WIDE Panoramic (9-shot) Distortion in Lightroom

[sharkster1021]

Were you able to merge DNG files in PTGui and export still in DNG or do you get cornered into a JPEG at some point in the process?

No option for DNG export unfortunately. Jpeg, tiff, PSD and a few others

 

[CalOldBlue]

Attached is a manually-shot 45 image (9 5-AEB shots in two rows; 5 in the top row 4 in the bottom). Did this as part of a Lightroom intro class I'm taking as a refresher.

Imported all 45 images into LR and told it 'make me an HDR Pano'... after a few minutes plus some minimal additional color/exposure tweaking and a small amount of crop attached is what came back.

(Conditions were wretched; too much smoke and shooting into the sun... this was just an exercise in mechanics, not aesthetics.)

 

[Reck_uk]

I got my mini 2 last week and noticed the issue with the 3x3 wide-angle pano.

In this mode the “edge” photos are taken at an angle and when I come to try and stitch them together I get a severely rounded horizon.

The DJI fly app is somehow able to stitch them together ok but when I use something like Affinity Photo I get the rounded horizon I mentioned.

Has anyone found an easy, free way around this, or even a paid, hard way that works?

If the edge photos weren’t taken at an angle we wouldn’t have this issue. I thought maybe it was a bug but seeing as the DJI fly app has been developed to stitch the photos like this it appears to be deliberate, but why do it this way?

 

[CalOldBlue]

I got my mini 2 last week and noticed the issue with the 3x3 wide-angle pano.

In this mode the “edge” photos are taken at an angle and when I come to try and stitch them together I get a severely rounded horizon.

The DJI fly app is somehow able to stitch them together ok but when I use something like Affinity Photo I get the rounded horizon I mentioned.

Has anyone found an easy, free way around this, or even a paid, hard way that works?

If the edge photos weren’t taken at an angle we wouldn’t have this issue. I thought maybe it was a bug but seeing as the DJI fly app has been developed to stitch the photos like this it appears to be deliberate, but why do it this way?

You may want to try applying some Transform:Vertical corrections to the individual photos before combining in a pano... don't know if that will work but that's what I would try.

 

[Meta4]

Has anyone found an easy, free way around this, or even a paid, hard way that works?

The simplest way is to manually shoot your panorama images.
It's quick easy and gives you full control.

 

[Reck_uk]

Well doing it manually is a workaround but the drone can do it with one button press and a lot more accurate in terms of camera positioning in the 3x3 grid than I could do manually repositioning the camera after each photo.

It just seems strange for DJI to make it so difficult for us to stitch the photos that the camera produces.

I shall have to start testing the different stitching applications to see if any of them can figure it out. There must be a way as the DJI app can do it with the jpg files.

I was just hoping someone had been here before me and figured it out.

 

[Meta4]

Well doing it manually is a workaround but the drone can do it with one button press and a lot more accurate in terms of camera positioning in the 3x3 grid than I could do manually repositioning the camera after each photo.

It's very easy to do it manually.
I always do it that way rather than use the aur\tomated feature as I like having more control.
Using the grid overlay in your app helps with overlaps.

I shall have to start testing the different stitching applications to see if any of them can figure it out. There must be a way as the DJI app can do it with the jpg files.

I was just hoping someone had been here before me and figured it out.

Before you go off to reinvent the wheel, here is another recent thread to get you started:

Panoramic slight fisheye in Lightroom

Coming from my workhourse Phantom 4 Pro, I'm loving the Air 2S! When I go to edit 9 shot panoramics in lightroom, however, the photos have a slight fisheye effect to them. Is there a lens correction profile in Lightroom that'll fix this? The P4P NEVER had any of these issues. Anyone else notice...

mavicpilots.com

I'm puzzled at how and why DJI does it.

 

[adcimagery]

I've worked with Lightroom for years, and I still find edge cases with the pano workflow where things just *don't* work. In this case, I think it's really hitting the hardest points for Lightroom to handle: a very wide lens, atypical lens movements (the tilt combined with a rotation around the nodal point), and the lack of Lightroom's controls for a finished pano.

With drone panoramas, I've just been going straight to PTGui, and I've been really happy with the results. Far more control, a quicker stitch on a 5950x and 3080 vs LR, and the preservation of individual files as layers for tweaks like brushing out cars in the finished result.

 

[vindibona1]

I've been really happy with On1 Photo Raw. I think it handles panos better than Lightroom... It handles a lot of things better and is far less clumsy.

 

[Reck_uk]

I've been really happy with On1 Photo Raw. I think it handles panos better than Lightroom... It handles a lot of things better and is far less clumsy.

Well I like On1 Photo Raw generally as well but it just can't cope with the pano shots from the drone which is the specific issue we're talking about here.

When you say it handles panos better than Lightroom I take it you're still getting a curved horizon in Photo Raw? If so it may be better than Lightroom but the output is still distorted so no good.

 

[Sebastian P. F.]

Has anyone found any new workaround on this issue since september 2021?

 

[BrianB]

The Mavic 3 has exactly the same issues

The internally stitches has a flat horizon, but several stitching errors. Try to stick in either LR or PTGui and you get the same result with the bulbous horizon.

Anyone found a resolution apart from going manual?

 

[Lambda]

Will DJI ever give Adobe the lens correction info, so LR can handle this
I use PTGui a lot for 360 panos, but for a 2 or 3 image pano, the distortion in the image is really bad. I ended up having to merge in perspective pano in LR, but you lose lots of the image. I don’t have this with the M2P

 

[Meta4]

Will DJI ever give Adobe the lens correction info, so LR can handle this

DJI incorporates the lens profile inside the image file and Adobe products read it automatically.

 

[BrianB]

DJI incorporates the lens profile inside the image file and Adobe products read it automatically.

This has to be the way that the wide pano is shot as the problem arises from the Mini, Air 2 and Mavic 3 which all do a twist of the Gimbal. This was not the same for the Mavic Air or Mavic 2. The internal stitched drone as a straight line but not when you stitch externally. This is an issue and clearly DJI and Adobe / PTGui are not communicating to each other as probably not an issue for many.

I’m off to see if I can try another edit fix in PTGui

 

[Meta4]

This has to be the way that the wide pano is shot as the problem arises from the Mini, Air 2 and Mavic 3 which all do a twist of the Gimbal. This was not the same for the Mavic Air or Mavic 2. The internal stitched drone as a straight line but not when you stitch externally. This is an issue and clearly DJI and Adobe / PTGui are not communicating to each other as probably not an issue for many.

I’m off to see if I can try another edit fix in PTGui

There's something weird going on with the way DJI twist the camera.
If it was as simple as just having a non-level horizon, it would still be easy to stitch regardless of the angle.
I tried all kinds of options and couldn't stitch them satisfactorily - see the link in post #27.

 

[Lambda]

I sure wish I had the answer you are looking for.. I am struggling with the same exact problem, using the multiple pan images from my Mavic 2 Pro. I have no problem doing a manual shoot- e.g.: using the grid, I manually shoot from left to right, with a 30% overlapping of the images. I try to take about 5-6 images. Then upload to Photoshop and then to Adobe Camera RAW. I select all (CTRL+A) (right click on any of the pictures), then hit "merge to panorama" and the program runs well, using the other options in the dialogue bos. When I get the entire image into Photoshop, I then bring the full pan back into ACR and make the edits.

Dale
Miami

View attachment 131947

(1) Here in the second location, we can see DJI's image correction really going to work. The target image (left) has fantastic flat lines throughout and produces a really clean usable image.

(2) The auto-photos from the Wide Mode Pano setting have the angled horizon in the peripheral (seen above) which prevents LR from producing a flat horizon when it does the stitching.

(3) Manually shooting the 9 shots for a wide-sized pano, we have corrected the horizon issue, but no amount of barrel distortion correction in lightroom is close to removing the fisheye.

I have same issue with 4 shots

 

[Dale D]

I have same issue with 4 shots

Here is a three shot pano taken with Mavic 2 Pro using my standard procedure, e.g.: 30% overlap, upload to Adobe Camera Raw, select all, right click, merge to panorama. This is the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida.Then, edited in ACR (Camera Raw).

Dale
Miami

 

[adcimagery]

This has to be the way that the wide pano is shot as the problem arises from the Mini, Air 2 and Mavic 3 which all do a twist of the Gimbal. This was not the same for the Mavic Air or Mavic 2. The internal stitched drone as a straight line but not when you stitch externally. This is an issue and clearly DJI and Adobe / PTGui are not communicating to each other as probably not an issue for many.

I’m off to see if I can try another edit fix in PTGui

There's something weird going on with the way DJI twist the camera.
If it was as simple as just having a non-level horizon, it would still be easy to stitch regardless of the angle.
I tried all kinds of options and couldn't stitch them satisfactorily - see the link in post #27.

You should be able to just click and drag the panorama in the Panorama Viewer in PTGui to correct this - the default stitch and projection might not be exactly what you want, but it's correctable.

 

[Meta4]

You should be able to just click and drag the panorama in the Panorama Viewer in PTGui to correct this - the default stitch and projection might not be exactly what you want, but it's correctable.

The issue is caused when the camera is pointed downwards for the initial shot.
If the camera is level with the horizon for the original shot, the problem is solved.