Printing a panorama

[mikeg]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to print a panorama. The file comes from 5 shots I made of the Lake Powell. I used Canon PhotoStitch. This program gave me a 8763x1345 jpeg.
The next step is to print it on my Canon s900 printer.
The idea is to divide this file into several jpeg and print them borderless. But when I print all those files, they don't match exactly.

Any idea on how I should print this out ?


Thanks,

MikeG

[robertwgross]

Mike, did you consider to print out the panoramic file directly on roll paper (if your printer supports that)?

I mean, what is the point of stitching multiple frames together into one image and then breaking it up into separate prints?

---Bob Gross---

[mikeg]

Well, in fact I wanna print this panorama onto multiple Canon PR-101 A4 sheets (210mmx297mm).
I don't have roll paper.

I used Canon PhotoStitch to stitch exactly the pics together. And because I don't have roll paper I have to cut the "stitched result" into several parts that would fit on a A4 paper.
From this : [ ]
I cut like this : [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ] to fit on each A4 sheet.

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Mike,

When you say "don't match exactly", do you mean the horizontal registration between the separate pages is not perfect? If so, what about slicing the images so there is some overlap of image and then trimming to fit exactly?

Or, for an artistic effect, print each page slice with a border for a triptych type result? :)

Regards,

[toycollector]

I printed an 11"x85" panorama which came out exactly to (5) 11"x17" prints.

I used photostitch and then took the image into photoshop. Here I sized the image to 11" x 85" (sized it down actually as the photo was composed of 8 shots). I use a LOT of overlap in my pano shots to give me some latitude for stitching together.

At this point I had a 179MB TIFF file! I used photoshop to clean out a couple plane trails in the sky and work on some of the blue sky coloration as well as some sharpening. To cut down the size of the TIFF file I decided to create 5 separate 11x17 images using the canvas option to cut it down to each 11x17 section.

I set the printer to scale the image to fit however, since I had an 11x17 image and I needed to print it on 11x17 paper which the S9000 can't print borderless at that size. The aluminum sectional frames covered the white edges perfectly without any trimming.

I hope this explaination helps.

[mikeg]

Check this out :

http://users.skynet.be/mikeg/IMG_0765a.jpg


And on top of that, colors of the sky and water don't match.

Here is the full pic :
http://users.skynet.be/mikeg/lakepowell.jpg

[john_houghton]

mikeg wrote:
And on top of that, colors of the sky and water don't match.
It may be that the printer is performing some sort of automatic colour adjustment. You need to select driver options to perform no adjustment.

From the complete panorama, it looks like Photostitch is not handling the downwards tilt of the camera very well, and is giving you that curved horizon. There are stitchers that will do a better job, such as PanaVue Image Assembler and Panorama Tools.

John

[toycollector]

Were you using a tripod?

Does the exif info for both photos show identical aperature and shutter speed? Maybe the amount of water in the right image caused it to underexpose a bit. I'd try to lighten it a little in photoshop to get the sky and water colors closer..

I find it helpful on panoramas to use the camera as a light meter and then switch to manual mode. This insures the camera doesn't change exposures on you. Also, provide a good amount of overlap on your images. This particular panorama could have been taken portrait with more images. By taking it portrait you leave yourself a lot of room to blow it up even larger or actually downsizing the image which we don't find ourselves doing very often... ;-).

[soumya63]

Any idea on how I should print this out ?


Assuming you have shoot your panorama with properly adjusted nodal point and final image is properly stitched together, I will explain how I do my printing

1) I use Photoshop to create 8x10 slices of the artwork with half inch overlap on both or all sides (depending on how big you want you print to be).

2) Once the slices are ready, I print them 1:1 (no fitting or border-less) on paper.

3) Trim the white borders from the overlapped edge of two consecutive slices and lay them on a self-healing cutting board.

4) Register them very carefully both at the top and bottom edges. As there are half-inch overlap, one print rests on the other.

5) once registering is done secure them on the board by using masking tape on the top and bottom white borders.

6) I use a Logan foam board cutter with blade depth adjusted little more than two print paper thickness and a metal straight edge. Place the straight edge in the middle of the overlapped region and cut the prints with a single non-stop firm drag.

The same process is repeated for all the slices.

Once done, you will have slices with perfectly aligned edges ready for mounting.

Some tips:

Wear cotton gloves while handling your prints.

Use a spray on adhesive to mount prints. They are most easy and clean to use than any other adhesives.

Touch ups the joined edges with properly colored felt tip pens to color the white paper bases, which sometime remains visible through the joins.

Lastly, it is not a very easy project, just like cutting a mat. But once you do it couple of time, you will be able to do it competently.

[gkas]

On the other hand.... West Coast Imaging (use google) does a great job on printing panorama formats on their LightJet equipment. They have a 'pre-flighted' price where you do all your own Photoshop setup. It should be trivial for anyone here to prep the print. They even have step-by-step instructions. You can upload or FTP you finished file to them. Excellent service and very reasonable prices.

[mikeg]

john_houghton wrote:
mikeg wrote:
And on top of that, colors of the sky and water don't match.
It may be that the printer is performing some sort of automatic colour adjustment. You need to select driver options to perform no adjustment.

From the complete panorama, it looks like Photostitch is not handling the downwards tilt of the camera very well, and is giving you that curved horizon. There are stitchers that will do a better job, such as PanaVue Image Assembler and Panorama Tools.

John


You're right John. I finally discovered what was wrong : it was an option that made automatic color adjustment. I unchecked those default options and everything was OK. And after that, the sky matched the sky, earth matched the earth on the 2nd sheet, etc...

I'm gonna try other software just to test...

Thanks for your comments.

MikeG

[mikeg]

toycollector wrote:
Were you using a tripod?

Does the exif info for both photos show identical aperature and shutter speed? Maybe the amount of water in the right image caused it to underexpose a bit. I'd try to lighten it a little in photoshop to get the sky and water colors closer..

I find it helpful on panoramas to use the camera as a light meter and then switch to manual mode. This insures the camera doesn't change exposures on you. Also, provide a good amount of overlap on your images. This particular panorama could have been taken portrait with more images. By taking it portrait you leave yourself a lot of room to blow it up even larger or actually downsizing the image which we don't find ourselves doing very often... ;-).


I was using a tripod, but let me tell you that it was the first time I made a panorama.
Next time I'm gonna shoot it in portrait mode, that's a good tip ;-)
All shots were made @ 1/250 sec exept the right one @ 1/180 sec and same F-stop