Creating your own spherical HDR pano's (android phone needed)

[Robert V.]

Hi,

I found myself a new and easy way to create my own HDR's to use as environmental lighting.

This is what you need:
Android phone
Robot View
A normal camera
a nice location

1) First, make a spherical image (call it pano) using robotview, stich it inside this program (takes a while, some bugs are present. It's still in development...) and send it to your pc (dropbox for example).
2) And don't forget to make your own backplates with your normal camera. The place where you took the pano should be visible.

3) your pano can look like this (this is my neighbourhood)


Load the pano In photoshop and apply any corrections, filters, etc. what you want (auto color was in this case very useful, it made the snow more white).

4) For HDR you actually need 3 pictures, low, normal and high contrast.
To fake this, make a low and high contrast from the original picture, by doing this:
Image>adjustments>Exposure (PS)
+2:

-2:


5) combine these pictures to a HDR: File>automate>Merge to HDR (pro)

When they ask for "manually set EV" Give the normal picture an exposure time, like 1/60th. and the light-version a higher exposure time (1/30th for example) and do the same for the darker version (e.g. an exposure time of 1/125th).

6) set it as a 32bit file, you can enable "remove ghost" sometimes it improves the picture.

7) Now you have your own HDR.

result:


good luck!

[Speedster]

Very neat!  Question- Photoshop Cs or Cs Extended?  I'm just getting Cs5 and can't decide between the standard Cs5 or Cs5 extended.  Thanks for posting this!
Bill G

[Robert V.]

I have the extended, but so far haven't used any of it. It's mainly the 3D-part which the extended version support. You can actually paint a 3d model inside PS, just by brushing on it, etc.

From a site:

"What’s the main difference between the Extended version of Photoshop CS5 and the standard version?

The main differences between the two are the extended version had some really neat features for video and 3D professionals in it. However, don’t let the word professional throw you off. For me, if you’re somewhat into those features (say a graphic designer) I think those features can be huge because they make working in that field a lot easier. There’s also an Analysis menu in the extended edition that is geared primarily toward medical and scientific professions so if you fall into that category you’ll probably want to grab the extended version as well."


But hey, we have got keyshot, don't we?

[JohnG]

Very neat!  Question- Photoshop Cs or Cs Extended?  I'm just getting Cs5 and can't decide between the standard Cs5 or Cs5 extended.  Thanks for posting this!
Bill G

If you're going to be working a lot with 32 bit files .hdr and .exr then you'll need to get the extended version as this supports adjustment layers, paint tools, clone stamp, 32 bit colour picker etc.
None of these features are available with the standard version when working with 32 bit files.

You also get the 3D menu which gives you the 3D features tbh I haven't used these much although there is one 3D menu option which I use a lot,
3D/New Tiled Painting
This is very handy if you're making tileable textures as PS will make a 3x3 Image based on the Image you select so you can see how well, or not its tilling.

If you don't think you'll need any of these features I don't really think its worth it.