~5 different panos using the various bracketed shots. For instance, first pano are all of the center shots, second pano are all the +1 shots, and thrid pano all of the -1 shots, then HDR the three panos. More work but better results I think.

FWIW that's how I do it and it can work well:

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/rYJ2​P1

Hi

Thanks for the advice. The shots were taken in manual mode and metered across the image so exposure is balanced throughout. I think I've shot these as you describe i.e. Three bracketed shots for each of the five sections of the image. My main question is how best to merge these to one RAW image with the range needed before then stitching together.

If you do this enough, you will benefit from tight control over your image acquisition and stitching.

1) use a tripod, even better use one with a pano head. This will give you repeatable control over the framing of each pano segment, across all exposures in that sequence.

2) all of the rules of HDR image acquisition apply. You need to figure out the exposures required to fully capture the scene; you need to fix WB, aperture and ISO, and vary shutter speed - you must shoot the same sequence of shutter speeds for every pano segment.

3) you will benefit from using dedicated pano stitching software that has HDR pano stitching built in. It used to be that you had to choose between stitching the full pano for each exposure and then combining those pianos into an HDR, or combining all of the exposures in each segment into HDRs and then stitching the resulting set of HDRs. Both techniques are still valid, but using software like lightroom or photoshop gives you no way to control the stitch or the resulting combination of files.

If you want to do this with full control of the process, you will benefit from using an application like PTGui. A previous post recommended AutoPano, but the company that produced that software is no longer is business.

Download a trial of PTGui and give it a try. It supports gpu computing and native HDR pano handling.

Have fun!

Kirk

Yep, PTGui.

I did this in Lr and created the HDR images before then running the HDR.DNG files though the pano stitcher. I used three exposures -1, 0, +1, based on fixed manual exposures. What you have to remember is that if you are doing this with the Adobe RAW based system that it doesn't apply any corrections to the images during the HDR or stitching process. You make your RAW conversion settings based on the final DNG file you have created. The latest version of Lightroom now has a merge to HDR Pano option, just feed it all the RAW files and it will spit out the final DNG ready for you to process. I did forget one thing, it will apply lens corrections to your images if you have a profile.

Alan