180 degree fisheye into flat image ????

[stevesideas]

How do I do this whilst retaining the hdr information. I have basically merged 3 raw files together at different exposure levels to create a HDR image. So I was hoping to convert the fisheye image into a flat version. I have tried using HDR shop V1 but it cant seem to do it.

[stef.thomas]

The flexify plugin for photoshop might be the answer, you can get a trial version here: http://www.flamingpear.com/download.html#flexify

[stevesideas]

I did find panotools which looked pretty good as well, but I'll give this a try too. Thanks

[peterguthrie]

I use hugin: http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

[stevesideas]

Cheers Peter. Hugin is pretty cool.

Im new to all this so im not sure exactly what I should be doing. Should I be converting my 180deg fisheye into a rectangular map or something else so that I can use it as a map for a vraydomelight ??

[peterguthrie]

Morning Steve,

lets see if I can remember how i do it..

- In lightroom, correct CA and make sure colour balance is the same on all shots.
- export to 16 bit TIFF

- merge to hdr (in photoshop or photomatix - the latter does a better job of correcting moving elements i think) and save as floating point tiff

- open in hugin. set lens to circular fisheye and 8mm, pitch 90.
- click on preview panorama icon
- tweak focal length so that horizon is in middle (vertically)
- tweak yaw so that sun is in middle horizontally (makes controlling hdr easier later on in 3dsmax)
- click stitcher tab
- click 'calc optimal size'
- make sure its on equirectangular mode
- uncheck 'soft blending'
- click stitch now!
- save as tiff

- open in photoshop
- remove frigging dust from sky
- slide exposure slider to admire how lovely it is
- save as exr

well, something like that anyway.

[stevesideas]

Thanks Pete. I managed to work out the method from tinkering around with hugin, although I didnt get rid of the CA, but I know I need to do that. Is lightroom a MAC only programme ? because I only have photoshop cs4.

My fisheye is a 180 degree fisheye, should I still set the pitch to 90 ?

[peterguthrie]

i *think* you set the pitch to 90 if your lens was pointing straight up, as mine was (sigma 8mm)

really, i'm just fumbling in the dark with things like this, i just got what i needed from the program and moved on!

adobe lightroom is both mac and pc. You can do all the same things in PS but I use LR for photography work and for things like this its really quick - you can copy all 'processing' settings from one photo to the next 6 just by copy and paste so take away a lot of the donkey work.

[stevesideas]

Thanks for the info.

[andrewjohn81]

Just a thought that might keep things much simpler.
Using HDR shop isn't too bad, but for the transorms to work it's easiest if you have a 360.

What about just doubling the height of your image, but add plain old black at the bottom. Bring that in to HDR shop and try the transform again. It should unroll that to latitude longitude without a problem but would give you some extra black at the bottom which could be removed.

Although, I could have too much caffeine right now. ha

[stevesideas]

I'll see if that works. Thanks