Panorama software and work flow

[Mike-PDX]

There are several forum regulars who have shown some outstanding pano's here. I'm interested in your perspectives on a "best practice" pano workflow and the tools you use.

Question #1: For those of you who shoot pano's regularly, what stitching software do you use? I know it can be done in PS, and I've used that myself. But I'm wondering if there is a better tool for complicated or tricky shots. I'm looking at two products; Autopano Pro, and PTGui - does anyone have experience with either of them? Are there better options?

Question #2: How do you process HDR pano's? Seems to me there might be three choices - 1) do the HDR processing on each image, then stitch into a pano; 2) stitch each HDR set into a pano, then do the HDR processing from the stitched images; or 3) let programs like Autopano do all the work. Does anyone have experience with these workflows and have a recommendation?

Thanks for the help!

 

[Scottpix]

I confess I'm old school. So take my answer with that in mind. I still have a Hasselblad XPan panoramic camera, although I rarely use it any more.

Q#1: When I do digital panoramic photos, I just use Photoshop to stitch them. It really isn't difficult. My workflow begins when I'm shooting, to make the end work much easier. I manually set my metering and white balance, so that all the stitched photos will be perfectly matched for exposure and color. I use a tripod, and level it before I shoot, so that all of the stitched photos will line up pretty closely. I have a grid screen in my viewfinder, which makes it easier to see how much overlap I'm doing. I usually try to overlap by about 20% for longer focal lengths, but at least 1/3 for wide angle. I don't do stitched panoramas all that often, and when I use the above workflow I've never found it necessary to use specialized software other than Photoshop.

Q#2: For me, I would use your option 2. Stitch it together first, then do your HDR manipulation. I would think it would be a nightmare trying to match the exposures if you do your HDR first, and then try to stitch them.

Another alternative is to simply shoot a regular frame, and crop it into a panoramic format. There is no law that says you MUST keep your original ratio out of the camera. This photo was shot with a regular Canon 5D. It is a single frame, cropped to a panoramic format. There are plenty of pixels to blow this up to a 30" print, if necessary.

 

[Mike-PDX]

Thanks Scott

Scott, thanks for the feedback. I've been using Photoshop Elements 8 up to this point, and it has worked ok. But sometimes it has dificulty stitching a sky with a smooth gradient. It seems to leave blotches. Maybe that's related to the fact that it can only handle 8-bit tiff's in photomerge. So I was looking for a better alternative.


I think you're right about option 2 for HDR pano's. But some of the specific pano SW apps advertise that they will do the HDR at the same time. So I was curious if anyone had some experience with that process.


As to just cropping a single photo for a pano effect, I've done that many times. But I have a bunch of very wide pano's where that simply wouldn't have been possible. I couldn't have captured the whole scene even with my widest lens. This one, for example: