P: "The file appears to be damaged" - Merge To Panorama with large Canon 5Ds files.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I am attempting to create high resolution HDR Tilt-Shift Panoramas with Lightroom's Merge To HDR and Merge To Panorama functions. I have taken multiple images with a tilt-shift lens on a Canon 5Ds. Each finished photograph would be composed from 15 or 21 separate images. I take 5 or 7 photographs, 1 stop apart, from the center position then 5 or 7 from the shift right position and the same from the shift left position. Each set of 5 or 7 is merged to hdr to create one dng file. This process works fine. The resulting 3 hdr images are then merged to panorama which completes successfully. When I switch to the develop module or open the panorama file in camera raw I get a message stating "The file appears to be damaged". I have reproduced this error on different computers. My Lightroom version is the 2015.4 Release and Camera Raw is v9.4. Both computers are running Windows 10. It seems to me that Lightroom is struggling with the large file sizes coming from the 5Ds. Has anyone else experience this issue.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

This should now be fixed as of the CC2015.6/6.6 update released today. You can find more details here: http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2016/06/lightroom-cc-2015-6-now-available.html

However, to correct the issue, the images have to be merged again. The bug was with how the resulting DNG was created so HDR and pano DNGs created before the fix, will still show the error.

[andyjmadl]

No! The problem still remains!
I tried today after updating with whole new pictures but "the file appears to be damaged". 

[J453]

Hi Andreas, did you merge the images from the originals again? The bug was with how the resulting DNG was created so HDR and pano DNGs created before the fix, will still show the error.

[andyjmadl]

Yes, I merged 3 new original pictures that I shot TODAY, and before starting LR I updated! So there is no chance I had an old DNG with the error already in it.  
I merged 9 RAW's to 3 DNG's to 1 HDR Panorama and voila there is the error again.

[andyjmadl]

... strangely it happend only with 2 out of 12 HDR-Panoramas

[ssprengel]

Can you put the 9 raws out somewhere on www.dropbox.com and post a public share link, here?

[andyjmadl]

I just saw the panoramas with the error were only made with 2 DNG's out of 6 RAW's but still the error appears. Here they are:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mig8u95ikm8wbzu/AADbxloEFpUS6t0QIjtIufoCa?dl=0

[ssprengel]

I am able to stitch the HDR-Pano using ACR 9.6 on Windows 7 just fine.  I need to get to my better computer with more memory to test in LR.

What are your HDR options?  You cannot have Auto Align enabled because that changes the width and height of the result image to something slightly smaller and slightly different for each HDR DNG, but you need to have the HDR output the same size for each pano source DNG, so Auto Align must be off. 

The only HDR options I have turned on are Ghost:  High and Show Overlay, mainly because of the people and moving cars in the first set.  Both Auto Align and Auto Tone need to be off.

I was able to get both panos to look reasonably correct by using Perspective and Boundary Warp 100%, although I did use Upright - Full to make things completely squared up.

If I get any different (non-working) results in LR I'll report back.  The only non-Adobe-default setting I used for the HDR source CR2s was Chromatic Aberration=On.

[ssprengel]

LR 5015.6 worked flawlessly.  I cleared my CR cache using LR / Prefs / File Handling, and otherwise the same settings described for ACR, just above.  I started with just the CR2s, ignoring what other files were on dropbox:

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

"but you need to have the HDR output the same size for each pano source DNG, so Auto Align must be off.  "

Why is that, I used it before and there was no problems!? But now I cant stich my photos...

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

So if I have deleeted the original RAWs and only have the HDR dngs, I can't stich my panorama now without erors?

[andyjmadl]

Thanks Steve for your feedback!
I merge HDR as a first step before I do any editing on the pictures. My HDR options are reduce ghost effects ON (or whatever the proper name is, my LR is in german), auto allign ON and auto tone ON. So maybe thats the reason why it doesn't work properly? And to save time I like using the shortcuts (Shift + Ctrl + H / M).
The other files in the dropbox folder are the merged HDR and Pano files with the error just to show you I'm not making this up.
Thanks for quick respond!

[andyjmadl]

No, there is a way! Try to export the HDR/Panorama file as a DNG file, reimport the new DNG, error should be gone (worked that way before the last update)! You just lose time in your workflow doing this with every single image.
Or stitch the files in the CameraRAW dialogue in PS.

[ssprengel]

Have you turned off Auto Align during the HDR step? 

When stitching with ACR, I was getting an error when I had Auto Align still on, where the two HDR DNGs were 3 pixels different in size from each other and more than 10 pixels smaller than the original photos.  The error was that the image was too large to stitch.

The Ghost option is not just off and on, it is a range, and I used the strongest to get rid of the most movement.

[Danie Bester]

Downloading LR 2015.6. Unfortunately; the error message still persist when building HDR's and Panoramas. Maybe it will be fixed with the next update, I hope.

[Danie Bester]

Downloading LR 2015.6. Unfortunately; the error message still persist when building HDR's and Panoramas. Maybe it will be fixed with the next update, I hope.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

This error still seems to be appearing on 2015.6. HDR-Pano.dngs with my GR

[Danie Bester]

Jeffrey, the error message still persist after the latest release 2015.6. I create loads of hdr-panos with tilt-shift lenses as part of my workflow when shooting architecture and large interiors. I absolutely prefer dng format over tiff and would like to stick with my lightroom workflow. Any news on why these annoying errors exist?

[esteban_zissou]

I am also still having this problem.

So everyone has this issue, Adobe acknowledge it, release an update which claims to fix it yet the problem still exists. This is very reminiscent of the great healing brush fiasco last year when every new update not only failed to rectify the problem but created new ones *cough - liquify tool..*  I lost all faith in that ever being fixed so I've stuck with PS 2014 and removed myself from receiving any updates from that thread due to the appalling communication from Adobe staff.

All I ask is this, Adobe: why not TEST your updates before releasing them, all you had to do was try and stitch some HDR'd files to see that the problem still exists. Why are your paying customers doing this for you?

[1ndivisible]

Why would they test the fixes? The most important thing is that there are lots of 'fixes' listed under the 'What's New' section for the update. It doesn't matter if they are fixed or not. As long as most people think that they are fixing things. This allows them to avoid actually fixing any of issue and concentrate on some new tool that no-one wants or needs.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

They do test their fixes, but there can be multiple different causes with similar symptoms. Ever played whack-a-mole?  You fix one thing and another pops up somewhere else.

[esteban_zissou]

I'm not sure how this could have been missed, we have specified OS, camera bodies, file types and the exact process. All they had to do was repeat this.

And yes we regularly play whack-a-mole every time the 'Update' but is hit on our CC apps!

[andyjmadl]

Yes right, I always use the light ghost option, I had Auto Allign turned on of course. I need these things to work properly, can't understand why it takes endless months to fix this. Obviously I'm not the only one who has still the same problems. 

[andyjmadl]

I don't understand why this topic still is marked as "solved", it's not!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

me neither, still one year from now and I`m having the same issue!