Cubeface converter now in PTGui

[HansNyberg]

PTGui now has a converter for cubefaces in the latest version 8.2.
It currently has wrong namings for FPP but it will be changed in the next update.
http://groups.google.com/group/ptgui/browse_thread/thread/c364f32c1cca9dd

To use it you have to choose it from the tools menu.

Hans

[discocandy]

Yeah. Joost is making his software to good to be true.
Now only if it could handle CA and some local sharpening for my 8mm it would be perfect.

well it is perfect already......:cool:

[Jochum]

Hello everybody, the cubeface converter does not export any colorprofile like sRGB or AdobeRGB, so if I don't convert the sourcepicture before the cubeface-converter to sRGB (then its AdobeRGB) the final panorama's colors gets slight dull, but if I convert to sRGB the final pano gets oversaturated. Neither yield perfect result, how do you do?

[tinwe]

I'm still on Pano2VR

[Tuddi]

Unfortunately, the quality is better in Pano2vr.

http://flashificator.com/1/TestsForTrash/Pano2vrQuenqo1_l.jpg

http://flashificator.com/1/TestsForTrash/PTguiQuenqo1_l.jpg

First image is a cut out from a cube face output from pano2vr, and is 28.39 KB in size.

The second image is cut out from a cube face output from PTgui and is 40.25 KB in size.

The difference in quality is HUGE, but I expect that a future release will offer better quality from PTgui.

I will stick to using pano2vr until that happens.

Also worth noting....

The same cube face from the same equirectangular, both set at 100% quality in .jpg
PTgui: 4.67 MB
Pano2vr: 2.97 MB

So Pano2vr gives 37% smaller (in MB) images, but with 100% better quality.

The good thing is that PTgui finally offers the cube face conversion, but it needs to get better.

[Jochum]

Interesting Tuddi... and so many that are saying PTGui is so great...? But that was a dramatical difference. I shall experiment to export tiff and then save jpeg from photoshop instead. Thanks again.

[Jochum]

Cannot get that huge difference when saving jpeg from a tiff from PS. However PTgui has exported the tiff also so... Maybe PTGui makes not as good stitchquality simply... ...so tomorrow I experiment to export double sized from PTGui and then save smaller jpeg from PS.
BTW I use lanczos in PTGui, you Tuddi?

[Tuddi]

PTgui is without a doubt the best stitching software available... I have no reservations to give my full endorsement there, but the cube converting is very lacking... to say it mildly.

I also use lanczos at 300 ppi (default) and the smartblend plugin.

[Jochum]

Hmm... I use PTGui blend, of some reason I can't remember, but if the stitcher export is superiour it can't be that, it must be so that Pano2VR simply are better then both PTGUi and Photoshop when exporting jpegs?!

[HansNyberg]

PTgui is without a doubt the best stitching software available... I have no reservations to give my full endorsement there, but the cube converting is very lacking... to say it mildly.

I also use lanczos at 300 ppi (default) and the smartblend plugin.

First of all do not use the default Lanczoes interpolation for panos.
It sharpens to much and can severely destroy your panoramas.
Use bicubic normal for best neutral output..

From what I can see above you have not done your test with the same cubeface sizes. Thats why you get this extreme differences.
You have to choose the same in PTGui and Pano2VR.

Ptgui actually uses the bicubic normal for the cubeface generator.

Pano2VR default interpolar is also very bad and produces very soft images.

For a match to the bicubic you should choose Lanczoes 3 or even better the last one Blackmann sinc.
Lanczoes 3 matches exactly PTGui output also with compression as 70% gives you same size in both, and quality is almost identical.

However speed is extremelly slow with Pano2VR and batching is really complicated. PTgui takes 30 sec for a 1500pixels cubes while Pano2VR takes 2 minutes.

Hans

[Jochum]

In an another photographic forum (not panoramas) one guy seem sure that Lanczos give better quality than bicubic, and I don't understand why it would add sharpening, its most "calculate pixels in between", not sharpen, but maybe it does... though in beginning with PTGui when I compared I prefered lanczos but maybe that was just only that pano that it was better suited for. And when Hans talk about Blackman I understand he doesnt use only PTGui for stitch(but warp using PT least)... a science this too, too much for poor moi. :)

[sandy]

How come I never hear anything about Autodesk (Realviz) Stitcher. It also has a cubeface converter. Is it not good or something? It's the stitcher program I use and my goodness, it's so easy to use. I take my original circular fisheye photos in RAW and then adjust and convert those to TIF's in Lightroom, then almost always use Stitcher to convert those to .psd format layered cubefaces and autoexport to Photoshop for touchup of the nadir, save, and then use Stitcher to convert finally back to .jpg cubefaces or a spherical for web output. This way I always have full resolution uncompressed cubefaces or a spherical to do with what I might want in the future.

It's nice to use Stitcher to easily convert uncompressed files back and forth to sphericals for global adjustments and then to cubefaces for local touchups. Stitcher seems to work great. I've never used PTGui, am I missing something? Is there a quality of output issue I'm unaware of? Inquiring minds want to know.

[Jochum]

Don't know about the quality but it is more expensive yes right?

[discocandy]

How come I never hear anything about Autodesk (Realviz) Stitcher. ......... Stitcher seems to work great. I've never used PTGui, am I missing something? Is there a quality of output issue I'm unaware of? Inquiring minds want to know.


Well last time I checked stitcher it could absolutly not compare with ptgui but..
It could have changed for the good???

no idea. if you are happy with stitcher please keep using it :).
Most of the panographers here use or ptgui or hugin for stitching but there are many more programs you can use and like i said if that works for you it's great.:cool:

I use tocube (http://www.tiempo-digital.com/en/software/tocube/tocube.html)
still no batch conversion but i hope he will release it soon....

[HansNyberg]

In an another photographic forum (not panoramas) one guy seem sure that Lanczos give better quality than bicubic, and I don't understand why it would add sharpening, its most "calculate pixels in between", not sharpen, but maybe it does... though in beginning with PTGui when I compared I prefered lanczos but maybe that was just only that pano that it was better suited for. And when Hans talk about Blackman I understand he doesnt use only PTGui for stitch(but warp using PT least)... a science this too, too much for poor moi. :)

It may be a little confusing as Lanczoes are several different interpolators. The default in PTGui is just Lanczoes and it does some extra sharpening. It is also very bad if you use a large source image and reduce the panorama output to half or less.
In Pano2VR you have Lanczoes 2 and 3 which are better.
You also have them in PTgui if you use Panotools to warp the images.

Hans

[Jochum]

Thnx Hans, not easy this. :)

[tinwe]

Minutes?
My Pano2VR to six cubefaces 1000pix each, takes no more than 10 seconds.
That, and I really do find the GUI faster to set up and use.

That said - the best possible solution would of course have been if PTGui could save directly to CubeFaces as one of its standard file formats when creating the panorama. Instead of first saving the result in another shape.
Otherwise I can just as well keep using Pano2VR, since I really see no time gain in using PTGui for the cubeface converting, and time is no small concern neither.

But speaking of quality, the worst thief would when saving an equirectangular panorama to jpg, just to reopen the same jpg to convert it to cubeface jpg, just to open it up in Photoshop and retouch mirrors and nadir and resave it into jpg(!) Speak about image quality loss...
Of course one should save in tiff between steps, but that adds to time lost as well.

[Jochum]

Yes, save as tiffs, not jpeg, until the end.

[Jochum]

For my initial question I have now the answer: convert the sourcepicture to sRGB yes, in PS View>Proof Setup>Monitor RGB, then View>check the Proof Colors, now you see exactly on the screen how the final jpeg will look like, adjust the saturation so it looks good, less saturation most often, save the file, tiff of course like it was. This file you now use to export cubefaces from within PTGui and you get exact result.

[Tuddi]

Thank you for the advice Hans. I still have a lot to learn, so your words are very much appreciated!

I did the test again, and it went like this:

Source image for both tests:

The same Equirectangular rendering from PTgui
_____________________________________________

Original size of Equi:

8190x4095
37.0 MB
_________________________

JPG quality rendering set to 100% in both programs
_________________________

Converting time when both convert at the same time:

PTgui 50 seconds
Pano2vr 68 seconds
_________________________

Converting time when converting individually:

PTgui 46 seconds
Pano2vr 48 seconds
_________________________

Pixel size of cube faces:
PTgui 2607x2607
Pano2vr 2606x2606
_________________________

KB size of cube faces:

Back
PTgui: 7828
Pano2vr:4987

Down
PTgui: 9679
Pano2vr:6009

Front
PTgui: 7913
Pano2vr:4655

Left
PTgui: 8011
Pano2vr:4791

Right
PTgui: 8398
Pano2vr: 5012

Up
PTgui: 5406
Pano2vr: 2892
_________________________

Total size of all cube faces:

PTgui: 46,1 MB (48.377.856 bytes)
Pano2vr: 27,6 MB (29.032.448 bytes)

Yesterday I may have used 2 different equis to render from... this time I made sure to do the test properly, and there is a difference in quality and size.

When making the conversion to cube faces, there are no additional settings available in PTgui?

Hans, you have a PM.

EDIT:

Here the resulting cut outs from the images:

http://flashificator.com/1/TestsForTrash/ComparingPTguiWithPano2vr.jpg

[HansNyberg]

Minutes?
My Pano2VR to six cubefaces 1000pix each, takes no more than 10 seconds.
That, and I really do find the GUI faster to set up and use.

That said - the best possible solution would of course have been if PTGui could save directly to CubeFaces as one of its standard file formats when creating the panorama. Instead of first saving the result in another shape.
Otherwise I can just as well keep using Pano2VR, since I really see no time gain in using PTGui for the cubeface converting, and time is no small concern neither.

But speaking of quality, the worst thief would when saving an equirectangular panorama to jpg, just to reopen the same jpg to convert it to cubeface jpg, just to open it up in Photoshop and retouch mirrors and nadir and resave it into jpg(!) Speak about image quality loss...
Of course one should save in tiff between steps, but that adds to time lost as well.

It all depends on what interpolator you use, and of course the size of the pano.
1000 pixels cubes using the default Mitchell takes 17 sec on my 5 year old G5 2,0 dualcore.
Same with best interpolator blackmann sinc takes 64 sec.

Do not use Mitchel if you want best quality.

Why do you believe using Tif would take longer time?

Hans

[HansNyberg]

Tuddi

I guess the reason you get larger files with PTGui is that the scale is different.
Also the interpolator affect the size.

If you use the default Mitchell in Pano2VR you get smaller sizes as Mitchell is softening the images.
My test at 70% compression was 188kb for Mitchell and 280kb for Blackmann sinc
PTGui was in between and as I said comparable with Lanczoes 3

Hans

[Jochum]

Tested some things, Blackman and Laczos 3 etc during stitchingprocess in PTGui took almost half the day to stitch with on my little computer so... however lanczos default with its slight sharpening suits me well. Less sharpening than bicubic sharp.

[adriansalisbury]

I always find these technical discussions fascinating and realise how little I know about these programs. I confess to leaving the settings as default as I have no idea what the different options do.

Hans, are you suggesting that the best settings for PTGui would be:

Stitch using: PTGui
Blend Using: PTGui
Interpolator: Bicubal Normal

Do you find the 'Use fast transform' to be detrimental to the end result?

Oh to have some of your brains!

[allSaints]

Thanks Hans,

you are a bank of information!


Tommy

[HansNyberg]

I always find these technical discussions fascinating and realise how little I know about these programs. I confess to leaving the settings as default as I have no idea what the different options do.

Hans, are you suggesting that the best settings for PTGui would be:

Stitch using: PTGui
Blend Using: PTGui
Interpolator: Bicubal Normal

Do you find the 'Use fast transform' to be detrimental to the end result?

Oh to have some of your brains!

Yes for most use that is my preferred. I sometimes use enblend as an optional output for moving subjects and then put this panorama in a layer with the PTGui blended.
They will be different and usually you can pick the best parts from each and get a better result.
You can do the same on PC with smartblend + PTGui
I have to say that I never seen any difference using fast transform but I am on Mac and from some of the tests I seen the difference in time is much larger on PC. Never done any real tests though

Hans

[adriansalisbury]

Thanks Hans, not going too far wrong then ;)