The Art of Panoramic Shots?

[wykdfantasy]

I have been practicing taking shots of horizons and using software to stitch them together, I currently have PS CS4, and Autopano Giga 2.0. They both produce pretty good pano's but not perfect ones.

My question for the experienced is:

Is it better to take many shots overlapping with good margins or is it better to try to measure them out to only overlap enough so that the software has some distinct object to measure where to seam them together?

I have noticed that with overlapping a good portion I can ghosting of some objects, and with trying to measure them so they don't overlap a lot, sometimes the software creates a hard seam where it just doesn't look smooth.

Is there a more preferred software to get rid of ghosting effects or one that allows you to manipulate the individual shots after it has pre-rendered the panoramic?

[jrader]

From my experience, I don't try to overlap more than 30%. Just like you said, when you overlap with more than 60% of the previous frame, you get stitching/blending errors. But if you don't overlap enough, the computer "forces" the stitch (sometimes with terrible results).

I think the cure for this one is to manually stitch/blend the images. I know that it can be tedious at times doing the transformations, but you'll be much more satisfied with the final image. The other suggestion I was thinking is to be sure and use a tripod and take shots when there are not moving objects in the frame. Sometimes, this is not possible (like ocean panoramics, for example).

I guess it all depends on what kind of images you are shooting. If you're shooting nature scenes, wait for a lull in the wind, shoot scenes with little to no movement in them (unless it's a stream/river, that won't affect the stitch), and repeat if necessary.

By the way, Autostitch in CS3 (I assume 4 as well) will let you manipulate the panoramic afterwards. It creates the panoramic in layers post-stitching, so before you save it, you can always go into the layers tab and do whatever you need to do (like some selective cloning) before flattening and saving the final image.

Hope this helps.

John

[argyle]

I usually estimate a 25% overlap and go from there. Also, I try to shoot all of my panos with the camera in the vertical position. This usually requires a few more extra shots to fill the scene, but shooting vertical allows more room afterwards for any needed cropping. For stitching, I don't bother with Photoshop...my preferred stitching software is PTGUI Pro.

[Scottes]

25% - 30% overlap is what I aim for.

For software, try Hugin (free), PTAssembler (cheap), PTGui (not cheap)

All 3 are very, very good. Hugin is open-source, so sometimes a little technical and sometimes a little "unpolished." PTAssembler can be fairly technical but it's extremely capable. PTGui is feature-rich, very capable, and easy enough to use (but with a lot of more capabilities once you get more proficient/knowledgeable).