Create panorama in PS CS

[tommykjensen]

I am trying to stitch 5 photos into a panorama with PS but the end result look horrible, is PS really that bad in this area?

Here is the resulting panorama:

http://www.klein-jensen.dk/external/panorama.jpg

And here are the originals (got the photos in raw).
http://www.klein-jensen.dk/external/part1.jpg
http://www.klein-jensen.dk/external/part2.jpg
http://www.klein-jensen.dk/external/part3.jpg
http://www.klein-jensen.dk/external/part4.jpg
http://www.klein-jensen.dk/external/part5.jpg

[Scottes]

To me it looks like Photoshop did a fine job with what it had.

Three questions: Did you use a polarizer? Was the tripod head level? And was the nodal point of the lens directly over the center of the tripod?

[tommykjensen]

Polarizer: no

Tripod head level: As best as I could yes, I was standing on a small hill that was not level.

Last question, don't thing so. The camera when used vertical is tilted to the right.

How come PS created those diagonal dark areas?

[Scottes]

My guess then is that you used some form of auto-exposure for each frame. PS didn't create the bands, the camera did. For panoramas you want to set the camera into manual mode so that the exact same exposure is used for each frame. If you used anything else the camera might have evaluated each picture differently. If frame 1 was 1/100 f/11 and the next frame was 1/125 f/11 then you'll end up with bands.

Next time point your camera around the scene and get an idea of what the exposure will be. Then pick something near the middle and use those settings in manual mode.

If you did use manual then I'm out of ideas.

[tommykjensen]

Next time point your camera around the scene and get an idea of what the exposure will be. Then pick something near the middle and use those settings in manual mode.


I actually tried this but when I moved the camera it focused differently so I tried on A-DEP instead.

I guess next time I should go full manual including manual focus.


Funny thing is I have been able to create fine panoramas with Olympus C3030Z handheld on full automatic :lol: Only did it 2 times...

[tommykjensen]

btw what effect would the polarizer have?

[Scottes]

Using a polarizer may do things like make the upper left hand corner of every picture have a darker sky. Then you get serious banding which looks very odd.

[john_houghton]

Yes, use full manual mode or auto exposure lock mode if available. Also, make sure you have a manual colour balance setting, not auto. There seems to be some mild vignetting or light fall-off to contend with too. I applied a correction for this and stitched the images with Panorama Tools, outputting a PSD layered file. I adjusted the individual layers to match them a bit better (you could do the same thing with thge Photoshop stitcher). Its not perfect, by any means, but not too bad.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/j.houghton/panotom.jpg

John

[chris.bailey]

I find the Canon Photstitch software to be much better than CS. Aside from shooting in Manual and taking an average of the readings from brightest to darkest, make big overlaps, I use half a frame and pick an object in the focus point to line up on the next shot. I have got some pretty good results from this method as this panorama of Paris hopefully shows.

http://www.pbase.com/image/28559842/original.jpg

[john_houghton]

Chris, that's very good, though there's some blurring at the seams and the obvious double image caused by the movement of the bateau mouche. You would be able to get a perfect stitch with Panorama Tools, albeit with a bit more effort.

John

[chris.bailey]

Actually, playing with the same image in CS did produce better results than Photostitch without the problems John mentions. Had never got it to work well before now.

http://www.pbase.com/image/28562690.jpg