First and foremost, I am beginner when it comes to taking picture such as the likes of this group but here is my problem which is work related. I need to create a very very large flat (not spherical) HDR image of a road scene with a car driving toward me. Of course the car will be positioned for the photo. ;-) The final image size should be approximately 20000 x 15000 or larger. I plan to use a Sony A350 to take the shots, sorry Nikon and Canon fans, this is what I have available. My confusion stems from when I have the various exposure shots at all of the overlapped positions, what is my workflow to merge into the HDR and stitch them into a final image. If I merge the exposures together to create the HDR images, can I still stitch them together to create the very large final image? What softwares do I need to do that, I have CS2 but that is about it right now. If I need something else I will have to secure it. To be fair I should explain the use of the final image. The HDR image will be used as a background image in an optical simulation software to evaluate headlight glare and establish perceived quality guidelines for one of the major eom automakers. The image size is dictated by the fact that the mock driver will be looking through a 3D cad surface windshield at the background road image which must be large enough to display the road, berm, sky, etc. Even at the noted background size, this will only give us one or two pixels per square mm of final rendered output. The simulation program runs on a distributed computer network due to the size, returning one answer every few hours. But that is a small price to pay for driver safety. Regards Vince

As a first step;
Have you already shot the multi-exposure images?...if not, they need to be in RAW format.

Perhaps other can chime in here....but I don't think you can "stitich" the individual RAW images to create a larger "RAW" pano.  Even if it was possible....I think your PC would choke trying to create an HDR out of several different exposures of 20000X15000 RAW images.

If you did individual HDR's from each small RAW and then stitched the final images...I can see some problems with matching up exposure differentials and ghosting....

As for HDR software....have a look at Photomatix....

I have not shot the images yet, too many days of rain so hopefully it will clear up soon.    I will keep the RAW files. The machine that I planned to do the compositing is a Quad core workstation with 32Gb of Ram, it will still tax it but I had hoped it would be enough to complete the job.  If I need something bigger I will be in trouble from the start unless I figure out another way.

Creating the HDR's and then stitching appeared to be the easier path, but stitching the raw images first and then using the Photomatrix software to create the HDR would seem to be the method that will give me the highest quality.  The Photomatrix software looks nice, I will purchase that Monday when I get back to the office, I locked my corporate charge card there over the weekend not thinking about such a software purchase.  Thank you for the tip.

Has anyone published any articles or tried such a silly thing before.  There must be some other insane person out there.  :-))

Although, I can't comment on the quality of this software....I did run across this tonight....and it appears that it can stitch RAW files and then HDR them.
It may do exactly what you want so, it might be worth having a look at it as well;

http://www.easypano.com/product-36_254.html

And here is a workflow for HDR of the RAW files and then multi frame stitching;

http://www.naturescapes.net/072006/rh0706_15.htm

Whoooo hoooooo! That looks like it will do exactly what I need, so simple even a caveman could do it. :-) Now all I need is a little cooperation from the weather to get started. Thank you all for the answers and attention you have provided. Regards Vince

Well I spoke too soon, they only stitch 180 and 360 pano's. They do not mention anything about planar pano's, I have entered a question to their tech support about it so we will see what they answer. Thanks!

Photoshop CS3 - Photomerge function may  work for you:

http://www.image-space.com/imaging_tips/Photomerge_tool/Photomerge_tool.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdD0U6WnRWg

http://www.ononesoftware.com/blog/2007/08/creating_panorama_images_in_ph_1.html

You may be interested in the info here at these links for reference:

http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/gigapixel.htm

http://research.microsoft.com/ivm/HDView/HDGigapixel.htm

Joe

There are some very interesting sites there, a lot of useful information. It appears there are a few software options that can provide a solution, but one thing I did not really see in any of the documention is where they correct for lens distortion. Or is that done automatically without my intervention?

Attached Link: Autopano Pro

Thanks Fred255 and to others. I have demo products from most of the companys to test the final outputs. I received the camera on Thursday, so not much time to play with it yet, that is planned for the weekened. I do not have a pano tool as of yet, so I will have to try with just a tripod for now, I can fine tune that later. Sun and rain are called for this weekend, so you will see me outside during the sunny times, I will be the guy with a big smile on my face. :-))