I do not own Photoshop, so shoot me. I am finding that GIMP does a lot of things for me that I need in terms of layers.

I have heard that the raw processor can ameliorate light fall off on the fisheye images. I own capture one, and have been tweaking a little with the exposure settings on the conversion and think I can duplicate it manually.

http://c.vrguild.net/c/stnd.pl?U=0606242145093777

Do you think that the Adobe raw processor is just using a basic set of presets or there is somekind of sophisticated algorithim or filter being used?

I don't know Adobe, but next version, Panoweaver 5 will realize this function. So you may shoot raw fisheye image and stitch it into panorama.

A lot of processing RAW depends on what camera and propriatory file format --- example,  Nikon is .nef  and Canon is .crw or cr2.  AND what lens you are using.

We take Canon .cr2. We use Sigma 8mm EX.

Our work flow is to transfer the .cr2 images to a hard drive.  Then use Photoshop CS2 to open 4 images in Adobe Camera Raw Converter 3.3. (ACR)

With PSCS and Elements 3 you can only open 1 Raw file at a time, but can load and apply the same settings to next 3 images.

In ACR for Sigma 8 lens

Apply the same white balance [example color temperature 5000]  to ALL 4 images.

Set ACR to output 16bit, RGB 1998 (more vivid colors) rather than sRGB.  When using Panoweaver use only 8bit.

On the Lens tab -

Set the Chromatic Abberation Red to -40.  This brings the red channel into line with the Blue and Green channel. The out of alignment RED channel causes some fuzzyness. The affect is to sharpen the image.

You can also change the green channel.

The Sigma 8 has some light fall off (darkened vignetting) around the lens rim edge.  Set the Vignetting slider to +100% to remove the vignetting.  Set the Mid slider to about -12.  This balances the exposure full width of lens glass.

Make sure you apply these settings to ALL 4 of your images.

You might want to save them as 8bit to be stitched in Panoweaver.  PW4 does not work withe 16bit files yet.   Sometimes I save the files out to 16bit TIFFs with a new filename incremented 1,2,3,4.

When I think of more, I will update this comment.

Dave

Hi John,

I looked at your $1.m home.  If you rotate up to the zenith you see the ceiling light.  Possibly the reason for the 4 lights (instead of 1) is that you might need to tweak your nodal point.  The correct nodal point will make ALL 4 images converge in the same top location.

The 4 way star shaded area affect you see is caused by lens light fall off.  Its that small vignetting area around the lens edge.  In Photoshop CS2 and Adobe camera Raw converter you can set the vignetting to +100% and the light will be distributed evenly out to the lens rim edge. This will in affect remove the darkened star affect in the zenith.

Although I will admit your tripod head at the nadir looks exceptionally tight and well formed.  There is a very MINOR seam error in the top landing hand rail.  Other than that.. the very difficult hardwood floor came together exceptionally well.  Great Job !!!

Just a thought.

I agree with Dave about the nodal.

What set up are you using Maserati?

Quote: Originally posted by 360texas on June-30-2006

---

On the Lens tab -

The Sigma 8 has some light fall off (darkened vignetting) around the lens rim edge.  Set the Vignetting slider to +100% to remove the vignetting.  Set the Mid slider to about -12.  This balances the exposure full width of lens glass.

When I think of more, I will update this comment.

Dave

---

Hi Dave

Thanks for those useful settings - I have started to use raw on my 350d and sigma 8mm and do have the lens vignetting set to 100%, however the midpoint slider is at 50. You state it should be round about -12 but mine only goes from 0-100. Do you mean +12? or do you have a different scale (I have pscs2).

Also I used to do jpg +raw and bracket +/- 1 stop, however this uses heck of a lot of memory up on the CF card. Seeing as it is so easy to adjust exposure in raw - do you only do a single raw shot and adjust if necessary(I know you can also under/over expose in raw and hdr blend in pscs2). This seems to be much easier than taking in effect 4 images at each quadrant? Thanks for the tips - its always good to see others workflow and I always seem to adjust mine slightly when things like this come up!

Kind regards

Crafty

Yes,  +12 for mid point slider in Adobe Camera Raw Converter 3.3 in Photoshop CS2.  Getting rid of vignetting is subjective. What looks good for you might be different for me.

Hmm I have not tried the Canon 10mm.

Ahhh so thats what the Kaidan pan head looks like.  Yes it appears it is the circular spirit level.

I you must convert RAW to 8 bit TIF singularly,  you might look to convert the first image [save the settings] then reload and use those same settings on image 2, 3 [optionally 4, 5, 6 +1 up].

**************** NOTE

I have found that Canon 5d 12mb Raw's converted to 37.5 8bit Tiff's can not be processed in PW4.  Loading 3 single 37.5mb images gets to 66% and then I get a Out of Memory error.  So please take note that there appears to be an upper memory limit in PW4.  I have been told that this will be fixed in PW5.  HOWEVER, Canon 5d 3 single at 120 degree JPEG's can be stitched with PW4 (just not raws converted to tif's)

************** END NOTE

We have not yet had a need to shoot HDR.

Dave