My Autopano Pro forum

Yes, but how should it work?  Should APP use the alpha channel to determine what not to blend?  (clouds, waves, etc) but still output those pixels in the render stage, or should it just output all the pixels?

Mixed wrote:

[..] I must render layers and then mask them and blend again with other software. This is a step I'd like to avoid.

Including into APP a large amount of features from Photoshop (or any other image editor) would not be useless but this would be time consuming both for Alexandre's crew and for APP users (lot of tools to learn again.)

It looks like the Layer Editor having a visible pane and more features in the new APP version is an interesting step toward an efficient solution for the difficult issue you are pointing at: the larger the panorama is (pixel size and file size) the more one would like to avoid a final image editor step, this don't make corresponding tools implementation easy...

Last edited by GURL (2007-06-26 09:08:10)

And APP supports alpha channel, at least on output

Alexandre, sorry to insist but do you have any thoughts about this?

Thank you.
I personally need alpha support for the blending stage, to exclude people or tripod parts from the image.

Done

Great!  so what is the support?

1. ignore alpha channel
2. use alpha channel for blending
3. use alpha channel for CP creation
4. both 3 and 3

Your post above says "use alpha channel for blending to remove people" but that was a month ago, and things change. 

AlexandreJ wrote:

alpha is used to prevent CP in transparent zone
alpha is used during blending

Can you explain more about using this feature as a tourist remover, like me and my legs, or the other bothering object like the panohead or the panohead bracket!

Tnx

Last edited by beeloba (2007-08-31 00:42:27)

How to use it :
- you paint transparency on areas where you don't want any CP to be created ( example : nadir shoot with panohead. Paint the panohead ).
- the zone where you have transparency will not be used in the blending stage ( on any blender ). So for example, if you want to remove some people, just paint them in the picture where there are and blend everything together. Be sure that you still have one picture left for any pixel. Instead, you'll get a hole.

Alexandre,

Thanks for including this in APP.
But I have troubles using it. Maybe you can do a quick tutorial with a few screenshots?

In PS I open a TIFF, switch to quickmask mode, paint the mask and then save. My tiff will have an transparency alpha channel in it. It's a nondistructive way, and my PTGui reads it fine. In APP I cannot open this file. So how do I use this feature in APP, I'm dying for it!! )