LR6/CC and ACR9 Merge to Panorama and Leica M Digital files

[Jim-St]

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Hi

 

I hit a snag yesterday when trying to stitch a pan in LR6 using the new Merge to> Panorama command.

 

The issue is outlined in this thread at Adobe Lightroom Forum, and can be summarised as follows:

 

Leica M cameras generate speculative and frequently inaccurate aperture settings which are stored in the exif metadata for each shot taken. It seems that LR's Merge to Pan uses the aperture information in the exif data in calculating how to blend content in merging files into panoramas. This can lead to errors

 

With the help of contributors to the Lightroom forum this hypothesis seems to explain the problems I had. It seems LR uses the metadata in ways that PS doesn't (and presumably other pan-stitching apps also don't)

 

 

Hopefully Adobe should be able to fix this. For now I hope this may help other users of LR and digital M's

 

Jim

 

[Jim-St]

I've updated that thread on the Adobe site with some more pano shots from my M9 and also some with a Voigtlander 25mm Color-Skopar on a Panasonic GX7 (same effective focal length as the 50mm Cron on my M9)

 

Here's a sample of the sort of problem I've found with running Merge to Pano on M9 files in the new LR6/ LRCC/ ACR9.0 Merge to Pano: 

 

 

(screenshot of the Merge to Pano Preview,accurately prefiguring the final output pan)

 

Hope this shows up, haven't tried to post a picture to the new-style forum. Off now to find out how it's supposed to be done!

 

Jim

Edited April 28, 2015 by Jim-St

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[menos I M6]

There are two workarounds I see in this:

 

1.) use photoshop's photo merge function instead

2.) manually match exposures of the individual photos in Lightroom, then export them as tiff files, stripping all metadata (to remove the EXIF exposure information), the reimport into Lightroom and use these neutral files for the pano stitch in Lightroom

 

 

In it's current mint 6.0 form the photo merge function in Lightroom lacks functionality compared to it's function in Photoshop.

It seems to be more restricted (see the thread I opened in regards of stitching film based photographs, which simply does not work under certain circumstances ,while it works perfectly fine with Photoshop CS6).

[Jim-St]

Hi Dirk

 

I think I now have proof that the ACR/LR Merge to Panorama is using the camera-generated exif data re exposure, and in particular re lens aperture in the course of its image blending, and that the guesstimates of aperture generated by my M9 (and therefore also by M8, M240, MM etc - the whole digital-M stable to date) is impeding its operation.

 

The proof comes from using the LensTagger plug-in, and putting a value in the F-Stop field in the LensTagger UI (probably doesn't matter what value, as long as its the same in all shots for any one stitching job). If you do this to apply a common aperture value in all the files, Merge to Panorama seems to work just fine. (see my post #22 in the thread at Adobe)

 

With the LensTagger and Photoshop plug-ins we now have 2 options on how to stitch pans from digital-M's out of LR in addition to the new ACR9 Merge to Panorama within LR

 

I wonder how you go about the PS route: do you use Photo> Editin> Merge to Panorama in Photoshop? Or as I usually do, Photo> Edit in> Open as Layers in Photoshop, then Auto-Align and Auto-Blend the layers? I find this sometimes works better so generally try it first.

 

Personally I'm quite favourably impressed by the new Merge to.. stuff in LR6/ ACR9, although the preview interface does look a bit v.1.0, which of course it is. I haven't tried using it with scanner-generated files, however, and I just may never do so now, though. Quite often when things one used to do in PS turn up in LR they can appear to "lack functionality" as you say, or as one might say, they substitute magic for functionality (I'm thinking of, for example, the "Upright" lens corrections: I'd agree it "lacks functionality" compared with using PS or DxO ViewPoint, but does seem to get it right by magic a lot of the time

 

Had Adobe run a public beta of LR6 the problems with the digital-M's would surely have emerged in the course of that.

 

On reflection I'm actually surprised that Leica doesn't have someone involved in the alpha and beta testing of LR, since they are signed up to it and give it out with most of their cameras these days. Such a person would surely have picked this up, and the ACR team would have sorted it out in a fraction of the time it's taken me. A line or two of code e.g. "if camera = Leica-M then aperture = 0.0" would suffice I imagine (but what do I know?)

 

Jim

[menos I M6]

Jim, thanks for the tip on LensTagger - will give it a try (I currently tag my lenses via Lightroom keywords, which works painless and nice + I can search for lenses this way, which is my main application for knowing which photo was taken with which lens, as I often stumble upon photographs in the archive which have a certain rendering I like and I would like to know which lens it was taken with).

 

When solving you issue above via the Photoshop route, it is rather easy, as Photoshop's Photo Merge feature will put each single photo's elements it uses for the merge on a separate Layer.

Should you still have non-satisfactory outcome with mismatching exposures, it is easy to fix as you can simply work in the necessary layer and match exposure manually.

This is not possible as I understand so far with the new Lightroom Photo Merge feature.

Matching the single shots in Lightroom manually first, "neutralizing" the files as described earlier and then using those matched files instead would work in a similar way though.

 

It is quite likely that during the following updates of Lr6 to later versions, Adobe will be made aware of this issue and might improve.

I would suggest you enter the Lightroom forums and report your findings there + add a feature request to Adobe to make matching exposures/ neutralizing Aperture EXIF values during the photo merge function.

 

It is a very fresh feature and Leica cameras surely make only a very small part of the supported cameras for Lightroom. I am sure this issue simply got overlooked thus far.

[pico]

I find no reason at all to read f-stop metadata for merging/stitching photos. Software reads the luminance of each image to make its brightness adjustments.

[Nordvik]

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If you block the brightness sensor, the default aperture value becomes 1,0 (on M9).

[Jim-St]

 

 

I would suggest you enter the Lightroom forums and report your findings there + add a feature request to Adobe to make matching exposures/ neutralizing Aperture EXIF values during the photo merge function.

 

It is a very fresh feature and Leica cameras surely make only a very small part of the supported cameras for Lightroom. I am sure this issue simply got overlooked thus far.

 

 

Dirk - I have reported it and have now had response from the ACR Team. Think you are correct it just got overlooked - an old-style LR public beta would probably have seen it fixed before the release

 

I find no reason at all to read f-stop metadata for merging/stitching photos. Software reads the luminance of each image to make its brightness adjustments.

 

 

Pico - Not so with the new ACR/ LR Merge  to Pano, which works on raw files and outputs raw pano files. It uses aperture/f-number metadata for the purposes of exposure normalization, in this its first iteration, anyway

 

 

If you block the brightness sensor, the default aperture value becomes 1,0 (on M9).

 

Well I never knew that! Thanks, Nordvik, good to have a pre-emptive workaround!

 

Jim

[andybarton]

Given that Leica Ms guess the aperture anyway, surely this will always be a problem.

[pico]

Given that Leica Ms guess the aperture anyway, surely this will always be a problem.

 

I just made a picture with the M9 (on Manual)  with the external light sensor covered.

Using M9info.app it reported that the F stop was F2. Light level -.67

So apparently it took the aperture from the lens setting. 50mm Summicron F2

Edited May 2, 2015 by pico

[Jim-St]

Hi

 

I hit a snag yesterday when trying to stitch a pan in LR6 using the new Merge to> Panorama command.

 

The issue is outlined in this thread at Adobe Lightroom Forum, and can be summarised as follows:

 

Leica M cameras generate speculative and frequently inaccurate aperture settings which are stored in the exif metadata for each shot taken. It seems that LR's Merge to Pan uses the aperture information in the exif data in calculating how to blend content in merging files into panoramas. This can lead to errors

 

With the help of contributors to the Lightroom forum this hypothesis seems to explain the problems I had. It seems LR uses the metadata in ways that PS doesn't (and presumably other pan-stitching apps also don't)

 

 

Hopefully Adobe should be able to fix this. For now I hope this may help other users of LR and digital M's

 

Jim

 

This is now fixed (for Lightroom CC subscribers) in today's update LR CC (2015). Makes the subscription seem well worthwhile when you get what feels like a freebie in your inbox of a morning - even though I worked for this one!

 

 

Jim

[menos I M6]

Thanks for your contribution Jim ;-)

I hope the fix will be available soon also for Lightroom standalone versions (I will never EVER use cloud based software, I rather ditch digital altogether then making myself completely dependent from my internet connection being reliable). 

[Exodies]

Is the subscription service cloud based? I think the software is all installed on my Mac.

[jaapv]

The software works perfectly fine without cloud connection. Athough I suspect it suicides after a certain period after it has lost cloud contact.

[menos I M6]

The software is installed on your computer and can be operated over certain periods without internet connection.

The issue is that the point in time when Adobe decides to revalidate your license via internet connection is determined by Adobe.

 

It is therefore NOT like a software license you bought and can run it as long as you wish on your machine without worry of connecting to the net just to verify that you have a valid license.

 

Cloud services do come with advantages (data sharing among devices) and disadvantages (dependency on software developers).

Personally I dislike the disadvantages more than I would benefit from the advantages, especially when living in an area where internet connections are not as dependable.

[Exodies]

Perhaps if you were off the air for a whole month the software would switch to read only mode; I suspect you are referring to brief cuts in connectivity which would not impact your use of subscription software.

I find the price of the photographers package reasonable and the regular updates are very welcome. The old marketing model would bias the company towards hoarding improvements to the package for a few years before a new release.

 

The cloud aspect of Adobe CC is optional, it's just for sharing work between tablets and desktops.

[Jim-St]

Thanks for your contribution Jim ;-)

I hope the fix will be available soon also for Lightroom standalone versions (I will never EVER use cloud based software, I rather ditch digital altogether then making myself completely dependent from my internet connection being reliable). 

 

I think it's likely that this will be available in an incremental update to LR6 as it is a bug-fix. The new "features" of LR CC 2015 (Dehaze, Blacks and Whites sliders in Brush and Gradient) probably won't get into LR6 - you'll have to wait on LR7 for them, I think

 

The software works perfectly fine without cloud connection. Athough I suspect it suicides after a certain period after it has lost cloud contact.

 

FWIW I switched off my main computer on Feb 9th this year and went on a long trip (Thailand and Australia) taking just an iPad. When I got back home on April 12th and switched the Mac on, PS CC and LR6 were both there and ready to play. 

 

I actually think the Photographers Package deal is a good one, and probably saves me cash against what I'd otherwise be spending - I'd probably be buying every new LR and every other PS. If I ever find a use for LR Mobile that'll be icing on my cake, but I'm not at all sure I'll ever find a use for the iPad in any photographic workflow... Next long trip I'll get a MacBook Air

 

Jim