My Autopano Pro forum

I would like the best quality I can get, so please do not hold back if you have a good combination that you care to share

I am interested in the rendering parameters too.

thanks

Henrik

What camera do you have?  Or, more importantly, how do you bracket? (using an auto mode and the camera's built-in autoexposure bracket method?)  APP has an issue with bracketing in manual mode, at least on some Canon cameras.

You can try dropping everything into APP and generating seven layers. While the number of CPs rises linearly with the number of images, the number of connections rises exponentially.  In your case, each of the seven images in one stack will connect to each of the seven images in the surrounding stacks, so if a stack only connects to the left and right image, you have 7x7x7 connections, times the number of images (times the number of CPs in each link.  If you do a 360x180, you have something like 7^7 or 7^8 connections per image, times the number of images, times the number of CPs in each link.

If you do PM first, then APP, you have one image in each stack, and get rid of a lot of links and CPs.  Likewise, if you can use stacks and can set the option to use one image from each stack to link to other images, you eliminate a whole lot of processing.

Basically, we don't know.  APP 1.9 is so new, we haven't tested it yet.  And its an alpha, which means all the features aren't there to test with.

hankkarl wrote:

What camera do you have?  Or, more importantly, how do you bracket? (using an auto mode and the camera's built-in autoexposure bracket method?)  APP has an issue with bracketing in manual mode, at least on some Canon cameras.

You can try dropping everything into APP and generating seven layers. While the number of CPs rises linearly with the number of images, the number of connections rises exponentially.  In your case, each of the seven images in one stack will connect to each of the seven images in the surrounding stacks, so if a stack only connects to the left and right image, you have 7x7x7 connections, times the number of images (times the number of CPs in each link.  If you do a 360x180, you have something like 7^7 or 7^8 connections per image, times the number of images, times the number of CPs in each link.

If you do PM first, then APP, you have one image in each stack, and get rid of a lot of links and CPs.  Likewise, if you can use stacks and can set the option to use one image from each stack to link to other images, you eliminate a whole lot of processing.

Basically, we don't know.  APP 1.9 is so new, we haven't tested it yet.  And its an alpha, which means all the features aren't there to test with.

Thank you very much for replying.

Well, I am using a Canon 1D mkIII and I was auto bracketing in Manual mode :-) so I guess I tick all the wrong boxes

stacks...like in bridge?

I kind of got lost a bit and very much carried away yesterday, shot 12gb (over 1000 images) of various panos and combinations around the harbour of Fremantle, Western Australia. but one was 16 sets of 7 exposures...:-) times 3 as I did three rows (only 336images, not bad for a beginner, or atleast someone out of training)...I am having a lot of fun sorting this out I can tell you. that was just one!

While I am at it, I am having one hell of a time with Adobe Bridge CS3, it just keeps crashing on me, went I have large collections 1000+ images in a folder....what are the rest of you using to sort your images with and how do you do it (workflow)

There is a lot to keep track of here.... there was a good reason why I didn't become an accountant....apart from creative accounting, but that wasn't all that appreciated

thanks, HankKarl

regards

Henrik
A Dane Down Under

tived wrote:

Hi everyone,

I need a little help here, I have shot a series of Pano's and bracket the heck out of them (7 exposures for each frame)  it quickly adds up :-)

now, do I just drop the whole set into APP? or do I first process each set in PhotomatixPro and then into APP?

thanks for taking your time, please advise

Henrik

Hello Henrik!

Depends on what you want the hdr-sphere for.

I found better to make HDR from every picture FIRST, do a tonemapping and put them into APP then.
That´s because 1) the RAW-conversation in APP is not really good and 2) smartblend doesn´t render HDR for a later tonemapping.

BUT if you have to make HDR-spheres as global illumination in 3D programs you have to render (!) as .hdr
The way to do i described in the controlpoint-thread here in "using APP".

I tested a lot with hdr - using RAW for bracketing is best. First "develop" the RAWs in a RAW-converter to TIFF and use TIFFs for APP.

best, Klaus

DrSlony wrote:

I wonder, what is the typical resolution of an equirectangular true HDR panorama that 3D companies buy from photographers/stock sites?
I saw some site where the biggest one was 10 000 x 5 000, is this typical? Whats the file size on one of those?

A Spheron camera - http://www.spheron.de/en/PI_spherocamhd … cation.php - is used very often. It´s got a resolution of more than 5000x10000px and delivers 96bit per pixel (3x32bitRGB)

But also Nikon 10,5mm or 16mm Fisheyes are commonly used - depending on the camera used you get a good resolution. Because of being used only for lighting
and as reflection-maps the resolution must not nessesarily be as high as used as background picture. Therefore an extra highres photograph is shot additionally.

With APP, its best to do, not read.  Try something, see what happens, and learn.

Just don't learn using lots of 22 MP images

I feel have have much better control of results by doing HDR and tone mapping first in Photomatix Pro. The tone mapped images then go to APP for stitching. This work flow also saves time and allows each software to do what it does best.