# Suggestion to merge panoramas of DEVELOPED images



## rjalex (Sep 9, 2017)

Dear friends,
another panorama question, if I may.

When I merged 3 shots into a panorama, the geometry and stitching is great but the resulting image showed a markedly visibile colour change within the three.

Upon inspection I noticed the Temp and Tint of thoese 3 RAW shots was set at different levels and so I made them the same and slightly correct the exposure amongst them to have a uniform base.

When I launched the merge on the 3 corrected images I still get the original behaviour.

What is the easiest and highest quality way of merging the CORRECTED shots ?

Thank you


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## Johan Elzenga (Sep 9, 2017)

Lightroom ignores the develop settings when stitching a panorama. For raw files that makes sense, because then you can develop the panorama itself as if it was a raw file. If you shot jpegs, you may want to adjust them before stitching. However, because Lightroom ignores that, you will have to export these first and then stitch the exported copies.


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## rjalex (Sep 10, 2017)

Thank you Johan.
All my shots are RAW but once they've been stitched together I end up with one composite image each sector of which has a different colour temperature corresponding to the original setting.


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## johnbeardy (Sep 10, 2017)

One thing LR doesn't ignore is dust spots, so try to resolve these before merging. If you work in AutoSync mode, you can fix dust spots in the sky very efficiently. So always correct dust spots before merging - unless you enjoy fixing the same spot every time it appears in the merged file!

John


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## Johan Elzenga (Sep 10, 2017)

True, but remember one thing: dust spot corrections are hard wired into the panorama. They can't be undone. The dust spot locations of the first images are used for all images. That means that in another image, the dust spot may be right in the branches of a tree and the correction may not come out well. But because of the hard wiring, you can't change that anymore.


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## Johan Elzenga (Sep 10, 2017)

rjalex said:


> Thank you Johan.
> All my shots are RAW but once they've been stitched together I end up with one composite image each sector of which has a different colour temperature corresponding to the original setting.



That is not how it's supposed to be. Are you still using Lightroom 6.5? If so, update to 6.12.1. Perhaps this is a bug and got fixed in some update.


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## johnbeardy (Sep 10, 2017)

JohanElzenga said:


> True, but remember one thing: dust spot corrections are hard wired into the panorama. They can't be undone. The dust spot locations of the first images are used for all images. That means that in another image, the dust spot may be right in the branches of a tree and the correction may not come out well. But because of the hard wiring, you can't change that anymore.



Yes, you do have to review healing before starting the merge. That review is quick compared with the time spent repeatedly healing spots after merging. So always fix dust spots before merging.


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## Johan Elzenga (Sep 10, 2017)

johnbeardy said:


> Yes, you do have to review healing before starting the merge. That review is quick compared with the time spent repeatedly healing spots after merging. So always fix dust spots before merging.



Agree. The best way to do it is to spot heal the first image, synchronise and look at the results in the other images. Just realise that if you do find a problem, it doesn't help if you remove or correct the spot healing in that image. You have to remove it in the first image, or correct it and then start the merge with this particular image as the most selected one. If you find a problem with more than one image, the only way to solve it is not to heal these particular spots.


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## rjalex (Sep 10, 2017)

JohanElzenga said:


> That is not how it's supposed to be. Are you still using Lightroom 6.5? If so, update to 6.12.1. Perhaps this is a bug and got fixed in some update.



This is what I see on my Mac when I hit the Help->System Info button

Lightroom version: CC 2015.5 [ 1067055 ]
License: Creative Cloud
Operating system: Mac OS 10
Version: 10.12 [5]


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## Johan Elzenga (Sep 10, 2017)

OK, so you have Lightroom CC2015.5. That is an old version. Lightroom is at CC2015.12.1 right now. Maybe you should also update your personal info here, because that says you have the perpetual version, not the CC subscription.


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## Tony Jay (Sep 10, 2017)

You may want to disable auto white balance on your camera as well as make sure that exposure settings are fully manual...
Nothing more irritating than having to mess around trying to match white balance and exposure before trying to merge a panorama.
This is especially so if one is shooting in low light.


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## Hoggy (Sep 11, 2017)

JohanElzenga said:


> OK, so you have Lightroom CC2015.5. That is an old version. Lightroom is at CC2015.12.1 right now. Maybe you should also update your personal info here, because that says you have the perpetual version, not the CC subscription.



Actually, LR is at 2015.12 - it's only PS that got the camera raw x.12.1 update.

I had to make sure and check though..  I'm desperately hoping 2015.12.1 will fix the problem with All the AMD drivers I've tried for my integrated HD6620.  I had to revert back to 2015.10 in order to keep using the GPU acceleration. (I had kept _wondering_ why things were so slow all of a sudden, until I finally saw that known problem with x.10.1 & x.12.)


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## Johan Elzenga (Sep 11, 2017)

Tony Jay said:


> You may want to disable auto white balance on your camera as well as make sure that exposure settings are fully manual...
> Nothing more irritating than having to mess around trying to match white balance and exposure before trying to merge a panorama.
> This is especially so if one is shooting in low light.



If you shoot in raw (and the poster does) and you use Lightroom to stitch the panoranas, then matching the white bakance should not do anything because white balance settings are ignored. Obviously it doesn't hurt (and setting exposure to manual is definitely a good idea), but this whole discussion is about the fact that the white balance setting of the individual images is not carried over.


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## johnbeardy (Sep 11, 2017)

WB settings aren't ignored. Panorama Merge applies the WB values from the most-selected photo.


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## Johan Elzenga (Sep 11, 2017)

johnbeardy said:


> WB settings aren't ignored. Panorama Merge applies the WB values from the most-selected photo.



What I meant is that it doesn't matter whether or not you've set the WB to a fixed value for all images, for exactly that reason. Lightroom takes the WB from the first selected image in the same way it takes the WB for a raw image. The point is: the WB settings of the other images are irrelevant and do not influence the result of the merge.


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## LRList001 (Sep 12, 2017)

rjalex said:


> Thank you Johan.
> All my shots are RAW but once they've been stitched together I end up with one composite image each sector of which has a different colour temperature corresponding to the original setting.



Try exporting the developed images as TIFFs, then re-import them back into LR as new images and merge those.  Does that do what you want?


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## rjalex (Sep 13, 2017)

Thank you all.
To clear up some confusion: I do shoot only RAW and in Manual setting (I'm old enough to just like it this way ).

It's not clear to me as to why the 3 shots when loaded in LR have such different light temperature values.

Of course if I set the 3 values to the same AND export in TIFF and then reimport them, the problem would go away, but it's a cumbersome process.

If it could be useful I could post and make available the 3 RAW files on Dropbox.

Take care


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## Jim Wilde (Sep 13, 2017)

That would probably be a good idea, Bob.


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## rjalex (Sep 14, 2017)

FWIW even the 2015.12 update has the same (wrong) behaviour.
The TIFF export method of course worked well albeit being cumbersome.

Thank you all.

PS If anyone would care understanding why this happens I could make the 3 RAW (Sony ARW) files available for analysis and test.


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## Hoggy (Sep 14, 2017)

rjalex said:


> PS If anyone would care understanding why this happens I could make the 3 RAW (Sony ARW) files available for analysis and test.



As Jim posted, you might want to do this..  I think you've gotten others curious, too.
Even _I'm_ kinda curious myself, now. 

It will be interesting because raw's are supposed to be scene-referred color, as are both of the LR-merge DNG outputs - so white balance shouldn't even be entering into it.   Perhaps you've even found a bug..??


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## rjalex (Sep 16, 2017)

Hi sorry for the delay. For some reason I've deleted the RAW after exporting the TIFFs. As soon as I get some time to go to the camera and find and reimport the originals I'll be happy to upload.
Thanks you


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