Can my computer handle this editing job??

Hello all,

Now Im pretty new to the whole photoshop and pic editing with it so im turning to you guys for questions on a large panorama I am planning to as a possible gift.

Im going to be shooting roughly 10 to 20 pics in raw with my t3i and stitching them together using CS5. After that I will be editing out things such a powerlines and other unwanted items, then adjusting the colors and possibly adding in a different sky, etc.

I will be doing this all on a 24" IMac with 8GB of ram and a 2.66 core 2 duo processor. So do you guys think my computer will be up for the job processing this image in raw form with CS5?

I dont want to be continuously crashing the computer since im also still learning photoshop and will already be spending a lot of time just figuring out the basic editing principles. I dont mind working slow just dont want to work to slow.

Thanks

Do you need all the pixels or could you resize the image after you stich it together that way your computer doesn't have to use up its resources with unwanted pixels.

It should work but would probably be a little slow. If it ends up not being quick enough to reasonably work on it you could just resize down a little and try again maybe. Large panos can be slow work even with relatively fast systems.

There's no reason you shouldn't be able to though, just might not be an ideal setup if you're regularly processing stuff like that.

elogical wrote in post #13533020
It should work but would probably be a little slow. If it ends up not being quick enough to reasonably work on it you could just resize down a little and try again maybe. Large panos can be slow work even with relatively fast systems.

There's no reason you shouldn't be able to though, just might not be an ideal setup if you're regularly processing stuff like that.

If it turns into something regular then I will be looking to upgrade but not yet. I dont really want to resize or convert it to jpeg until I know I have it the way I want it really as im going to print it and I dont want it looking bad on paper.

Now I just need to wait for a fairly decent day to do the shooting. Thanks!

I'd suggest that you do some "practice runs"...having a large number of images running through Photoshop like that can be a real drain on your resources. Having 8GB of RAM certainly helps, it's just that before you seriously tackle a job you would want to know what you are in for -- at least some lengthy coffee breaks!

I believe that there is software that handles big panos with a bit less of an overhead than PS, but I haven't personally delved into the matter -- maybe someone who sees this has an idea?

ndekens wrote in post #13532912
Hello all,

Now Im pretty new to the whole photoshop and pic editing with it so im turning to you guys for questions on a large panorama I am planning to as a possible gift.

Im going to be shooting roughly 10 to 20 pics in raw with my t3i and stitching them together using CS5. After that I will be editing out things such a powerlines and other unwanted items, then adjusting the colors and possibly adding in a different sky, etc.

I will be doing this all on a 24" IMac with 8GB of ram and a 2.66 core 2 duo processor. So do you guys think my computer will be up for the job processing this image in raw form with CS5?

I dont want to be continuously crashing the computer since im also still learning photoshop and will already be spending a lot of time just figuring out the basic editing principles. I dont mind working slow just dont want to work to slow.

Thanks

It probably depends on how long you're willing to wait. I've done nine image HDRs on a 1.6 GHz Mac Air with 4GB. Don't expect it to happen in the blink of an eye. Unless you're running a lot of other stuff at the same time, it's unlikely to crash.

It'll work, but it'll be slow.

I'm no pano expert, but my advice would be similar to Tony's - try some 3-image panos first, to make sure you're shooting images that Photoshop can play well with, and to make sure the results are what you expect.

After that, start up the pano processing, then go have a sandwich. Once the pano is stitched together, make any tweaks you like to the masking/stitching, then flatten the layers, then crop, then do the rest of your edits.

You might even edit out some of the simple unwanted stuff (power lines, etc) before starting the pano processing - that way, Photoshop doesn't try to force those to match up. That might mean less resources consumed, and maybe even better results on the parts of the pano that DO matter.

nathancarter wrote in post #13533384
It'll work, but it'll be slow.

I'm no pano expert, but my advice would be similar to Tony's - try some 3-image panos first, to make sure you're shooting images that Photoshop can play well with, and to make sure the results are what you expect.

After that, start up the pano processing, then go have a sandwich. Once the pano is stitched together, make any tweaks you like to the masking/stitching, then flatten the layers, then crop, then do the rest of your edits.

You might even edit out some of the simple unwanted stuff (power lines, etc) before starting the pano processing - that way, Photoshop doesn't try to force those to match up. That might mean less resources consumed, and maybe even better results on the parts of the pano that DO matter.

Sweet! I thought about editing out the unwanted items first but thought it might screw with the stitching guess I was thinking about it backwards?!

ndekens wrote in post #13533438
Sweet! I thought about editing out the unwanted items first but thought it might screw with the stitching guess I was thinking about it backwards?!

Well, that's a reasonable question, and there is no easy answer. It depends on how much editing you need to do and how much data there is around the edited areas to allow a "clean" blend/stitch. This is one thing that you can practice with!

tonylong wrote in post #13533690
Well, that's a reasonable question, and there is no easy answer. It depends on how much editing you need to do and how much data there is around the edited areas to allow a "clean" blend/stitch. This is one thing that you can practice with!

Will do! I just need the time now. Thanks!

Try a test stitch by converting your raws to JPEGs - maybe with a max dimension of about 1200 px on the long side of each image. See if Photoshop can do the stitch properly and blend the images accordingly. There is no need to wait for a long time to find out that the stitch failed. Photoshop CS5 is not interactive at all (it used to be) so you hit the stitch button and hope for the best, try different settings, hit the stitch button, wait, etc. Not very efficient.

There are pano stitchers out there that will handle the task much more efficiently and permit you to tweak a bad stitch - hugin is a free front end to panotools and PTGui is the not-free version that offers a wealth of tools. PTGui will permit you to do a small JPEG stitch to get the panorama just the way you want it interactively - then you can create a Template from the low-res stitch and swap in the huge images with all of the distortion correction and alignment work already done - that way the heavy lifting is done only in the blending phase.

There is also a plug-in for Photoshop that permits you to turn off large-file-format (PSB) image compression so that the file loads faster (at the expense of size).

http://kb2.adobe.com/c​ps/902/cpsid_90248.htm​l

is a link to that plug in.

Good luck,

kirk

ndekens wrote in post #13533438
Sweet! I thought about editing out the unwanted items first but thought it might screw with the stitching guess I was thinking about it backwards?!

Do not mess with your images before stitching them. Those pesky wires actually help the stitcher align the images - let the stitch happen and then edit out the wires in the stitched image - otherwise you are creating artifacts in your image that will potentially cause problems when stitching.

Do not mess with tonal adjustments either, unless you make uniform adjustments across the image set - otherwise you are going to get blending artifacts.

Just feed the stitcher the images and then edit the result.

kirk

I don't think that there is any advantage in terms of load to be gained with jpgs rather than 8 bit tifs. The first thing that happens to a jpg when it is opened is that it is decompressed and the image in memory is a full 24 bits times the number of pixels in size, same as a tif would be. When it is saved again as a jpg it is recompressed, but it is only in storage that the file is smaller.

Agree with Elie.

The file format for a test is irrelevant. The idea is to convert the Original full res raws to small rgb images to test the stitch. Jpg, tif, png whatever floats your boat.