Problem stitching panoramas

[donjiskra]

I have a problem with LR classic stitching spherical panos shot with a DJI Phantom 4 Pro. It distorts them such that the horizon rises in the center of the stitch. The Phantom shoots 34 images that Microsoft ICE has no problem stitching:

Here's what it looks like in LR, with merging options shown.

I was quite excited when I got the correct result on ONE pano after the latest update, but alas, that was a short-lived success. Multiple panos since then in the last couple weeks give the same distorted result.

I don't see any settings I can change in LR to fix this. No transform tool will correct it that I can tell.

Any idea what is going on here?

Some details: 

DJI 20MP Sony FC camera 24mm equivalent lens

3:2 Aspect Ratio: 5472 × 3648 raw DNG files

Lightroom Classic latest version as of 25-Nov-19

Windows 10 fast desktop PC

[Jao vdL]

This is a limitation of the panoramic stitch tool in Liightroom. There are no settings whatsoever and it easily gets confused and gives you curved horizons. I always use hugin for all my stitches of spherical panos because of this.

[donjiskra]

Thanks for your response, Jao_vdl. I googled hugin and it looks interesting, will check it out when I get to the photo processing PC.  I was hoping there was some secret tip to make it work better in LR so that I can edit the stitched pano in raw format! 

[Jao vdL]

Hugin has a steep learning curve but is the absolute best I have found. It is not easy to use! There are some commercial programs that are about as good and have a better GUI but they are expensive. Both Lightroom and Photoshop's pano stitching are very rudimentary and there are basically no settings

[donjiskra]

Thanks again. Do you know of any that will ouput to a raw format rather than just tiff and jpeg?

[Jao vdL]

No only Lightroom can do that. It is a quasi raw format that Lightroom creates (it is really a tiff but with the white point not baked in) by the way and there really is not that much difference between using a 16-bit tiff from hugin and a dng from Lightroom's own stitch. This is how I generate my 360 panos such as this one:

https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/103896020270046143315/place/ChIJe1TijlzbPocRV28IklPMkOw/@37.806,...

[donjiskra]

Can't argue with those results, Jao! I especially enjoyed #15 🙂

I haven't had great success editing tiffs from Microsoft ICE, but it does a great job stitching.

Hugin keeps popping up in my searches, so might have to lean into that learning curve.

[GoldingD]

Was this hoot multi row or single row?

And despite single or multi, what happens if you choose  Perspective and crank up the Boundry Warp slider?

[donjiskra]

Sphere, multi row, 34 images from a drone software algorithm. The drone camera cannot point straight up so I rely heavily on autofill boundary Warp scaling etcetera to fill in the sky.  

Any other pano format then sphere won't merge gives an error which is to be expected.