Welcome back to episode TWO of HDR Virtual Tour Masterclass with Rioch Theta Z1 and Professional
Mirrorless cameras like the SONY Alpha 1 or SONY A7 R4.
Today we will cover the missing Ricoh Theta Z1 tutorial - bracketed HDR editing using
Photomatix.
So you have more control of the HDR look instead of auto-blend within the camera using Dual
Fisheye Plugins.
Using Photomatix can make your final result look more natural instead of that HDR look.
We will even cover how to upload your 360 virtual tours on Facebook.
If you do not want to spend extra money on another HDR software, I will also cover the
Exposure Blending technique in Photoshop, which will achieve a similar result with more
refined control.
This is a technical tutorial, but the knowledge I share will dramatically increase your virtual
tour quality.
Let's learn!
Hey, what's up, everybody!
It is your boy Hugh here from CreatorUp.
If you have not already, please watch the Theta Z1 HDR tutorial with the Dual Fisheye
plugin here first.
That tutorial only covers how to use the internal HDR blending.
It is very good and very easy to use.
But there are two drawbacks - it takes longer during capture onset blending the HDRs, and
you have no control over how the HDR looks.
So every Theta Z1 Dual fisheye photo look kind of the same - the hyper-realistic polish
look.
The white balance is usually off as well - a common issue of HDR blending.
So a more professional way to do Theta Z1 with dual fisheye plugins is actually to do
9 bracketed HDR photos without auto in-camera blending.
It will save more than half the time in capture.
Here are the Dual fisheye settings - bracketed 9.
You can also set up manual stops of exposures based on the environment to have a more fine
control without using the dual fisheye plugins.
That is up to you how much time you want to spend on set.
Then in post, you will have a folder of 9 DNG images.
Drop them all in directly inside Photomatix.
Photomatix will detect your exposure brackets.
Go ahead to click Next: Choose merge options.
Uncheck Align source images.
If you have moving people or objects in the scene - like in a tourist attraction with
lots of people - you can enable remove ghosts option to remove ghosting.
A very powerful features for HDR photographer.
I don't use it here as this is an interior virtual tour.
Check reduce noise and drop down use "all source images".
Make sure to check reduce chromatic aberrations - this is another advantage compared to Theta
Z1 in-camera HDR.
They usually have a crazy amount of purple fringes - you can see that in lots of the
not-so-professional virtual tours.
You can even spot that in some of the sample works by people who are offering "paid courses"
on virtual tour creation.
You better watch out who you learn this from.
Raw conversion options drop-down, you can even set white balance manually here.
Then go ahead and merge to HDR.
You can set batch processing in Photomatix for your entire tours - which saves you hours
of manual work if you are only using Adobe Lightroom.
Under Automate, Batch processing.
Set the folder of your entire tour.
Tell photomatix your bracket selection.
For Theta Z1 is 9 images at a time.
Then you can pick a preset here and start the automation.
Talking about Preset, let's take a look at the image we just merged.
The advantage of photomatix is its preset library to save you time.
I really like their interior selection on the interior virtual tour - which looks really
realistic.
You can adjust more settings here.
If your images are already stitched - like using Qoocam 8K or Insta360 ONE X2, you can
check the 360 image option, it will NOT create a stitch line.
Photomatix Pro is the only HDR software that works directly with 360 photo without stitch
line.
I will pick the balance preset here and click next.
Here you can add sharpening on your image.
If you do not want to use Adobe Lightroom, you can add sharpening here and use Theta
Z1 stand-alone stitcher - which is detailed in this tutorial.
So you don't even need to go tho any Adobe product to have the final 360 image.
Most people tho use Adobe Lightroom.
So I will not sharpen here.
Open the output image in Adobe Lightroom Classics.
It is already well balanced with a very natural look.
The beauty of Photomatix is it does not have HDR artifacts like unnature color cast.
We will do extra chromatic aberration removal here.
Under detail, we add sharpen to the image.
The amount is around 100 - as Theta Z1 takes very soft image in DNG.
But then you hold down CMD in mac or Alt in PC to draw the Masking slider.
Until you see it only sharpen the details you want but not the noise.
Great!
Now go ahead right-click on the image and edit in, Edit in Ricoh Theta stitcher.exe.
If you don't see this option - please refer back to my first Theta Z1 HDR tutorial.
Usually, Theta Z1 stitcher does a really good stitch in auto, as you see here.
Just go ahead and render it out.
Upload on Facebook as a 360 interactive photo There are usually TWO ways to inject 360 meta
into your photo so Facebook will recognize it as a 360 interactive photo.
If you don't know what I am talking about - go visit my official Facebook page at facebook.com
/ 360creator and check out some of my personal works.
Facebook is a great way to get exposure of your 360 works, as you see, my photo usually
get thousands of likes.
You can even click this DOT DOT DOT here and Save Post.
Then you can watch this in your Oculus Quest 2 VR headset under your saved item on the
Oculus browser.
Way #1.
Use Photoshop.
If you have Adobe Photoshop, this is really easy.
Open the stitched output photo in Photoshop.
Under 3D, Spherical panorama, New panorama layer from selected layers.
Now your photo become 360.
Go to again under 3D, Spherical panorama, Export panorama - and export it as JPG.
Then you can upload this as regular photo onto Facebook and it will turn into 360 interactive
photo on Facebook.
Facebook has a limitation of 60Mb photo.
If your photo is more than 60Mb, you might just render out an regular 360 jpg under 60Mb
in size and inject meta manually.
Way #2, download this free software called Exif Fixer.
Drop in your 360 photo here and hit Add metadata.
It then works on Facebook as well as 360 interactive photos.
This is a great way to add meta if you use Affinity Photo or your use direct export from
Photomatix using camera like Qoocam 8K or Insta360 ONE X2.
Exposure Blending If you do not want to spend extra money on
Photomatix or other HDR software, you can also use a technique in Photoshop called Exposure
Blending.
This is actually what the Pro do as well to get a more fine-tuned result without any HDR
artifacts.
It is time-consuming tho.
Let me also show you how.
Open the nine bracketed photo in Lightroom.
Under development, select all 9 images, right-click, Edit in, open as layers in Photoshop.
Re-order your layers and make sure the brightest images stay on top and the darkest image stay
in the bottom.
For 9 auto bracketed photos of Theta Z1, I only use the middle five photos to save time.
Feel free to use all of them if you have a more dramatic lighting situation.
I go ahead and delete the top 2 and bottom 2 layers to just stay clean.
Move the 2nd layer on top.
Go to layer, layer mask, and hide all.
Now select the second layer and go to Channels tag here.
Control and click RGB layer to make a selection.
Hold ctrl + alt + shift on a PC or control + cmd + shift and click the RGB layer again
to refine your selection.
Now, you have a selected mask or safe area.
You can go back to the layer.
Click the Mask.
Make sure your front ground color is WHITE.
Pick the brush tool and make sure your Flow is around 30 to 40 precent.
Now go ahead and paint on the highlight to bring back the over-exposed area.
Before and after, before and after.
You see now the windows details are back.
And your shadow is still super low noise - which is great.
Now repeat the same steps on all the layers.
The only difference is when you refind your selection using ctrl + alt + shift and click.
You can do it multiple time depend on the brightness of your scene and what you want
to bring back.
If you make mistakes, just switch the front ground color back to black and fix your mask.
It is that easy.
In the last layer, I usually use ctrl + alt + shift click like more than 10+ time to really
narrow my selection on only the windows area and paint the detail back in.
Look, the result is amazing!
The room is bright, and the windows are clear instead of blown out with no noise in the
shadow.
The best part is, this is not HDR, so no HDR artifacts whatsoever.
It gives us the most nature look.
The only downsize is very time-consuming.
You will get a way easier process if you just capture this with a professional Mirrorless
camera like the SONY Alpha 1 instead of using Theta Z1.
The rest of the process is the same as above.
Go tho Lightroom with Theta Stitcher and inject meta for publishing on Facebook.
Thank you for watching another in-depth tutorial on professional HDR virtual tour creation.
As you see the post-editing using cheap consumer cameras like Qoocam 8K, Insta360 ONE X2 or
even the Theta Z1 is very time-consuming or can be expensive.
Photomatix really make the process easier but the best way is still use a professional
DSLR or Mirrorless camera like the SONY Alpha 1 or Canon R5.
So the next tutorial, we will be back on HDR Virtual Tour masterclass with Mirrorless camera.
We will focus on PTGui HDR workflow.
Instead of using Theta Stitcher, Photomatix, Lightroom and Photoshop, we will replace everything
with only PTGui Pro.
And you will see how much time you can save in post-editing by using a professional camera.
Again you can see the result already now in episode one.
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can continue to help the professional virtual tour community FREE with LOVE.
My goal is to help you make money with great high quality works instead of works that hurt
the clients' expectations of what a good virtual tour really is.
Bad quality works hurt the entire industry, and less clients will order virtual tour again
in the future.
So you are doing your part to help the community to grow by continually learning and growing
your skills.
Together, we can create more jobs for everyone, and raise the Virtual Tour bar higher.