photo merge...the secret

[OceanRider]

hey any body have any secrets to making a nice photomerge?

The puter cant seem to get any to line up automatically....so I have to do it manually and I get allot of overlap of the two pics which cause abvious discolorment of final pic.

What I am doing wrong. I stood in exact place and left a little of each pic for fusing.

Help!

[steven]

You are asking about photomerge but it sounds like you are wanting to create a panoramic photo.

As I understand it (an I can, and often am, way off base), photomerge is where you take two basically identical picutres (as far as what is in them) and then combine them into a single image. Often done to get better dynamic light coverage. In this you want 100% overlap.

And for panoramic you are putting photos end to end with some overlap to blend together.

So is a photomerge or panoramic?

[grandad35]

There is a very nice Canon program called "PhotoStitch" that should be included on the CD that came with your 20D. One of its settings is for the situation that you described, where you stand in one place and pivot a little for each new shot. I think that it wants the shots to be from a lens with a focal length >35 to work correctly. I copied the following description from its help dialog.

PhotoStitch Features
Join As Many Images As You Please
You can merge as many images as you please in horizontal or vertical sequences or in matrices (m x n).

Auto Merges
In Auto mode, PhotoStitch automatically searches for corresponding areas on adjacent images, adjusting the image size and orientation. You can also manually specify corresponding areas. Moreover, images shot in Stitch Assist mode on a Canon digital camera can be automatically arranged in correct merge sequences.

High-Precision Merges
PhotoStitch produces seamless images, employing a variety of merging techniques to achieve high-quality results. It automatically compensates for differences in brightness and color arising from variations in exposure values. It can even merge images acquired by scanners.

[OceanRider]

There is a very nice Canon program called "PhotoStitch" that should be included on the CD that came with your 20D. One of its settings is for the situation that you described, where you stand in one place and pivot a little for each new shot. I think that it wants the shots to be from a lens with a focal length >35 to work correctly. I copied the following description from its help dialog.

PhotoStitch Features
Join As Many Images As You Please
You can merge as many images as you please in horizontal or vertical sequences or in matrices (m x n).

Auto Merges
In Auto mode, PhotoStitch automatically searches for corresponding areas on adjacent images, adjusting the image size and orientation. You can also manually specify corresponding areas. Moreover, images shot in Stitch Assist mode on a Canon digital camera can be automatically arranged in correct merge sequences.

High-Precision Merges
PhotoStitch produces seamless images, employing a variety of merging techniques to achieve high-quality results. It automatically compensates for differences in brightness and color arising from variations in exposure values. It can even merge images acquired by scanners.

Thanks very much, just found the CD you talk about will load it tonight!!! GREAT!

Joel

[chris.bailey]

Rule 1 - Shoot in manual.
Rule 2 - Aim to get 30% overlap.
Rule 3 - If there is anything moving in the panorama, aim to get it in the middle of a fram.
Rule 4 - Cross your fingers!

Photostitch works OK as does Photomerge in CS.

[OceanRider]

30% that much???

[rufis6]

Yes, that much at least. And if you have problems aligning your images I would suggest you employ a little manual help. The best way for me is to go to "edit," "transform" and "perspective." Then pull on those little handles until the perspective of the various images is the same. It'll take a little time at first, but once you get the knack of it you find it quite easy. Luck

Sorry, I failed to mention that my references are to Photoshop CS. There is a built in "stiching" mode, but it won't get you all the way, you will still have to follow the suggestions above.

[Ivan Barnes]

I can`t get the photostitch facility to merge my photo`s.In the "Help" section it mentions a camera setting Stitch Assist but I can`t find such a setting on my 300D.Where am I going wrong ?
Ivan Barnes

[tim]

There's no stitch assist on the 300D AFAIK, that's for the A70/A80 etc line of cameras. Just make sure you get good overlap, use portrait mode(ie hold the camera sideways), and shoot in manual so you don't get a banded image like I did last time I tried. (http://mrwild.co.nz/unprotected/potn/CloudPanarama2.jpg)

[robertwgross]

When I shoot panoramas, I generally take one meter reading from a direction about 45 degrees off from the sun. Then I plug those settings into the camera and shoot with manual exposure. That way, the finished/stitched image will look a little brighter toward the sun, and a little darker away from the sun.

If you want the whole panorama to look uniformly lit, then shoot with the sun directly overhead at the Equator.

---Bob Gross---

[DReb-MO]

I just completed a 5 shot pano using PS_CS photo merge. It did an OK job but I spent a significant amount of time to make it print worthy. FWIW, I did shoot manual to keep exposure the same, overlapped 30%+ and used the 50mm f/1.8 lens. I can post the results if you are interested but the current version is quite large and making it small enough to post here you'd be hard pressed to tell what it is. I have also tried photo stitch but prefer the merge keeping layers and editing post merge.

[Ivan Barnes]

There's no stitch assist on the 300D AFAIK, that's for the A70/A80 etc line of cameras. Just make sure you get good overlap, use portrait mode(ie hold the camera sideways), and shoot in manual so you don't get a banded image like I did last time I tried. (http://mrwild.co.nz/unprotected/potn/CloudPanarama2.jpg)

Thanks for your help I`ll try what you suggest.
Ivan Barnes

[Headcase650]

Another tip besides shooting in manual is to pick your white ballance, DO NOT USE AUTO WHITE BALLANCE! If auto decides to shange the color temp on different shots you will also get banding in the color.

[joeseph]

I'm thinking auto white balance caused the banding on this one, as everything else was manual. Seems to have slightly darker shade of blue sky at the bottom of each frame (this shot done vertically) anyone else get this sort of thing?

http://joebloggs.servebeer.com/odd_files/ZQN-pano.jpg

[davidvj]

I have found that the Canon panorama software still leaves some poorly blended areas of the final image.
This doesn't look so bad in general areas but in a blue sky the results can be very noticable.
The problem gets worse if you intend to do some 'severe' post processing.
After foraging around I found a solution: try "AutoStitch" .. it's free .. its small and it makes a very impressive 2 dimensional assembly.

[mkh]

One of th ekeys to taking panaramas is to rotate the camera around its axis. It seems most people make the mistake of rotating around themselves as they take the shots and this slightly distorts the perspective, makes changes to the horizon and causes other issues. In order to get the best shots only the camera should rotate on its axis.

[chris.bailey]

I have had very mixed results with Photostitch and always end up doing a lot of manual blending. I favour the CS route though it seems to get stuck with memory issues with shots.

[flowe]

I would support davidvj: I have found that the Canon panorama software still leaves some poorly blended areas of the final image.
...
After foraging around I found a solution: try "AutoStitch" .. it's free .. its small and it makes a very impressive 2 dimensional assembly. PhotoStitch not only blends brightness poorly, but sometimes has problems to bring details to congruence.

AutoStitch does a beautiful job. I did a 90° 6 shots pano, 45° to 135° from sun, and an absolutly flawless transition resulted - no chance to tell the shots and joints. Interesting for JPEG output, but I set quality to 95%.

AutoStitch is beta, so I don't complain about some UI snags. One major problem I noticed though is AutoStitch occupying the whole of 1GB RAM and not releasing it after closing - nothing works anymore, the only remedy is a reboot (XPH, SP2). See readme.txt for settings!

[flowe]

And this ist the pano I mentioned in the previous post. 6 portrait shots, merged with AutoStitch and here scaled down to 12%
http://homepage.hispeed.ch/flowe/digifoto/img/pano_1-5+9_800x342.jpg

[UncleDoug]

One of th ekeys to taking panaramas is to rotate the camera around its axis. It seems most people make the mistake of rotating around themselves as they take the shots and this slightly distorts the perspective, makes changes to the horizon and causes other issues. In order to get the best shots only the camera should rotate on its axis.

Hate to be knit-picky but the point of rotation needs to be the "nodal point" of the camera-lense combination. Where the light cris-crosses before being exposed to film or CCD. Some people have built their own custom head to perfrom this, but there are several heads for use with SLR's/Med. format. and soem made specifically for point/shoot cameras.
Besides the head/nodal point issue, I've found the exposure reading 45° from the sun as mentioned before is a great guideline.
And be sure that there is nothing switched to auto on your camera. You want the camera to be as dumb as the rocks in your foreground. As stated before, if the camera thinks for you, you will have bad blending problems in skies and large areas of gradients or solid colors.
If you can, get a hold of Stitcher, from Real-Vis. Awesome program.

[cactusclay]

I would like to see the shots from the equator.

[rdenney]

If you want a true panorama with the same projection you'd get from a swing-lens panoramic camera, then you need to warp each image. The warping will also correct the perspective distortion at the edges of adjacent frames and the stitching will work a lot better.

I've done it manually, and never been happy with the results. Then, I bought Panavue. When I bought it, I paid $50 or 60 for it, but it makes panoramas like this possible:

http://www.rickdenney.com/images/ranier-ridge-panorama-lores.jpg

This one was made up of 9 images shot at 20mm on a 10D in vertical format. I used a tripod to maintain level. The software took me through making a correction for the lens (which suffers from a bit of barrel distortion at that focal length), and using that correction automatically stitched the images together in one process. The field of view is 180 degrees, and the projection is cylindrical like a swing-lens camera. I did have to blend the clouds a bit because they moved between exposures, but everything else stayed sharp to the pixel level. The resulting image is about 2500x12,000 pixels.

I saved enough time on this first experiment alone to pay for Panavue. Now that I know how it works, these will be much easier, and I'm going to do more of them. It's $64 now, according to:

http://www.panavue.com/index.htm

Rick "who no longer lusts after a swing-lens camera" Denney

[Jonny]

I always found PSCS good for doing this. Using the Colour Match tool removes banding.

[Mayukh]

Hi,

Did anybody work with nightshots ? I have tried Canon Photostitch and it cannot really do a good job with the night shots. Also one reason could be perspective correction, which I can try in CS2.

Any suggestions ?

[Picture North Carolina]

I have tried many, and by far, the best is Realviz. However, the price is waaayyyy too high.

[SWPhotoImaging]

Ok, I have a question at this point . . .

If white balance is as critical as the manual aperture/exposure for the initial shots to be used in a pano, can this be "fixed" in raw prior to "stitching"? In other words, if I had a set of shots, taken with fixed manual exposure across a panoramic vista of cityscape, but had forgotten to set a fixed W/B, couldn't I just load them all into ACR, set the white balance to the chosen number, and apply to all of them at once?

I ask because I have tried a dozen times with as many software programs to stitch a set I did of San Francisco from Treasure Island, and they come out like the ones from joseph above, with banding on the left edge of each shot where it appears the sunlight exposure variation darkened the left side of each photo.

At first I thought it was a mild light-falloff (vignette), so I ran the set through ACR with various vignette correction adjustments until the appeared to my eye to no longer have darker corners. Even so, they still end up with the "banding" where each image meets the previous one.

If it wasn't such a stellar (IMO) set of images otherwise, and from such a fantastically clear and gorgeous morning, I'd toss them and do it again next time. I suspect I could go to Treasure Island 75 mornings in a row and not have quite the clarity and color of that morning again.

[Rhinotherunt]

Here is one I did using Photomerge in PSCS2:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=4534208&size=lg

Multiple images taken with Canon 300D and Sigma 30mm 1.4 EX DC HSM. Shutter Speed 1/25. Lens Aperture F/8. ISO 100. Taken 6/5/2006 at 6:45. Merged in PhotoShop CS2.

Original size: 15000 (wide) x 2500 (tall) pixels.

[Richard_Miami]

Autopano Pro fan here. That program does so much of the fine tuning automatically it is incredible. Here is one from this weekend - 350D - ef 28-135 IS lens - Handheld. It is the Deering estate in Miami. The sky color is, unfortunately, accurate..no blue at all that day. Six shots in total. There is a larger version in my Gallery if you want to look at details.

http://i.pbase.com/g4/11/670311/2/63216483.7cedRh0h.jpg

[atholg]

You might like to check this site <http://www.panotools.info/mediawiki/index.php?title=Windows_software>
It lists a number of tools for creating panoramas that I have found to be more versatile than the Canon or PS approach. Some are shareware but at very low cost and all have forums which allow you to get help and exchange ideas with other users.
I am using Max Lyons PTAssembler, last panorama is at http://host.jwcinc.net/5345980/Curl Curl baths.jpg and is 1 x 9 images taken hand held with a G3