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Feature request - HDR stitching and Paralax stitching

Question
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Dear Developers of ICE,
your programm is the fastes and best looking stitcher I have ever used! Still I have some question about some feature which maybe could be included in the future.
Do you plan something like a HDR option ?(I currently use a selfwritten programm which modifies saved .spj files to get same stiching results between exposures)
I also thought about something like a paralax stitching mode. For example I do not own a pano-head so I there are paralax errors in the stitching results, but since ICE is well programmed you can tweak structured panorama settings that way it fits with minimal errors. could you implement it that ICE takes into count that the camera is not rotating around its nodal point and adjust the needed distorsion?
Thanks again for your amazing software,really!R. Gützkow
Saturday, October 22, 2011 5:45 PM
Answers
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Thanks for the kind words.
It would be great if you could share with other users what you've learned about modifying the .spj. Perhaps create a blog post, or do like this tutorial on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweeperpix/sets/72157608703660071/detail/ As you've discovered there are many interesting ways to hack the spj, HDR being one of them.
We don't currently have plans for an update to ICE, but if we do HDR would be a very interesting feature.
Compensating for parallax is a difficult subject. Once you have parallax it means that you can no longer compensate for the motion with a simple reprojection of each image, you now have to calculate region by region compensations in each image and deal with the disoclussions that result from parallax. Faced with parallax ICE currently does what you suggest, it picks the dominate depth in each image and stitches to that (causing stitching errors for the non-dominate regions), but sometimes it doesn't make the same decision about what is dominate that you would.
- Marked as answer by rj_design Sunday, October 23, 2011 5:52 PM
Saturday, October 22, 2011 7:15 PM
All replies
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Thanks for the kind words.
It would be great if you could share with other users what you've learned about modifying the .spj. Perhaps create a blog post, or do like this tutorial on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweeperpix/sets/72157608703660071/detail/ As you've discovered there are many interesting ways to hack the spj, HDR being one of them.
We don't currently have plans for an update to ICE, but if we do HDR would be a very interesting feature.
Compensating for parallax is a difficult subject. Once you have parallax it means that you can no longer compensate for the motion with a simple reprojection of each image, you now have to calculate region by region compensations in each image and deal with the disoclussions that result from parallax. Faced with parallax ICE currently does what you suggest, it picks the dominate depth in each image and stitches to that (causing stitching errors for the non-dominate regions), but sometimes it doesn't make the same decision about what is dominate that you would.
- Marked as answer by rj_design Sunday, October 23, 2011 5:52 PM
Saturday, October 22, 2011 7:15 PM -
Thank you for the fast reply!
I updated my program and will release it for free dowload soon (Of course I will post the doownload link in the forum).Keep on going like that :) !
R. Guetzkow
Sunday, October 23, 2011 5:54 PM -
I have created a blog post with a download link to my finished software.
I put the link here as well.
http://project-eagleeye.deviantart.com/art/spj-File-Converter-265553174Thanks for ICE !
R. Guetzkow
- Edited by rj_design Thursday, October 27, 2011 7:26 PM
Thursday, October 27, 2011 3:28 PM -
The work-around I used was to batch render the HDR frames first, then stitch the results.Wednesday, March 14, 2012 1:37 AM
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Sorry for my late reply. Technically my programm does pretty much the same thing only more comfortable and end-user friendly. You can simply select what images you want to have in in an file-open dialogue and the spj-file will be created. Still you need to put the different stitch-results from the spj files into an .hdr or .exr file with Luminance HDR, Photoshop or similar software.
Maybe you could to a look at my program and tell me what you think could be improved?- Edited by rj_design Monday, March 26, 2012 3:07 PM
Monday, March 26, 2012 3:07 PM -
Imcompatibility???
.SPJ file Converter. Nice feature, I have missed that function in ICE. I have two problems with this small and nice app.
- When saving the new .spj file, I have to type the extension .spj. Otherwise the file will miss the extension.
- The app do not handle Swedish characters correct. If I have a pathname with Swedish special characters, i.e. å, ä or ö, then will the app produce a spj-file not readable for ICE. Error message "Could not open the project file"
Another thing for improvement: to many messageboxes where I have to respond.
Win 7 Pro 64 bit, ICE 64 bitTuesday, April 3, 2012 6:04 PM -
Thank you for your feedback. I will try to improve my program as fast as I can. I am not sure if the Swedish characters cause a problem with my program or if ICE is not able to handle them. All other points mentioned will be improved.Wednesday, April 4, 2012 8:34 PM
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[EDIT]
An updated version is available now!
*The file extension is now always added properly.
*Infoboxes are reduced, but error messages are still active.The Swedish character problem is still investigated. I am using the German Windows 7 and all special characters, both German and Swedish are working.
I will compile a special version for you with a different encoding so you can give it a try, if that does not work please post here the following things:
1. The path where the spj-file is that you want to open, the path where you want to store and how the files are named(simply copy the path from the explorer window)
2. Post the spj file that the converter creates (if it is not to long). You can do this by right-clicking the file and open with editor. Copy and paste it into your post.Here is the version with different encoding (use the SPJ_Converter_v1_4_1_utf8BOM.exe) http://project-eagleeye.deviantart.com/art/SPJ-Converter-UTF-8-BOM-294225602
Thanks a lot!
PLEASE GIVE FEEDBACK IF IT WORKS !
- Edited by rj_design Friday, April 6, 2012 12:25 PM
Thursday, April 5, 2012 11:33 AM -
Glad to see that tutorial is still being useful :) I'm wrapping up some panos I took while in vegas for the NAB show, will have to post them here when I'm done. I coincidentally ordered some more RAM >.>Tuesday, May 1, 2012 12:16 AM
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Hey RJ,
what I would propose is adding in some EXIF reading to automate the process of image selection, or at the very least be able to select a folder of images instead of one image at a time. If you look at that tutorial Matt linked, you'll see how pre-sorting images based on EXIF data (in my case using a separate program) made the .spj manipulation very trivial.
In the long term, I think the whole multiple-exposure-stitching thing would best be handled by ICE itself, in the same way the structured panoramas are handled. You'd set the number of bracketed exposures, and then select which batch you wanted to use for 'previewing'. The ICE would only run the final export stage three times, instead of doing control points, etc, three times. So Matt, when is the source getting released so we can poke at this stuff? :)
Tuesday, May 1, 2012 12:23 AM -
I allready have thought about that, but I would need to add different sorting options in case that not all images are taken in a row (maybe one image double or something alike). This is making the whole thing a little more complicated rather than simple multi-select, but it is an option I will add if I am done with my exams at school.
Doing it directly in ICE would definetly be the best way, though I could fully automate my program so you can select all the images and count of exposures and it will automatically stitch and save all panos. I just did not implement it in the downloadable version because it has to be used according to RAM and CPU available otherwise it might crash if after starting my program the resources are needed by another application. I still have to add that it is checking the current usage of RAM and CPU and force the programm to wait.In this case it would of course do the export and stitching three times, so a all-in-one solution would be better...
- Edited by rj_design Tuesday, May 1, 2012 10:43 AM
Tuesday, May 1, 2012 10:39 AM