16 bit in Spherical Panoramas

[MarcosTC]

Hi!

When I create a spherical panorama from a 16bit image the colours are oversaturated and the brightness way too low. Another member of this community suggested me to look for a feature called "linearize colours", which is related to 3D spaces in Ps. Actually,  when this property is unchecked when handling 3D objects at 16bits, it has the same effect on the image (I try this by creating a 3D object out of the same 16bit image). This option is not available in the 3D panel in a spherical panorama and I don't find it anywhere else.

I tried several formats and space colours, but the results are always the same. There is no way to work on this mode, since every effect you apply or tool you use it's wrongly applied taking those weird colours as reference. Some tools, like health brush, don't work at all, while they do in 8bit spherical panoramas.

I have Windows 10 and I am working with the last released version of Photoshop, 20.0.1.  My computer should be more than capable of dealing with this (Ryzen1800x, 1080 GTX, 16gb RAM). Of course, this problem is reproducible for any equirectangular 16bit image I have. Furthermore, this issue does not occur when the same image is changed to an 8bit mode before creating the spherical panorama.

I have already written in a discussion about this topic but the title was confusing and, after 2 days of research, I have finally came up with the root of this problem, which is working in 16bit.

I hope somebody could help me with this.

Best,

Nair

[Mylenium]

Working in 16bit or 32bit requires proper color management to be in place for correct conversions to screen color space and of course also to lower bit depths within PS itself. that's all there is to it. You need to read up on this stuff.

Mylenium

[MarcosTC]

Thanks for your tip. But I have already read (and studied) a lot about this stuff. That's why I stick to one colour profile (from my camera to my exports) which is already optimized in for my screen. But thank you anyway, I will definitely check that out again.

The equirectangular image in Ps looks fine, perfect, as I wish to be (16bit, sRGB). The problem here is that when I create a spherical panorama (3D > Spherical panorama > New panorama layer from selected layers) the image CHANGES dramatically, and this ONLY happens to 16bit images. I don't touch colour profile or bit depths. I am not talking about tiny changes, no; I am talking about huge changes. Like when you push both contrast and saturation sliders all the way to the right.

Probably I didn't explain myself properly, but I don't want to change the colour bit depth nor the colour profile (and I don't pretend to do it either in my workflow).  Those were just tests, and in those tests, I got the same result over and over again. With all those tests I just wanted to prove that this IS NOT a colour profile issue, but a bit depth visualization issue under specific conditions, which are 16bit images (unchanged, no matter the file format) in a spherical panorama. The equirectangular photo is ok, then you go to spherical panorama and it is a mess (only 16bit images, this does not happen in 8bit)

I will attach two images from before and after so everything stays clear. Hope you can no the difference. And colour change is not the only problem. Image resolution changes and some tools or effects don't work.

Best,

Marcos

[jane-e]

byta_visuals

Hi Marcos,

Did you try the two workarounds that davescm​ gave you in the other thread Spherical Panorama changes colors and quality (2019 CC 20.00) ?

~ Jane

[MarcosTC]

Hi Jane.

Thanks for reminding me. Didn't see or get any notification on the last replay from davescm. It definitively worked, as I lost tested. Is not the best solution for my already-huge images, but it definitively worked. One thing I couldn't use was the healing brush tool since it does not work in 32bit. But the image looks excellent and I could save the 16bit.

This is the thread with the workaround solutions

Hope Adobe fix this bug since we are many people using this option for 360 photography. It was great when they implemented the spherical panorama options, hope they keep thinking on us.

Thanks Jane!!

Marcos

[jane-e]

byta_visuals

You’re welcome, Marcos, and I see that you have now answered Dave on the other thread.

~ Jane