Manual image correction possible?

[chipy]

hi guys. i used AutoPano Pro to stitch my pictures together and came up with three different renderings based on preset color corrections (or brightness/blending/some kind of correction).

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/9527/01nocorrection.jpg
No correction

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/4694/02hdr.jpg
HDR color correction

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/3358/03ldr.jpg
LDR color correction

i like the first one except where the middle has the overexposed sky. is there any way to manually correct it in Lightroom 3 or other software?

my second choice would be HDR, but that and the LDR seem to take away from how dark it really was during the time of the photo-taking.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

I think that manual correcting of the first one would be too painstaking. For the HDR and LDR, simply play around with the exposure/contrast settings in LR. If you want it darker, decrease the exposure a bit and then increase the contrast a tad as well.

 

[chipy]

I think that manual correcting of the first one would be too painstaking. For the HDR and LDR, simply play around with the exposure/contrast settings in LR. If you want it darker, decrease the exposure a bit and then increase the contrast a tad as well.

yeah, that's what i was afraid of. thansk for the suggestions, i'll try that... otherwise i'll just keep the HDR one.

 

[shocksyde]

What mode was your camera in for the individual shots?

 

[littleprince]

I only looked at the first image, if you like it, its only 10 mins in photoshop.
Since theres no detail in the sky fixing it is not time consuming or difficult at all...

 

[chipy]

What mode was your camera in for the individual shots?

i took it in Tv (shutter priority) since it was night time and i wanted to expose it correctly. obviously the middle picture didn't get exposed like the others so maybe i need to learn how to use manual mode. any observations/suggestions? thanks!

 

[shocksyde]

i took it in Tv (shutter priority) since it was night time and i wanted to expose it correctly. obviously the middle picture didn't get exposed like the others so maybe i need to learn how to use manual mode. any observations/suggestions? thanks!

If you're taking pics with the intention of stitching them together, they have to all be at the same setting.

 

[Anubis]

If you're taking pics with the intention of stitching them together, they have to all be at the same setting.

there are issues with that if the scene you are shooting has a large change in light. Sometimes its easier to just match them in PS before you stitch them

 

[qbfx]

there are issues with that if the scene you are shooting has a large change in light. Sometimes its easier to just match them in PS before you stitch them

The best technique would be to take the first photo in shutter priority, note the settings after metering and then just use the same settings in manual mode. That way there shouldn't be ay difference in exposure between the three shots.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

i took it in Tv (shutter priority) since it was night time and i wanted to expose it correctly. obviously the middle picture didn't get exposed like the others so maybe i need to learn how to use manual mode. any observations/suggestions? thanks!

With Autopano you CAN shoot entire panoramas using an automatic setting like aperture priority because Smartblend can automatically compensate for differences in exposure like that, but it has its limits:

1. It's sometimes a good idea to lock in your white balance. It can sometimes get confused if one shot is a completely different white balance than the other. But usually the scenes you're shooting won't differ in white balance between shots.

2. HUGE differences in exposure that are side by side don't fare as well. Imagine you're doing a vertical panorama of a really tall building. Going upwards, your second to last shot has the top of the building and a large part of the body running through it (ex. f/8, iso200, 1/200). Your last shot only has a tiny portion of the tip of the building, and everything else is sky (ex. exposure jumps to f/8, iso200, 1/1600 to compensate for the brightness of the sky). Two shots with such a huge difference in exposure will be hard for Autopano to equalize effectively. In this case you might want to do HDR, pick a middle exposure and lock it in, or try to pan more gradually so the exposures have a chance to increase gradually to 1/1600s.

But for the most part you don't have to lock in a single exposure when using Autopano, hence why it's so awesome. With stitchers that are not as smart you would have to.