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HDR in LR 6.14?

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No there is not a HDR merge in this version of Lightroom. It came some time later with one of the updates to the 7 or 8. There is an option to send a selected set of images to Photoshop if you have that to do either an HDR or Panorama merge.

-louie
 
No there is not a HDR merge in this version of Lightroom. It came some time later with one of the updates to the 7 or 8. There is an option to send a selected set of images to Photoshop if you have that to do either an HDR or Panorama merge.

-louie
Yes, there is. I can't remember which point update of v6 HDR merge came with, but it's certainly there in v6.14.

Lightroom-1.jpg Lightroom-2.jpg
 
Sorry you're correct I was looking in the "Edit In" menu and I completely missed seeing the "Photo Merge".

In any case it is a very powerful HDR merge and creates as I recall a 16 bit DNG that is easily edited with Lightroom. If you mean by "tone mapped only" that it doesn't produce the "HDR look" of many of the external HDR apps that is true. It has a very natural look.

Rikk Flohr has written up a very good overview for how to take the best advantage of Lightroom's HDR.

Lightroom 6/CC2015 – Photo Merge Tidbits (Part 1)


thanks,

-louie
 
Thank god it doesn't produce that 'HDR look', but that's not what I meant. I meant it doesn't produce 32 bit per channel Radiance RGBE or 42 bit per channel OpenEXR format true HDR images typically used in computer modelling.
 
Gentlemen, many many thanks. Yes, I see it there, the "Photo Merge" option. When I click on it, however, both "HDR" and "Panorama" are grayed out.
I can probably figure that out, but you've pointed the direction. Thanks again.
 
Thanks, Roy, you're a gem. I've made my first HDR images now--following your lead. Now I'm experimenting with the panorama feature. Am I correct you can stitch only two images together? I presumed you could use as many images for panoramas as you can in the HDR process, but that seems not to be the case. Yes?
 
Am I correct you can stitch only two images together?
No, you can stitch more than two images (I've done up to 19). But again, you have to select the complete set before initiating the Photo Merge....
 
Yes, like Jim said, you can certainly stitch more than two images. Lightroom is very good a fudging the joins on hand-held panoramas, but if you're shooting with a proper tripod pano-head then you'd be better off using something like PTGui.
 
When trying to do a pano merge, the images need a healthy overlap (around a third, I believe). If that doesn't exist, the merge will fail.
 
Gentlemen, you are helping immensely, but I'm a very senior citizen and soft, apparently, in the head. I made a 3-image panorama successfully, but my 8-image attempt has failed several times. Two of the images merge, but that seems to be all. Hm.
 
And did you confirm that you have sufficient overlap in those 8 images?

Also, when using LR 6.14 I'm pretty sure that all the images in the selection have to be shot using the same focal length (that restriction was removed in LR Classic), so check that as well.
 
And did you confirm that you have sufficient overlap in those 8 images?

Also, when using LR 6.14 I'm pretty sure that all the images in the selection have to be shot using the same focal length (that restriction was removed in LR Classic), so check that as well.
And also the exact same dimensions in pixels. That is no problem when you shoot in raw (because raw edits in Lightroom are ignored), but it can be a problem when you try to merge jpeg or tiff files. Just a few pixels difference will make that fail.
 
Gentlemen, you are helping immensely, but I'm a very senior citizen and soft, apparently, in the head. I made a 3-image panorama successfully, but my 8-image attempt has failed several times. Two of the images merge, but that seems to be all. Hm.
You could upload the images (half-sized JPGs would do) to a file sharing site and let us have a look at them.
 
Gentlemen, thanks again for your expert help, which I'm applying with vigor: shooting in RAW, overlapping 1/3 +/-, constant focal length. I shot a 10-frame interior of my living room, and LR made a perfect panorama. I shot a 9-frame seascape and LR stitched only 3- 4 of the frames--an incomplete panorama.

I can't believe LR distinguishes between interior and outdoor subject matters, but I observed only two other difference between the experiments. The Panorama Preview for the seascape appeared far more quickly than the Preview for the interior scene. (The actual mergers took about the same length of time.) And the focal lengths differed: for the interior shots it was constant at 20mm; for the seascape it was constant at 85mm.

I'm about to jump. out of my skin with frustration, but hesitate to rely much longer on your generosity and time. I have one of our lovely Queen's books, but that was for LR 4. Do you know if her more recent books cover the topic of panoramas?

Thanks again.
 
Eureka, Gentlemen. Subject matter does bigod make a difference. I told my wife my sad tale, and she observed the interior sequence was comprised of sharply different images--the couch, the TV, etc. Nah, that can't be it, I responded, possessed of vastly superior photographic knowledge.

Well, she was right. Her intuition trumped my vanity.

My seascape shots--at 85mm--contained 4 frames with nothing but sparkling sea. One frame was not SHARPLY different from the next. So I shot the sequence again, at 50mm., so that all the shots contained a portion of the shoreline; now the frames WERE sharply different.

Voila. A fine panorama. LR needs, apparently, clearly distinguishable edges frame-to-frame. If it can't find one, it skips the intervening frames until it does.

Thanks again for all your help, with HDR and Panoramas, both. Much appreciated.

And now much relieved.
 
The difference you're seeing between indoor and outdoor panorama sequences is probably down to parallax which will show much more clearly on near objects. It will make finding an acceptable merge much more difficult, hence taking longe rto compute. This is where a proper panorama head makes a significant difference.

A tip for shooting panoramas: set the camera to manual exposure (and manual light balance if you're shooting JPG) so that all the shots in the sequence have the same values.
 
Roy,
You got it backwards. Richard's stitching worked OK on the interior shots, but not on the seascape. He correctly diagnosed the problem of the seascape not having enough distinguishing features for LR to find the stitching points.
 
Lightroom and all Panorama software works by mapping shapes in one frame with the same shape in another frame. Distinctive edges (tree trunks, lamps, people, cars etc.) give the panorama software an anchor. Without that anchor (e.g. open monotonous sea horizon) and every panorama software will fail the automatic stitching process.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
I have one of our lovely Queen's books, but that was for LR 4. Do you know if her more recent books cover the topic of panoramas?

In answer to your question, yes, the Classic eBooks are completely up to date. Lots has changed since LR4! But it looks like you got some great answers to your pano questions already.
 
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