Free and Open Source Software.
It can output an exr file, which is high bit depth, or 32 bit tiffs. Again, no application I’m aware of is putting out raw panoramas. You cannot edit inside hugin, it is for stitching only.
So a 32 bit tiff behaves the same way as a RAW file?
No, but a 32 bit tiff has plenty of information to continue to edit it without much issue, generally speaking.
A raw file typically is data with the sensor pattern (Bayer, xtrans, etc…), that is mosaiced data.
I’m pretty sure the dng files you get from stitched panorama in LR is deposited data in dng container. Which means it’s not raw anymore, even thought it can still have all the original dynamic range.
Hugin can stitch panoramas and give you tiff output files with sufficiently high bit depth to retain you data.
Then you can further process the panorama in another software like RawTherapee to refine color, contrast, crop, whatever.
However the whole process might involve more from your part than the all-in-one solution from LR.
Hmm, that sounds kinda good… But also annoying as hell.
Im honestly finding it very hard to stop using Lr, even though I think the subscriptions are not great.
If you don’t understand the difference, then do you even understand what you actually want? Give Hugin a go and see how well you like it.
Hey, could you be a bit more unnecessarily condescending
What I want is a program that lets me stitch RAW files an output a Panorama that retains all the highlight and shadow details of the original RAW files. And I want to be able to edit that panorama in the same program too.
Basically, I want Lr to have a good competitor that can do all the things I personally do in Lr.
Your original question and intermediate answers weren’t doing you favors in terms of clarity I’m afraid. But now you have asked the real question, it can be answered: like others have said, Hugin is your best bet. It retains the dynamic range that is present in your input files. It can also do some brightness, contrast and color processing. It may be all you need. Really, give it a go 
This thread became a discussion on its own. All I wanted to know was “can this thing stitch” basically.
I will check out Hugin though.
You’re probably going to notice a bit of a difference in how things are approached with Free/Open Source Software (FOSS). We tend to have different programs to solve problems so we can distribute the work better and allow people to focus on specific aspects of the problem.
So where you might have a bunch of tools disguised under one “umbrella” (Adobe), Free Software is usually a series of separate tools. (It sucks, I know, but it’s a consequence of the community and the way they approach problems - this is a much harder thing to make better than any technical programming).
In our world, we generally tend to refer to Hugin for stitching together panoramas.
You seem to want to make sure that any intermediate file that goes from panorama stitching to devlopment/editing is as high a quality as possible. In that case, the 32-bit EXR file output from Hugin will contain all of your data. (there’s a caveat there about de-mosaicing raw files and a couple of other things, but I don’t want to overwhelm you if you’re not familiar with it).
Then, you can continue working on the EXR in something like RawTherapee when you’re done with the stitching.
In general, this sort of makes sense from a workflow perspective because you’re doing a bunch of pixel-manipulation to bend the panorama into what you want (geometric modifications), and once the geometry/perspective/view is what you want, you can focus on the colors, exposure, etc.
(Note: some folks may develop their raw files first and then stitch the output when they’re done - this is certainly a valid workflow as well and possibly better? I’d defer to @heckflosse to tell me if I’m wrong like normal, or just so-so wrong 
).
You’re mostly spot on, except the fact that RT can not read EXR. You have to use 32bit float tiff instead.
So I just stitched my first panorama in Hugin and I dont know if I did something wrong, but its REALLY noisy. Lots of color noise, especially in the shadows. I’m looking at the panorama in RawTherapee, btw.
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Apply some of RawTherapee’s noise reduction, it works well.
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Did you edit the frames in RawTherapee first, or just go directly into Hugin?
You can drag-and-drop images or files directly into the post editor here if you’d like to share them or demonstrate anything. 
I did not edit them first since what I want to do is have a Panorama file with all the information that were contained in the RAW files from my camera and then edit that file afterwards.
Its way easier to know how to edit an image when you can see all of it at the same time, you know.
Anyway, I have another question now, why does Hugin make TIFF files for each individual file that I put in before stitching? I dont need a TIFF version of the original files, I only to save the panorama.
Hugin makes tiffs, then stitches them into a larger tiff for you. You can delete the unnecessary tiff files.
Yeah, it’s a little weird, but hopefully I can explain without mangling things too much.
Basically, your raw file contains the raw data from your camera in some format. Viewing that raw data is not like you see in Lr or RT - the data has to be de-mosaiced before it can really be viewed in a way you’re likely accustomed to. This is usually one of the very first steps done to raw data before you even start editing other things about it. Those RGB values have to be built from the mosaiced image.
So yes, it can be hard to know how to edit the image before you start stitching. I totally understand.
Hugin needs to create a viewable image to map the point-matching when creating the panorama. So it will generate intermediate files that it works from in order to do feature-matching and the eventual pixel-bending that occurs when making a panorama. You can skip the tiff version of the original files if you only ask for a blended output (I think - I haven’t looked at the interface in a few versions so they may have changed something).
Im not 100% sure I understand, but let me ask you this, am I doing it wrong by stitching a panorama from the RAW files without opening them in RawTherapee first and then exporting 32 bit RAW files?
Or is how I am doing it normal?
Also, I appreciate all the help!
I don’t know how proficient Hugin is at demosaicing raw files. What most of us do is for example:
- Convert the raw files in RT with a neutral profile straight to high bit depth tiff (16-bit floating-point is probably enough, otherwise go to 32-bit). There’s some info here on using the “unclipped” profile in RT to export files without clipping data.
- Feed Hugin with those tiff files and stitch them, choose the TIFF output format for the panorama.
- Open the stitched panorama in RT and process it the way you want.
It’s impossible for us to know why your first try was noisy, we’d need to see the original files and we could probably be of better help if we can try ourselves and provide you with a workflow.
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LR HDR and Panorama DNG are not raw they are demosaiced. I don’t think it is possible to stitch or merge raw data like that. My guess would be the HDR is 32 bit and the Pano 16 bit. In other software the workflow would be to do your base adjustments in your raw converter then export 16 bit tif. Stitch then edit the stitched tif in your software of choice the rest of the way.