- Throughout this course,
we've been using a workflow
that we like to call stitch then HDR,
meaning that we stitch our images together
into our bracketed panoramas
and then combine those.
But a lot of people like to do it the other way around,
and combine the images first in HDR,
and then stitch them together.
And even though we're not going into detail
about that in this course,
I have some advice if you're following that workflow.
In this movie we're talking about
the HDR then stitch workflow.
If you watch previous movies
where we were stitching together bracketed panoramas,
there was a lot of images involved
and it could get rather complicated rather quickly,
and I think the main advantage of this kind of workflow
is its simplicity.
We're going to take our 12 bracketed images,
we're going to combine those in Photomatix Pro
using a batch process,
and that way, we're only going to have
to stitch together our four resulting images.
The main disadvantage of this kind of workflow
is that we're going to lose control
over some of the finer details.
This is also a great workflow
if you're working on very large panoramas
or Gigapans, when your computer just doesn't have
enough memory and resources to combine
so many images.
By combining the bracketed images first,
we can then stitch those results.
Here we have our 12 TIFF files ready to combine.
Let's look at them just a little bit first.
I have three shots, and these are minus two,
zero, and plus two exposures,
meaning there's underexposed image,
middle-exposed image, and an overexposed image
for each one of my four camera positions.
I captured each of the bracketed sets the same way.
So now we can take advantage of Photomatix Pro
and the powerful batch processing dialog.
That's found on here under Batch Bracketed Photos.
You can also go to the Automate menu
or use Cmd + B.
We're going to combine a full folder of images
so let's select that up here in the Source section.
Have that here under Reflecting Pool,
I have the TIFF versions here.
Select that.
In the Bracket Selection section,
we can choose how many images make
up each bracketed set.
We are using the standard three.
If I had different numbers of bracketed sets,
I could change it here.
I could even use the Advanced Selection,
which would mean that Photomatix would figure out
which images went together as bracketed sets.
But since we have a consistent number here, of three,
we'll go ahead and use this top option.
For the destination, I typically choose the subfolder
within the source folder,
and we'll continue to use TIFF in this workflow.
I don't need to create the 32-bit unprocessed merged file
because I do want to combine the TIFF files
directly in the stitching program.
Now how do I want to process the images?
Well, in this kind of workflow,
it's very important to use exposure fusion,
so I'm going to choose the filter just
to show the fusion presets only.
The reason to use fusion rather than tone mapping
is that using fusion will create
a more consistent result
so that the blending will go together
more easily.
Usually in tone mapping, the individual details
within the images will be considered,
so there's more of a difference.
So tone mapping definitely has its advantages,
but fusion is better here.
I'm going to choose the Natural preset.
In the Merge with section, this is important here
because our panorama was taken on a pole
about 12 feet high, so there may or may not
have been some movement between the images.
Just to be sure, I'm going to go ahead
and choose Image Alignment here.
There's a little-known option, Crop aligned images,
usually you would want to use this,
but the Crop aligned images means
that during alignment, the images are shifted around
a bit so they match up, and that results
in a few pixels around the edges being unused
and even transparent, so normally you would want
to crop those away for your image.
There's no reason to keep them.
However, we're combining them in a stitching program later,
and the stitching program expects them
to be exactly the same size.
Even a difference of just a few pixels
would cause a problem in the stitching application,
so here we're going to uncheck the Crop aligned images.
I've applied Noise Reduction already in RAW Conversion.
Now Ghost Removal is important.
We have moving people right in there
in our scene, so we're going
to use the batch processing's automatic Ghost Removal,
and under More Merge Options,
we can even choose how strong we want that to be,
here Ghost Removal Advanced Setting.
You can go ahead and leave it at medium
because again, we're applying this to many images
and we're looking for settings
that are going to work the best for most images.
I do have the option of changing the Base exposure.
This means that when there's an area
that needs de-ghosting,
the zero EV image will be the one
that's used in that area.
We don't need to remove chromatic aberrations,
again because that was done during RAW processing.
Now I'm clicking OK.
The Finish with section, this is post-processing.
So I prefer to leave that for a later step
to be done after the stitching.
So I'm going to leave those as none,
and go ahead and click Run.
So this will just take a few minutes,
and it's a great time to walk away
from your computer.
Following my Photomatix Pro Batch process,
my Photomatix results folder shows in my source folder
and I see just four resulting images,
just as we expected.
Just taking a quick look through,
I see much better exposed image all the way through.
Also, I don't see any ghostly people,
so our de-ghosting was very successful.
Now, let's see what a nearly automatic process looks like
to stitch together a panorama in PTGui Pro.
As I drag the images to the icon,
it quickly loads the source images for me.
I go right to the Align Images button
to compare the images and to generate control points,
and quickly show us a preview.
This gives me a opportunity to just quickly point out
that I can adjust the horizon
when the automatic straighten doesn't quite work perfectly.
It's very close, but I wanted to have the opportunity
to show how I can straighten it a little bit better,
just by clicking and dragging right on the image,
or Option and clicking and dragging
to align here,
just a little better.
Okay, let's go back to our main window
and address the moving people in the scene again,
because remember, we did de-ghosting in the HDR step,
but they're also overlapping left to right,
so I want to look in the Mask tab,
and make sure that my resulting panorama
doesn't have ghostly images from the stitching either.
So I start with my zero image,
and one image, so that I can see
the overlapping areas,
so the right side of the image on the left
is overlapping the left side of the image
on the right.
What I'll do here is either trust PTGui
to take care of it itself,
or I can choose myself which version
of these people I want to keep
and which ones I want to remove.
So I'm going through each one,
one at a time, looking at the brush
on the left image, compared to the crosshair
on the right image,
I can see the overlapping areas,
and I'll just remove
this group of people,
meaning that it will keep
the group of people on the right.
I use my red arrows above
just to move through,
and continue to compare the same way.
In this case, it seems easier to remove
this person.
Click once more for our last overlapping set,
and just decide which people I want to keep,
and which one to remove.
I'll keep the less people version,
just to give it a little bit more separation.
I believe those are some people taking photos,
so that's nice for our panorama,
but again, it's just a choice to make.
That's all I think is needed here.
If we go back to the Panorama Editor,
I can quickly check if my masking was successful.
What I'm looking for here is
that checkerboard pattern.
If I see that, I'll know that I have accidentally masked
both images, leaving no image in a certain area,
but I don't see that here,
so I think we're looking good.
I'm ready to go ahead and create my panorama,
moving back to the main window,
to the Create Panorama tab.
We'll keep it at full size,
clicking Set optimum size.
Keep it as a TIFF file
for post-processing.
Blended panorama only.
And I'll keep the default name,
and go ahead and just click Create Panorama.
This should just take a few seconds in this case,
since we're only working with those four source images.
And once finished, we can go right to this View button,
open in PTGui viewer,
see just how successful our quick
and easy stitching workflow was.
Rotating around the panorama,
and we'll zoom in just a little bit.
I see the couple here who is maybe getting
some engagement photos,
I see the monument,
some other photographers,
and some other tourists like ourselves,
even the airplane flying above the monument
is there, and there it is, our HDR then stitch workflow.