My Autopano Pro forum

It looks like this answer includes more questions than anything ...

NONE is defined as No color correction   
AUTO is defined as LDR color correction
HDR   is defined as HDR color correction

            EXIF             Anchors      Levels        HDR Radiance    Tone Mapping    Smartblend
           (exposure)                                       file format

NONE     not used      not used     useful        useless              (4)                    OK
AUTO     used (0)      used           useful        available (3)      (4)                    OK
HDR       wanted        used (1)     useful (2)   meaningful        meaningful        don't work

(0) Is actually AUTO mode useful when no EXIF are available ?

(1) How anchors should be used for HDR is completly unclear for me

(2) How Levels tool should be used for HDR is quite unclear for me but I do click the Auto button and pray... (histogram of a HDR Radiance file is different when anchors are moved and/or Levels tool used but I can't say something useful about that)

(3) HDR Radiance file format is available with AUTO mode but I presume this is useless

(4) I remember Alaxandre said that tone mapping operator could be useful for NONE or AUTO but never attempted that.

(Thanks to Warren, I added a Smartblend column.)

Last edited by GURL (2008-03-08 09:24:56)

For one (very important) thing, you can't use Smartblend with HDR.

Warren Sarle wrote:

For one (very important) thing, you can't use Smartblend with HDR.

Smartblend is not compatible if one renders to HDRI format.

But one can use HDR colour correction and Smartblend and output to JPEG.

And here's a pano to show that. It's one of a number taken to experiment with use of auto and semi-auto exposure modes, together with an idea/technique suggested by John Sauter when one shoots far more images that strictly required to cover the scene which seems to produce better results from APPs colour correction.

Shot outside as sun went down so huge variation in lighting - except this time as well as shooting more images than strictly necessary for 360 (9 around with FC-E8 FE) I also used AEB -1EV/+1EV range WITH auto exposure AND limited range auto-ISO (64-100). In fact all exposures used ISO 64. 5MP Fine JPEG.

Exposures ranged from F6.1 at 1/397sec to F3.9 at 1/96sec.

Here's the result from APP from the 27 images with HDR colour correction, rendered spline36/smartblend. Levels adjusted slightly, downsized for forum and sharpened with Photobrush.

I think it is the best pano I've achieved of this scene which I shoot a lot as a test scene.

Looks like auto exposure WITH AEB works very well for my P5100 + FC-E8 using APP's HDR colour correction.

Last edited by mediavets (2008-03-10 12:49:44)