Photoshop CC - amazed... and not

I received a discount and subscribed to PS CC a while back mainly for access to the ACR 2012 engine. I haven't really used PS much, and deplore LR. Until a couple days ago.

I was doing panoramas, but was not on the machine with my trusted PTgui. So I tried PS CC photomerge.

I was amazed! The ease of use, the stitching, and mostly the content-aware fill of transparent areas. It worked brilliantly. Adobe has come a long way.

So while in it, I thought I would try the PS CC HDR function. Horrible. Not even close. Adobe has a long way to go on that one.

Just my perceptions of CC.

(And yes, ACR 2012 was worth it alone. Miles above the 2010 engine.)

I use Photomerge quite a bit....have for a long time. You're right, easy peazy.....great results.

saea501 wrote in post #18397088
I use Photomerge quite a bit....have for a long time. You're right, easy peazy.....great results.

I have PTgui v9.1.8 (or 9.8.1 - forgot) which is about 4 years old. I was going to upgrade, but then ran across the miraculous photomerge. I emailed PTgui today asking them about an upgrade and asking the tough question if they had anything to compete with the brilliant photomerge. (No reason to upgrade if they don't). We'll see what they say.

For folk who are envious of your CC PS photomerge, try Microsft ICE. It is free and very easy to use and the results are just as good as PS CC.

I always used the PS panoramic merge for the odd occasions that I do them. What I have been really impressed with it the RAW merge to pano that is now part of LR, and I guess ACR too. It ends up giving you a merged DNG file, so that the data is still RAW. one of the things it does that I really like is where there are moving objects in the scene, such as people moving about, it does it's best to remove them from the images. The only thing you cant do is go in and adjust the alignment of the sections manually. Still for every image that I have thrown at it I prefer the results from this to either PS CS 5's implementation, or my quick trials of MS ICE.


Alan

Stiga wrote in post #18397890
For folk who are envious of your CC PS photomerge, try Microsft ICE. It is free and very easy to use and the results are just as good as PS CC.

I'll give it a try. Out of curiosity I did some online research. Hugin was on every top app list, and at or near the top of them. I've never used it. I'll give that a try, too.

BigAl007 wrote in post #18398380
I always used the PS panoramic merge for the odd occasions that I do them. What I have been really impressed with it the RAW merge to pano that is now part of LR, and I guess ACR too. It ends up giving you a merged DNG file, so that the data is still RAW. one of the things it does that I really like is where there are moving objects in the scene, such as people moving about, it does it's best to remove them from the images. The only thing you cant do is go in and adjust the alignment of the sections manually. Still for every image that I have thrown at it I prefer the results from this to either PS CS 5's implementation, or my quick trials of MS ICE.
Alan

As a person who also uses PS CS5 more than CC, I can say the pano-merge in CS5 and CC is not in the same universe. Vast improvements were made since CS5.

Still, I did not know that about RAW merges. Thanks. I'll give that a try, too. I can see where output that maintain a raw format would be very useful.

Edit: I don't do many panos either. In the fine art arena they don't sell well and are extremely hard to display online.

Just get Micosoft ICE. You'll be happy.

kjonnnn wrote in post #18398613
Just get Micosoft ICE. You'll be happy.

Since I already have LR/ACR and this is a feature, I thought I would run a comparative test between LR/ACR and ICE in doing a merge on a three image off the cuff hand held series of shots. In each case the three CR2 files were merged and processed only in the respective programs. In the case of ICE I saved the image to a PSD file and opened in PS. For the DNG version it was processed in LR/ACR and opened to PS. I then ran identical export processes on both images. I did it that way so that the JPEG conversion would be identical in both cases.

The LR/ACR image

For HDR, I stick with Aurora.

Purchased Pixelmator outright for macOS and iOS. No more renting software from Adobe. In addition, Canon's DPP is rather powerful for CR2 processing, and is free.