Stitching panoramas in LR vs. PS?

[Tom75]

Lightroom Version Number

CC Classic

Operating System

1. macOS 10.15 Catalina

Hi All,

I always created my panoramas of landscapes in PS mainly because it was not possible in LR and due to that I am still a little bit more drawn to PS when doing this but I would really like to know if there are any real advantages or disadvantages of creating panoramas in PS vs. LR.

Obviously when doing it in LR you will get as a result a DNG file and not a PSD for example and also the whole process is in LR much faster than in PS but is there a quality difference? I mean will the panoramas created in PS be technically of better quality.

I can spend the additional time and continue to do that in PS if its worth it but if there is technically no difference then I would of course do in LR because its easier and faster.

Regards,
Tom

 

[clee01l]

I have not looked at the PS Panorama lately. Behind each process is going to be the same Adobe code. There may be option differences between the two apps, but the end result is going to be the same,

The DNG file Specification is essentially the same file specification as PSD. Both are based upon the. TIFF-EP6 file specification. I would prefer DNG over PSD because DNG is more actively supported by Adobe and I don't think Adobe is continuing to tweak PSD while DNG has undergone a lot of changes. In either case, the data block from PSD or DNG is that same for panoramas.

DNGs don't support layers and PSDs do but you are not building a layers data block with a panorama.

 

[Conrad Chavez]

Obviously when doing it in LR you will get as a result a DNG file and not a PSD for example and also the whole process is in LR much faster than in PS but is there a quality difference?

I’m not sure if there is a quality difference other than that the DNG from Lightroom potentially preserves more quality when you edit it as a raw file. The Photoshop panorama feature existed years before Lightroom added it, created by a different team, and that’s why they work so differently. Both methods offer options that the other one doesn’t. I like the DNG result from Lightroom, and that it builds it in the background so you can keep using both Lightroom and Photoshop, so I try Lightroom Classic first. But if it’s an unusual case that isn’t working well; then I’ll try it in Photoshop.

If you want to know more about the differences, I wrote an article that compares them. It’s now slightly out of date since Lightroom Classic added the Fill Edges option (similar to Content-Aware Fill Empty Areas in Photoshop).
Creating a Panorama: Photoshop, Camera Raw, or Lightroom? on CreativePro.com

(Adobe Camera Raw uses the same panorama engine as Lightroom Classic.)

 

[clee01l]

...Lightroom potentially preserves more quality when you edit it as a raw file. )

DNG does not mean RAW. The data in a DNG data block from a Panorama is RGB. Probably the same RGB data that the PD PSD might create.

The Photoshop panorama feature existed years before Lightroom added it, created by a different team, and that’s why they work so differently. Both methods offer options that the other one doesn’t. ...

(Adobe Camera Raw uses the same panorama engine as Lightroom Classic.)

The biggest difference is going to be the user interface. Although i have no proof, I am willing to bet that the same underlying panorama engine. The options not present in one user interface could probably be added to the other since the underlying code likely has “handles” to accommodate these options.
As for ACR it too uses the same Camera RAW engine differing only in the user interface.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Conrad Chavez]

I don't agree that it’s exactly the same code. When someone has trouble stitching a panorama, one of the reasons a common troubleshooting step is to try it in the other application is because you often get different results. If the code was basically the same, the output should be too. But sometimes, panoramas that produce bad seams or fail to complete in Lightroom/ACR will work just fine in Photoshop.

Below is an example. Both were set to Spherical. But the results from Lightroom/ACR simply don’t line up with the results from Photoshop Photomerge; they are noticeably different. In addition, there is a bad seam along the right of the Lightroom/ACR version that Photoshop had no problem with. This is not an isolated case. Fortunately, the Lightroom team keeps refining their code and it works much better today than a couple of years ago; I don’t have to resort to Photoshop very often.

 

[Tony Jay]

I agree with Conrad here...

I have had panoramas that could not be stitched in Lightroom where the Photoshop version had no issues! It is clear to me that the stitching algorithms are simply not identical between Lightroom and Photoshop...

That said, if the panorama is actually successfully stitched I have seen no quality difference between the versions produced by Lightroom or Photoshop personally.... I completely accept that others mileage may vary here!

 

[hanoman]

I stitch my handheld panos in PS, it's a lot more tolerant and i use the Adaptive Wide Angel Filter to a large extent, because i mostly have to correct the horizontal line and the vertical lines.
Hannes
Pixelwerke

 

[Paul McFarlane]

I tend to always use Lr first (good for 95% of them) and drop into Ps if it isn't quite as I want it - best of both worlds! In terms of photo quality no difference, but Lr is a great time saver.

 

[Tom75]

Thanks a lot to all of you for the comments and valuable information!

Then this is clear to me but I will continue to use partly both LR and PS to compare some cases.

Regards,
Tom

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Lightroom creates a linear RGB DNG file, while Photoshop uses the non-linear RGB output from ACR to stitch that. That means that even if the algorithms were identical (but I don’t think they are), you could already get a different result.

 

[johnrellis]

I too often observe significant differences between LR and PS, in how they handle different projections, in the quality of the seams, and in vignette handling. Usually LR gives very good results, and I only use PS when LR doesn't.