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P: Better auto stacking for bracketing, HDR, Focus Stacking and Panoramas

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
April 27, 2011
65 replies
5905 views

I currently shoot a lot of Bracketed shots for exposure blending, and with each shot having a different shutter speed the auto-stacking can fail to accurately stack the grouped shots - especially when the shutter speed gets up into 10+ seconds!I would love an option for Auto Stacking to work on the time delay between the shutter closing and the shutter opening again, so it is a true measure of the gap between shots. In this way I can auto-stack on all bracketed shots even when the shutter speed is seconds long. Calculate the time between shots by adding the shutter speed to the capture time of the first shot, and then compare this to the capture time of the next shot, and if I am using Continuous shooting, this gap will be only a fraction of a second, regardless of the shutter speed.Gary

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bryn_f

Known Participant

well I guilted myself in to collecting data rather than real work (ok I was already procrastign commenting here)

lightroom only shows the seconds in capture time (see here where they say they use difference in capture time https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/grouping-photos-stacks.html#WS4FA9631A-25CC-43e2-B3E2-20FC80E... )
on a landscape panorama where I wasn't in a hurry because nothing was moving (where I was shooting 0, -2, +2) on a 5ds r with a slow buffer

autostack group 1
1 - 3:14:47
2 - 3:14:47
3 - :47
4 - :48
5 - :48
6 - :49
7 - :50
8 - :50
9 - :50

autostack group 2
:52
:52
:52
:53
:53
:53

group 3
:55
:55
:55
:56
:56
:56

group 4
:58
:58
:58
:59
:59
:00
:01
:01
:01
:02
:03
:03
:04
:04
:04
:05
:05
:06
:06
:06
:07
:08
:08
:08

all of these exposure speeds were ~1/100th of second so provides no data on whether these use start or stop (and if they don't have access to sub second timing, then irrelevant)

I guess the fundamental issue is that I wish this set was bracketed by 3, so I could see the panorama in the grid, rather than being grouped in to sub batches. If I increase the interval to more than 1 second, say 10 seconds, since it's processing the entire folder, i starts to combine non bracketed pictures that aren't panoramas together.

The time taken to try different settings, and then get close then check and unstack (and change the stack if one is put in the wrong group) seems to add up to more than the time savings for me.

If I could select a group of images (without moving them to another folder) and run autostack on the selection, that would help some https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom_auto_stack_by_capture_time_use_curr...

also if they don't want to implement algorithm to try and figure out bracketing sequence (say 0, -, +, vs, -,0,+) ability to select a group of images and stack in groups of n

Stephen Shankland

Known Participant

I was just thinking of this idea a few days ago as a way to remove grunt work. I'm in favor.

C

Chezbriand

Participating Frequently

I'd be happy if a plugin solved this, but when you bracket, quite often photos are shot right after each other, so they are often shot very closely together in time, and the Exposure Bias changes.For example, when I shoot HDR I might have a -1 EV, 0 EV, and +1 EV set of 3 photos or I might have -2 EV, -1 EV, 0 , 1 EV, and 2 EV. I'd love for there to be a way , in addition to setting a time interval (as Auto Stack does today) to also ask the Auto Stack to look at the Exposure Bias, and group photos that are shot in sequence AND with different Exposure Bias to be grouped into a stack as a Bracket set.Perhaps Auto Stacking today can be made to do this, but I don't think it could properly distinguish times when I happen to snap two or three shots quickly in succession vs a series of differing EV values. When the EV values are different with shots close together in time, you can be certain they are a bracketed set.

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Chezbriand

Participating Frequently

Add a feature to LR that groups bracketed exposures into a stack (or other grouping mechanism based on bracketing). This is different from the current feature that stacks based on time elapsed between shots. This would actually have smarts to collect different exposures taken and group them together.

M

malcolmxavier

Participant

Feature Request: Auto Stacking for bracketing. We know the camera make, have a auto stacking feature that will (if selected) look at the camera, the order of bracketing (user defined) & the EV (0,+,-) and stack everything selected that meets those criteria.

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bryn_f

Known Participant

Rikk and Jeffrey, Autostack by capture time often doesn't work. Using the EXIF info (I know at least canon puts it in there for all modes except M, B) to know if it was bracketed, would help the autostack. see topic http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh... for discussion of scenarios where autostack doesn't work.

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Rich Fisher

Participating Frequently

The only option I find for auto stacking is time. Time between the beginning on image and the next. An improvement would be the time between the end of one image and the start of the next.

Even better would be HDR and Panoramic auto-stacking tools. In HDR stacking tools, LR would look at the exposure data as well as time between sequential images. Of course the options for auto number of images in the stack, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, .. images in the stack could be entered. I hesitate to suggest that LR check for alignment between images in a stack because this could be rather time consuming.

In panoramic auto-stacking, the exposures would need to be the same (though there could be an option to shut this off). Panoramic would be harder to implement as action could get confused with a panoramic. A truly smart panoramic auto-stacking mode might require auto alignment.

Another tool could be created that shows the images to be stacked together, in the grid view each stack would start on the left of the grid and be surrounded by a box. + key would expand the box to the right, Shift + would expand the box to the left, - key would reduce the box on the right, shift - would reduce the box on the left.

Finally a simple thing (I hope this is simple), when I right click I get the stacking options. Within the stacking options the hot keys are not shown. I only recently found out the CMD G will combine images into a stack.

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bryn_f

Known Participant

see autopano by kolor for how to find the brackets automatically using exposure info, then detect panoramas automatically

R

Rich Fisher

Participating Frequently

Currently the auto stack looks at the difference between the "start" time between images. If the exposure is longer than the start time, then the images are not auto stacked.

Improvements for LR auto stack

1. look at the end time when calculating the time difference between images

2. Set up an auto stack HDR mode. Not only look at the time difference but also look at exposure data. Auto stack HDR based upon user selected parameter - change shutter speed, change aperture (unlikely), number of images to be in the stack.

3. Set up auto stack Panoramic/focus stacking mode. Not only look at the time difference but also check to make sure exposure data is the same for all images.

4. Create a semi-automatic mode, that lets me color code images to the stacked. I could apart a stack into smaller stacks (stack 1 would be red, stack 2 would be blue, ...) or combine images/stacks.

areohbee

Legend

Hi all,

I just released Stacker 2.0 (free), which I think works well for:

* HDRs
* Panos

but maybe not

HDR Panos (yet)

It has 2 main advantages over built-in auto-stacking:
* Timewise, it considers time from shutter closed to re-opened, not just capture time, so works well for long-exposure bracketed shots too.
* Supports exposure criteria: you can say whether exposure should differ by a certain amount (e.g. HDR components), or should be close to the same (e.g. Panos).

Note: if it does NOT work well for you, then help me figure out why not! (contact me offline).

Oh - it only works in Windows a.t.m., but it's on my to-do list to port to Mac.

http://www.robcole.com/Rob/ProductsAn...

Rob

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