Am 23.03.2011 19:11, schrieb kfj:
But maybe you can enlighten me also as to what you'd propse as an easier technique! My sensor produces 14bit images (I think it does) which is certainly well above anything a monitor can display, so some dynamic range compression is needed. I'm convinced that enfuse-like techniques produce superior results to HDR tonemapping with less effort, but if you know of an even simpler method that does the trick, please let me know.
The problem is the raw conversion. Most raw converters let you choose the "exposure" but it's very hard to extract the full DR. Most likely this is because such an image would look very flat and the raw converter would get bad critics.
To find the settings in your raw converter you can use any image with enough DR, however, I suggest using an exposure bracketed series of a simply target consisting of large white and black areas. For the wiki article I used a white paper on a black cotton and an additional grey card for reference: http://wiki.panotools.org/File:Camera-RAW-04.jpg
You need to find settings the clip least highlights and least shadows. Usually this requires to pull down the contrast slider. But be aware: The camera has clipped the highlights already. If you use clipping display and lower brightness some program don't show a region actually clipped by the camera as clipped because it's darker now.
If you shoot for panoramas you need to process all images the same with fixed settings of course. Later processing can be done after stitching which makes stitching fast and easy.
To get back original vividness without loosing the highlights and shadow details try f.e. unsharp mask filter with radius between 50 and 200 pixels, amount 20% and threshold 0. This might blow some highlights. If you don't want that use a mask to protect highlights. Same applies for shadows. Another technique is to create a mask from the highlights only, blur it and use it to selectively increase their contrast by adjusting the black point. Do the same for the shadows but use the white point. However, I don't know whether the Gimp allows for all that techniques...
best regards -- Erik Krause http://www.erik-krause.de -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Hugin and other free panoramic software" group. A list of frequently asked questions is available at: http://wiki.panotools.org/Hugin_FAQ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hugin-ptx
