I have created a plug-in for darktable that provides easy access to HDRMerge capabilities right from the lighttable view. I did all my testing in Windows 10, but in theory it should be cross-platform compatible. Let me know if you run in to issues on Linux or MacOS though.
The plugin supports:
Single or Batch Mode
Ability to control all HDRMerge options (except masks):
Bits [16, 24, 32]
Preview Size [Half, Full, None]
Gap [1 - 60 seconds]
If not running in batch mode it will auto-import the newly generated DNG and apply the additional options upon import:
Style
Copy Tag [copies tags from first file in the selection]
Additional tags [these are added regardless of your selection on “Copy Tags”]
All of these controls (aside from the two batch operators) can have their default values set via the “settings > lua options” dialog box. This way the module can load up with your most used settings by default.
I hope others find this useful! With the high FPS of cameras these days the vast majority of my bracketed shots are handheld, so the alignment provided by HDRMerge is very handy compared to dt’s built in HDR tool.
Test it on Linux. I have HDRMerge installed manually in user folder. It works fine from command line. Pointed out DT to this binary in lua options for HDRMerge but still getting error “HDRMerge is not found”
Benja1972, did you select the folder where the executable was located, or the executable itself? Using the lua options, you need to select the executable.
Ok, I’ll merge in some lines to help us debug the issue. I’m wondering if it has to do with the location it is installed at on your PC. I’ll let you know when the code is updated.
Pardon my ignorance and lack of experience but when I go to GH all i see are a .lua and a .md file, i don’t see any windows executable. So what’s the basic procedure, i download these two files and then what, do I open DT and point it to them? many thanks in advance
All, I have made some changes based feedback that this was not working well on Linux. I believe it should now work, but would appreciate it if someone could verify.
Similarly, I did run in to some issues on one of my windows machines and these changes resolved that issue. So if you tried it before and had trouble, please try again.
Thank you Kevin! It works now. I have only two question:
When I select two files RAW and DNG previously created, HDRMerge starts and never finish. Just progress bar stopped in the middle. Probably DNG files are not supported, but error message was not returned to DT.
What is purpose of batch mode? What is gap in batch mode? Could you describe typical scenario when it can be applied?
Thanks for your work
Select RAW1 and RAW2, then run HDRMerge to create DNG_MERGED1
Select RAW1 and RAW2 and DNG_MERGED1, then attempt to run HDRMerge again and it fails? (this failure causes the plugin status bar to hang and does not return as a failure)
Confirm I am understanding correctly and then I’ll make an issue for it on the GitHub page.
Regarding Batch mode:
You can select many, many sets of bracket exposures. HDRMerge will automatically group them based on their timestamps. Any pictures where there is a separation in time of at least the specified “gap” amount will be grouped into a new grouping. So,
Sequence1 [taken at 12:00:00]
twenty seconds later
Sequence2 [taken at 12:00:20]
You could select all images from sequence 1 and 2 at the same time, and HDRMerge would automatically split them as two separate sequences as long as “gap” is set to less than 20 seconds.
Take a look at the bottom of the page on HDRMerge’s user manual.
Hope that helps.
Do note that when running in batch mode the plugin does NOT auto-import the results like it does in single mode. You’ll need to go through dt’s normal import process to bring those in.
Thank you Kevin for explanation! Nice feature in batch mode. Good to know.
About failure, it is like that in fact:
Select RAW1 and RAW2, then run HDRMerge to create DNG_MERGED1
Select RAW and only DNG_MERGED1, then attempt to run HDRMerge again and it fails – and yes, “this failure causes the plugin status bar to hang and does not return as a failure”
More precisely for second step I selected one RAW and one DNG randomly, both was already in my folder, and run HDRMerge just for fool test to know if it it is possible to merge two arbitrary selected files.
Ahh, ok. I’ll do some testing around that to fix the error handling.
I do know it is possible to merge two shots of very different scenes, I did it and you get funky results. Probably it was not happy that there were two different file types. The documentation for HDRMerge does stipulate that the source images need to be taken with the same camera (so its probably expecting identical file type and pixel dimensions)
