Currently, when you shoot HDR with Planix (Ricoh Theta), all of the photos are pre-blended. This renders quality subject to internal iGuide device processing.
Would love it if we can shoot all brackets in DNG, and blend them in a 3rd party software (Photoshop). This would mean we can do window and sky replacements, adjust shadows with little issue and the 360 photos would look 1000x better.
If you know of a work-around, would love to hear it. I mentioned this in today’s iGuide webinar and he said I should submit a ticket to iGuide support, I have since done that. The only workaround I know is to: turn on the iGuide, scan the room, turn off iGuide, turn on Ricoh Theta by itself, connect to Ricoh Theta, snap your DNG HDR brackets, turn off Ricoh Theta, turn on iGuide, connect to survey, and start on the next scan. This is a phenomenal waste of time, so if you have any other ideas - I’m all ears.
There is potential to get iGuides looking very similar to how HDR real estate photography is done, yes obviously it means you’re now editing each image meticulously aside from your real estate work, but some people (like myself) would love to spend the extra time & resources to have quality so far ahead of the competition who might not have the time to blend the HDR’s themselves and would rather fall on the quality of iGuide auto blending.
I’m thinking of just taking one scan, splitting it into 3 (Virtual Copy on lightroom), leaving one untouched, one over-exposed, and one underexposed. Then blending these in photoshop, cutting out the windows, doing a sky replacement, and seeing if this can work in the meantime. This solution is by no means perfect, but I’m thinking this will do until (hopefully) a firmware update comes in and allows us to separate the 3 brackets & allows us to shoot DNG.
I too think this is a great idea. I am an architect and I use iGuide for as-built measurements and photos, progress photos and I’d love to have quality after photos.
Wish I could share the process exactly, but I know I have direct competitors in this forum. But I wanted to post to show it’s possible! Took me quite a long time, but it was my first time with that new process, took about an hour for that house. I’m sure I can cut that down to <40 minutes with fine tuning.
I’m sure you understand how this industry works. Since I’m the only person in the forum (It seems) who has started to shoot and process iGuides like this, why would I give it away to my competitors this soon?
Figure it out - didn’t take me long to find a workaround, I’m sure you can find a way to replicate it
I took a fast look to your iGuide, to see the blending works…there a quite a lot of stitching errors and blending could be better, of course this is a question of taste. May I ask, why you cut out the windows and replaced them?
@jasthoff yeah, it’s a first round with the new way of editing, we’ll get it tuned up with time I’m sure! We cut out the windows and replaced them because we think it looks better than blown out windows.
I normally wouldn’t comment on this but for some reason just can’t “bite my tongue”…
It’s nothing less than an absolute insult to every single person on this forum for you to come here asking us (and yes some most likely are your competition) how to do something openly and freely, then when you figure out a process it then becomes proprietary and top secret. That’s down right rude and a slap in the face to every single member of this forum.
Do you not understand how hypocritical this action is? We are ALL here to learn from and support each other. We are a COMMUNITY and as such we share what we can and take what we need to better us all as a COMMUNITY. We are better than this . . . .
For transparency, I have some “trade secrets” that I have developed through Trial & Error over the years but I didn’t solicit my techniques from other industry professionals and them decide the process to be secret.
It’s a good skill to have to use window pulls for homes with views worth showing, I have done that with the ims-5 setup before with ocean views…however, I think the window pulls on your example is a bit aggressive for my taste, the outside should be brighter than the interior in my opinion.
I basically shot a full pano exposed for the room, then shot a pano exposed for the windows without moving the camera and blend in PS as needed. With the ims-5, it’s fairly straight forward, since there is an option for manual exposure settings.
Sorry you feel this way, my intention was by not means to shove it in your face that I can now separate the HDR brackets, I just posted on a topic that I started, that I had figured it out. If you read through this forum, I didn’t ask for any help whatsoever actually. I just brought up that iGuide should give us the opportunity to separate our brackets. Not once did I ask for anyones help on this, I brought up a good idea, and people agreed.
I work full time for a real estate brokerage, my boss has instructed me to keep quiet, so our listings look way different than anyone else’s. It’s not competition in the iGuide industry in my case, its so my bosses listings are set apart from HIS competitors, I hope this makes sense.
I wanted to post it to show that it is possible, as encouragement to others. I apologize if this was interpreted any other way.
