There is new functionality in lux: I call it 'snap-to-stitch'.
After a few weeks of development, I have gained enough confidence in my
implementation of the multilevel blending code to try and use it
automatically when a PTO is displayed. Here is the logic:
Per default, lux switches to 'high quality rendering' if there is no
activity: neither ongoing user input, nor any background jobs, and no
jobs pending in any of the queues. Until recently, 'hq rendering' would
display the 'live view' of a PTO file, just with better interpolation.
Now what happens is that a stitch or exposure fusion of the current view
is produced in the background and displayed once it's ready.
For 'ranked blending' - the default, used for panoramas - this may be
hard to notice, but if the live view showed 'hard' borders between the
images, with the switch to the blended result these borders should
simply 'disappear' after a while. For 'hdr blending' the switch is much
more noticeable, because due to the exposure fusion the intensity values
change a good deal - blown-out highlights darken and become visible, and
dark areas receive fill light.
The snapshot logic remains the same: 'E' produces a snapshot of the live
view, 'U' an exposure fusion and 'P' a panorama. As I have explained in
my last post, the default for the 'source-like' snapshots, done with
'Shift+E', 'Shift+U' and 'Shift+P' is now to produce a rendition
according to the p-line in the PTO.
So trying out the new functionality is simple, especially for panoramas:
just load a PTO with a panorama and see the boundaries between the
images disappear after some time. Play with it: zoom in and out, look at
other places. Once the viewer is at rest, the 'snap-to-stitch' should
happen after some time. If you don't like the new mode, you can easily
switch it off by pressing F12 or clicking on 'IDLE HQ'. For exposure
fusions, you have to invoke lux with --blending=hdr to see the effect.
Of course, all of this is CPU- and memory-intensive, so if you use it
with large panoramas, the background task may take long, and - as ever -
you may run into memory problems, so you may want to consider adding
--build_pyramids=no and possibly even --facet_squash=1 to your command
line to lower RAM consumption. The idea is not to use lux' PTO-viewing
capabilities to actually *look at* PTOs for any length of time - if you
want to do that, stitch/fuse to a single output file and view that
instead. What's intended is to give you a tool to inspect what the
blended/fused output will look like before you actually commit to
stitch/fuse.
And, again, a word of warning: lux' understanding of PTO files is
limited to source image projection, position, Ev, lens and vignetting
correction - and now the projection, shape, fov and crop from the p-line
for source-like snapshots. Don't be disappointed or surprised if other
stuff from the PTO file is simply ignored. And be aware of the fact that
this is new code and not yet well-tested. Start with something simple
and work your way up.
Kay
--
A list of frequently asked questions is available at:
http://wiki.panotools.org/Hugin_FAQ
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