GigaPan EPIC Pro - Manual (Page 34)

31
5. What is an accurate method of determining the number of brackets and the
exposure value separation?
When using Gigapan Stitch to align and render your panorama along with exposure
bracketing, you will need to use a fuser or tone mapper with batch capability to consis-
tently apply the same settings to each set of exposure brackets. The resulting fused
or tone mapped images are then stitched by Gigapan Stitch. Some of your fusion or
tone mapping options are:
• Photomatix 4.0 - www.hdrsoft.com
• Enfuse ( freely available ) - enblend.sourceforge.net
• Enfuse GUI wrapper - software.bergmark.com/enfuseGUI/Main.html
• HDR Expose - www.unifiedcolor.com/hdr-expose
Preview your exposure brackets with a file browser or Adobe Bridge, adjusted so that an
entire exposure bracket sequence is displayed on each row. Review the rows checking to
see that features match and that you did not miss any exposure brackets. If you are fusing
the exposure brackets with Enfuse and the Enfuse GUI wrapper you should convert the
files to 16 bit TIFF format before fusing them. Photomatix and HDR Expose can process
camera RAW and other formats.
When using the fusion or tone mapping software it is often necessary to adjust several pa-
rameters to achieve realistic looking results. Fusion will yield realistic results with less inter-
vention. Common parameters that you might need to change are strength, color saturation,
exposure bias, and the black level.
Once you have processed your exposure brackets and produced fused or tone mapped
files, you are ready to stitch your panorama using the Gigapan Stitch software. See Chap-
ter 4 for more information about Gigapan Stitch software.