PTGui update

Parasol pines panoramic landscape

A new version of PTGui was published during my Corsica trip. I've downloaded it yesterday and did some tests with old images.
I was interested by two points of the evolutions : better memory management and better blending quality. For some years, i think that PTGui's blender makes a wonderful work in most of the cases so it's difficult to say from my test images if the new version is a real improvement. I'll need to try with some more problematic pics.
While i was doing these tests, my main workstation was busy with processing Corsica shots so i tried the new version on an old HP Vectra with PIII and 384 MB RAM. I can say that developpers have done a great work with memeory management and speed because the software was running very fast with this old config :)

First try of exposure fusion with PTGui Pro

Massif des Maures landscape large view here

From version 7.7, PTGui supports exposure fusion. Exposure fusion is another method to create images from scenes with High Dynamic Range. As HDR photography, exposure fusion asks to take multiple exposures of the scene but with exposure fusion no HDR image is created and so there is no need for tone mapping. So it's more easy to produce images with a natural look.

The image above was created from 3 vertical frames with 3 exposures for each.
The 9 corresponding raw files were first processed in SilkyPix and the resulting tif files stitched with PTGui Pro version 7.8.
PTGui automatically recognized the multiple exposures for each frames and made a beautiful work while blending them. Also when stitching but it's not too difficult with this kind of images.
I spent hours looking for blending/stitching errors in the resulting file but couldn't find one. Just amazing !
At the end, i just had tu use PictureWindow Pro to make some very little tweaks to this resulting file and produce the final image.

Some will say that this image is not a good example because one exposure for each frame could be enough. That's not false and i've also made the same work with only 1 exposure. But when shooting i had to slightly underexpose to keep all the details in the lighted rocks. At proccessing time when working on the shadows areas i wanted to open them a little bit. As they were corresponding to the very left part of the histogram the the result was not so rich in colors and details than in the multi exposure files...

In first conclusion i would say that PTGui can make a very beautful work with exposure fusion and can save many time with avoiding manual blending of exposures.
In the landscape context it can be a very good tool but remeber it can't make impossible things when some parts of the scene are moving (branches in the wind...)
In my day job context, i think it will save me a great time when working on interiors shots.

In second conclusion, i invite you to compare the image above with the one just under these words. It was taken at the same place just one year before. You can see that the bush's colors are not the same. It's not due to processing, it's just because this year we had some rain late in the springtime. It's less photogenic but it's really better for the forest and can protect her (little) from the fires.

Photo stitching for high definition images

Provence waterfall

I've started stitching digital images when i was still shooting film. After scanning slides, i was stitching them manually with a basic photo editing software to produce panoramics landscapes.

With digital shooting stitching can still help for panos or to produce some high definition files.

How does it work ?

Imagine you are framing a shot with your DSLR and a 17 mm lens. If you use a longer lens, you can decompose the shot in more frames. Say 4 for example. But with the longer lens, you will capture more details in each shot and if you can stitch these shots together you will obtain a file with more pixels and most important, more details.

Here are some important points if you want to be able to stitch your shots and have a high quality result :

• Your shots must overlap.
  
• In most of cases, every shot should receive the same exposure. So set your camera on the manual mode.
  
• Your shots sould not include moving elements.
  
• For the best results, you should rotate you lens around an axis passing threw the entrance pupil of the lens to avoid parallax errors. So, you should use a sturdy tripod with a QTVR pano head.
  

About the last point : Today stitching softwares like PTGui can often stitch images even if they are suffering of parallax errors and you can shoot without a specific pano head and sometimes without tripod. But if you want to use some wide angle lenses or shoot a landscape with an important forgeground the software can fail and the pano head is the only real solution. And in all cases, the tripod will improve image sharpness ...

The waterfall photograph illustrating the top of this post was produced by stitching 9 D200 images taken with a 28 mm lens and for the forest image, i've stitched 4 D200 photos made with a 35 mm lens.
As usual, i shot in raw mode, raw files were converted to 48 bits tif files with SilkyPix and tif files were stitched with PTGui.


Provence forest

PTGui Pro : first impressions

For now more than one month i stitch all my panoramic photos with PTGui Pro.
The software is still in beta state and versions are updated very often so i won't write here a real full review but just give my firsts impressions.

About normal (not HDR) images :

• The control points generator seems to be more accurate.
• Blending is very good in most of the cases but sometimes using smartblend as a plugin can improve the result.
• Speed and memory management are very nice. I could stitch some huge panos on an old HP Vectra with Pentium III and 384 MB of RAM.
• I've noticed a little bug with Vertical lines control points but it's not a real issue and i think it will be corrected in a future update.

The HDR side :

As told in a previous post, i'm not a HDR fan. But HDR management beeing one of the biggest improvement of PTGui Pro, i've tested it with some landscapes in difficult light conditions.
So here is what i can say :

• PTGui makes a very good work to identify and align the different exposures of the same shot.
• I've noticed some kinds of dark halos in some parts of the resulting HDR files. This problem does'nt show when i combine the same source files in Photomatix Pro. In the PTGui versions history i read they fixed this bug but i didn't verify.
• The Tone Mapping tool is too basic in my mind and the preview is too small. I find very hard to obtain results having a natural look.

Conclusion :

For me PTGui Pro was the natural update for PTGui to compete with AutoPano Pro and every panoramic photographer will enjoy its simple interface and the quality of the resulting files. For me there is no doubt that the HDR functions will be improved in the future updates.

PTGui Pro : PTGui's answer to AutoPano Pro

PTGui started its life a few years ago as a GUI (Graphic User Interface) for Panorama Tools.
In the first versions i used, i had to set all control points by hand, and file processing was a little slow.
While taking age, PTGui was realy improved : files processing was greatly increased and the software offers now a few tools for an automatic detection of control points. The last stable version (6.03) is one of the most powerful tools for stiching panoramic images.

Near one year ago, a french developper launched Autopano Pro who's is in my mind the only real competitor of PTGui. AutoPano is easy to use and produces some images of high quality with a big plus for some photographers : it handles HDR.

I'm not an HDR fan but sometimes it can be useful to combine different exposures to avoid highlights clipping and noisy shadows so i was surprised that PTGui didn't seem to do anything in the HDR way.
It's done now, i discovered this morning on the PTGui website that PTGui Pro will be soon released and will support HDR.

If you like panoramic photos, you can check mines on patmo.net.

A few words about panoramic photography

I always loved panoramic landscapes, with digital photography, stitching images has become very popular and stitching softwares very powerful.
I own 2 QTVR panoramic heads, one pro and one cheap.
The cheap one presents for me 2 issues. First it's long to setup in the field and second it's not rigid enough to ensure a very good image sharpness with some lenses.
The pro one is better but i don't always have it in my bag ...
So most of time i just use my tripod with its standard rotule head and a bubble level.

After the shooting session, digital workflow is still the same :

• The RAW files are converted in 48 bits TIF with SilkyPix.
• The TIF files are stitched with PTGUI.
• Final adjustments are done with PictureWindow Pro.

With the earliest versions of PTGui, we had to manually set up the control points. With the recent versions this time is gone and PTGui offers two different ways to automaticaly find these points. Its blending capabilities has also evoluated with the versions and you can now obtain rapidly some stuning results if you take a little care while shooting.