Panorama Advice

[motowriter]

Even though I have Photoshop 7 on my PC, I bought Photoshop Elements to get a more convenient tool set, and mostly for its "Photomerge Panorama" tool. Little did I know that it's not quite the click and go utility I was hoping for. See the pic below to see what PS Elements does with 4 pix. Yeah, I know, lighting changes can be a real pain for Pano stitchers, but I know I've had better one-click results than this using trialware and my old program. I used to use a neat little program called Quickstitch that came with my first digital camera years ago, bundled with the Olympus camera software. But that program has long been unsupported and won't run on XP.

Can someone recommend a no-fuss panorama tool? What is your experience with different utilities? I bet I can tweak the lighting and color correct the photos to improve the blend on photos like those stitched together below, but I'm lazy and I take a LOT of pano shots.

So, if you are one who tweaks the photos before merging, do you have any quick tips to improve the color blending? Anyone else out there unsatisfied with the Pano tool in PS Elements?

G

[Fastfar]

Gary, when you exposed the images in the pano, how was the camera set. Was the auto function engaged or did you do a manual f-stop/s-speed camera setting and then shoot the images?

[motowriter]

That's a good point, John. For better or worse I'm using a relatively simple Kodak digital with limited settings. I can make a couple of adjustments for contrast and lighting on the menu, but I haven't messed with them. I'm generally taking pictures pretty quickly and cropping or adjusting at home. I'm glad you pointed it out though, as it's worth trying, for sure. I'll be upgrading to a high-end digital, but prolly not this season. Of course, I'll likely buy a pano lens at that point and won't need to do any more stitching!

G

[Fastfar]

Next pano, try setting the camera to manual, and leave it the same for all shots. If you can, use the camera meter to set shutter and aperture to a 'medium' point of the scene and then shoot the sequence without changing settings. As well, if you bracket the scene by changing ONLY 1/2 to 1 stop each separate pano series, you'll be able to sneak up on the best settings for a given scene.

With practice, this will lend a natural graduation of light throughout the stitched scene.

[motowriter]

Thanks for the tip... sounds like a good idea, getting the lighting set at the center of the pano. Now I need to figure out how to override the auto lighting settings. Again, my little digital camera is pretty much a point and shoot device... the letter F is not mentioned because it has no manual lens adjustment (though I'm known to utter an F or two when a car shoots across my pic.).

Thanks, John!

[pashnit]

Gary - my Canon G5 came with 'PhotoStitch' software. I'm not sure if it's independent software you can just go get or what.

But it certainly has changed the way I take photos. I often shoot the photo, then take a left and right shot just for good measure. Later, when I get home, I can glue all three together. The result at times can be quite neat.

The Iowa Hill Rd shots might be a good example of this...

----> Scroll right...

[pashnit]

Another... This is 1900 pixels wide (800 is normal)

----> Scroll

[pashnit]

PhotoStich also allows you to do something called a 'matrix'. This is 5 photos across the top, 6 photos across the bottom. The program glues all 12 together. Try and find the seams.

[pashnit]

Here's a single photo from the one above to give you sense of perspective...

[motowriter]

Well, that looks about like what my old Photostitch program used to do. I think it would take up to 16 photos in a 4x4 matrix and produce pretty miraculous results. I can't find any examples of panos I made with more than one row, but I was able to stitch together six photos with excellent results (though I probably stitched 1-3, 4-6, then combined the two... this was from a trip to Italy in 2000, so I really can't remember).



The rustic farmhouse in which we rented a vaca flat in summer, 2000.


Here's a comparison of Photostitch and PS Elements, the raw output before cropping, 4 pix on one row. Interesting how PhotoStitch messes with the perspective by default, curving portions of the photos. You can see where it's done this.

From Photostitch:


Here's a PS Elements take on the same pano, using the Advanced Blending and Perspective options (which is all you can mess with, and that's just by check boxes, no settings...). To me this is a pretty bizarre result. How do you crop this monster into a meaningful photo?



A Roman-era public theatre, outside Florence, summer 2000.

Tim, does your Photostitch program run on Win XP? I can't track down what happened to the product that came with my old Olympus. References on the Internet don't relate to this old software... bummer.