PHOTOSHOP CS - PHOTOMERGE - PANORAMA QUESTION

[nworbmit]

I am experimenting with Photoshop CS's new Photomerge ability.
But am having some dificulty.

Here is the situation.

I am shooting a panarama with a 17mm lens on a Canon 10D, wich has a 1.6 multipler, effectively cropping the image to a 27.2mm lens.

I stitch the images together and they look awfull...unaligned... when viewed in the "NORMAL" perpective option.

I then click the PERSPECTIVE" button, and photoshop crunches the data for a few moments. The result is a "bowtie" shaped cropping containing perfectly aligned images. I am very happy with everything up to this point. I can zoom in and I can't find any indication that it has been stitched. This "preview" looks fantastic.

Now for the bad part.

When I click OK to have the "actual images stitched", the result is not even close to being as good as the preview. I still get a "bowtie" shaped cropping so I know that some correction was made, but things look un-alligned, awful.

Any ideas on what I am doing wrong?
I have tried the "advanced blending" option
I have tried clicking "save composition " before clicking OK

Ahhhhhh!!!!

Thanks
Tim

[john_houghton]

Many automatic stitchers perform poorly with images taken with wide angle lenses. The images need to be accurately warped to get them to line up well. Is there obvious barrel distortion present in your images? I use Panorama Tools (together with PTGui), which can handle extreme wide angle lenses such as an 8mm fisheye having a 180 degree field of view. Results are excellent, but it takes a little while to learn how to use it.

John

[nworbmit]

Many automatic stitchers perform poorly with images taken with wide angle lenses. The images need to be accurately warped to get them to line up well. Is there obvious barrel distortion present in your images? I use Panorama Tools (together with PTGui), which can handle extreme wide angle lenses such as an 8mm fisheye having a 180 degree field of view. Results are excellent, but it takes a little while to learn how to use it.

John

The image is stitched together "perfectly " in the preview, but not when the actual images are processed. My question is, why is there a difference between preview and final result? Obviously, photoshop is able to stitch together the images - I can see the result in the preview (even when zooming in).

Does anyone out their have experience with PS CS PHOTOMERGE specifically? Thanks

[BoySpot]

This probably is not the most helpful answer you will get for which I apologise. However, I was less than impressed with the performance of Photomerge in CS and compared it with the Photostitch application Canon included with the 10D. That seemed to work a lot better. CS will not handle the edges of the image as well as the centre whilst Photostitch seems to do a lot better. I'm sure there are better applications but this one is free. I haven't tested it with very wide angle lenses so that may make a difference. However, it does read the lens focal length from the EXIF data and uses it in the processing.

[Radtech1]

I have tried and decided to buy PanoramaFactory. Alignment is easy, and it compenates for color changes in vingetting. BUT, I really like it because you can input the type of camera and lens combination and the program will compensate for barreling and pincushioning. Trial version is full featured, but it puts a big yellow "MADE WITH PANORAMAFACTOY" in the middle of the shot.

Rad

[chris.bailey]

Stick with the CS photomerge, I processed this shot of Paris with it and am very happy with the results.

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

Stick with around 50mm, shoot in portrait and overlap by at least a third, the above was a merge of 8 shots. Shoot on manual with constant speed, f-stop and focus.

The nice thing about CS is that it puts each shot on a different layer so if one shot is a little lighter or darker you can tweak that layer