My Autopano Pro forum

DrSlony wrote:

I'm carrying out certain tests for a hdr workflow and I have some questions for the developers (Hello Alexandre! ;] ):

I'm here

DrSlony wrote:

a- Does APP treat Radiance RGBE & OpenEXR identically? Which one would you recommend and why?
b- What about 32bit TIFF?

Only HDR for the moment. OpenEXR is planned the same time as TIFF float format.

DrSlony wrote:

These are the workflows I will carry out and report results here:
1- render layers in APP, generate hdr and tonemap in Photomatix or Qtpfsgui
2- batch hdr in PM and save as openexr, stitch in APP, tonemap in PM or Q
3- batch hdr in PM and save as tiff 16bit, stitch in APP, tonemap in PM or Q
4- batch hdr and tonemap in PM and save as tiff 16bit, stitch in APP

hum, interesting. 2 is not possible because of openEXR not supported, but could be done in HDR.
I think you should study 1 and 4 first. It's the two limits : stitch first, hdr after or hdr and tonemap first, then stitch.

DrSlony wrote:

The problem with PM is that max image size allowed for tonemapping is limited by physical RAM, no scratch disk usage is possible and they told it it wont be possible anytime soon, so with 4GB RAM I can tonemap images up to about 17 000 x 8500. For bigger images only workflow 4 is possible.
OpenEXR stores 48bits per pixel
Radiance RGBE stores 32bits per pixel
TIFF16 stores 16 bits per pixel

I have a prediction for this year. A new HDR star is born : enfuse / tufuse. This is a new way to do HDR : http://panospace.wordpress.com/

DrSlony wrote:

ps. how can I edit the topic of this thread? 'test' isn't enough, I want to change it to 'hdr workflow test'.

Agreed. Done it for you.

One word: TuFuse!

TuFuse is a freeware command-line program currently only for M$ Windows (but runs well in WINE) that blends several exposure bracketed shots. It allows the photographer to portray a much higher dynamic range in the image than his camera can capture, same as Photomatix does, but without the hassle of going into HDR and then tonemapping. Output quality is impressive and seems very natural, no halos!

As using command-line is slow, I recommend this GUI:
Enfuse GUI http://software.bergmark.com/enfuseGUI/

So far this program accepts only TIFF files as input. I listed supported input TIFF compression types in the tabel below.

Photos below are:
1- -2EV
2-  0EV
3- Enfused result
4- +2EV

Last edited by DrSlony (2008-02-28 17:50:21)

DrSlony wrote:

One word: TuFuse!

I'm using Enfuse and EnfuseGUI with good results. Some reasons to prefer TuFuse?

GURL I asked Max Lyons to answer that question as he would seem the best person to ask :]
digipano: TuFuse does not have a gui, but you can use EnfuseGUI and just set it up to use tufuse.exe in the options!

after installing enfuseGUI It ask for enfuse.exe path, so how do I get Tufuse to work with it.
Do I rename the tufuse> as enfuse.exe?

Hello all...I'm the author of TuFuse.

I've updated TuFuse so that it can now be configured to create 8 or 16 bit images, and can also read JPEG and RAW files as input.

Some reasons to prefer TuFuse?

There are a number of differences.  Here are some of the reasons I prefer TuFuse:

1. Two stage image fusion allows for both focus blending and exposure blending in one iteration.  TuFuse figures out if the images you feed it ought to be focus blended or exposure blended or both.  It picks the right settings for each/both operation and performs fusion as necessary.  Enfuse must be configured to perform one or the other.

2. "Auto-bracketing".  Feed Tufuse a single image and it can create a "pseudo HDR" file by creating lighter and/or darker versions of that file, and then fusing those lighter and/or darker versions with the original. 

3. Support for RAW files.  The latest version (version 1.30) can read RAW files if DCRaw is installed.  This works nicely in combination with the "auto-bracketing" feature mentioned to create a converted file with as much dynamic range information as possible extracted from the RAW file.

4. More configurable.  For example, TuFuse offers adjustment over the "sigma" parameter which configures how much/little weights is given to light/dark regions compared to mid-tones.  In Enfuse, this is hardcoded.

5. I listed a few other differences here.

Does Tufuse have a GUI

Yes...it is called PTAssembler.  PTAssembler can also align (see the "auto-align" feature) images before invoking TuFuse.

Max

PTassembler ... did not have an panorama editor/preview window

It does now!

Can you or do you plan to make a seperate GUI so Tufuse can be used separately just for blending?

I can, but I'm not sure if I will.  If I was to make a seperate GUI, it would not include the image registration/alignment portion.  That feature is non-trivial to build and is a core part of functionality in PTAssembler.  It wouldn't make sense to me to reinvent that wheel by writing another program, when I've already written one explicity for that purpose!

Max

Thank you for the answers!

I have a problem though. I tried hard but I couldnt get EnfuseGUI to run in wine (a linux program for running windows programs). I cannot really use tufuse as a photographer if I have to use command line, that just takes too much time on a 150 photo (5 brackets per fov) panorama, I need a gui.

I know running tufuse using the command line from wine works.
Do you know of any way that linux users can use tufuse from a gui?
Do you know if PTAssembler can run from wine?
Is compiling tufuse to run on linux planned at all, or just on a 'some day' basis? Because if you will do that soon, Im seriously considering writing a gui in python myself. I will have to learn it first of course, because so far the only pythoning I did was a simple batch script thing for gimp, but this would be a good investment, I think. I would like to make it opensource and all that, but then I'd have to spend more time learning about svn or git.

As of now using enfuseGUI & then using APP works perfectly fine & gives far better results than APP hdr method.  May be we can have enfuse as a plugin within APP that would be best of the both worlds.

'[bo wrote:

'A slight misunderstanding here. I did not imply this whole discussion is off-topic. Rather I pondered if you needed Autopano at all, using the process described on Max Lyons' site.

The way I see it, PTA+TuFuse produces much better looking HDR stuff than APP+PM, it does not require two separate purchases and it happens in a single interface. AND it allows amazing quality focus blending!
.........
Maybe there is a way to use TuFuse as a plugin of some sort, I don't know. A few years back I was the main proponent of SmartBlend integration in APP and in the end - I got it. We got it ! So nagging about TuFuse in APP could potentially help !

Would I switch to PTA+TuFuse? No way! For me APP beats all the others in so many (other) ways. And I guess the majority of APP users don't and won't ever be doing AEB and blending/HDR. But...wouldn't it be great if it was possible to have something like TuFuse's apparent capabilities integrated into APP.

I am grateful you managed to get Smartblend integrated I'd probably not have chosen APP without it.

Last edited by mediavets (2008-03-06 20:58:20)

About HDR2.0 ( I like the name ). It's been 6 months now we are working on this new system and we already have good result. Comparing to enfuse : it's also really easy to use but you have far more control on the result. There's still the problem with ghost that we are studying. Standard HDR ghost removal approach are not good at all ( example in photomatix, it's doesn't work as well as a smartblend technology ). So we are investigating to solve this.