Patti – You can use the panorama function in Elements (haven’t opened Elements in six weeks as I only got home yesterday, and can’t remember exactly what the command is called!) – obviously it won’t be able to automatically fit the photos together but you can just jiggle them manually until you get a result that you are happy with.
Susan S.
It’s File>Photomerge.
Hey, Welcome back Susan! Hope you had a good trip.
Patti,
Sounds like the two pictures you have were not taken specifically for a merge so you might need to do this manually.
Make sure the images are the same resoulution and size. Then on one of them click image / resize / canvas size and add enough to the width or height for the other photo. Click the right (or left) anchor arrow so that the new empty canvas appears all on one side. (for instance if you have 2 4X6 photos and want them to be side by side you would change the canvas width size to 12 and then click on the "right" arrow in the anchor icon and then OK).
Then with the images side by side, select the "move" tool, click on the other one, hold, and drag it on to the balnk area of the canvas.
Pete
Susan,
Welcome home.
A few weeks ago visited my son in Colorado, his wife was from New South Wales area. Her father was visiting there also (he still lives in a town west of Sydney) and we enjoyed hearing about life there.
Pete
Thanks for the welcome backs – while I’m here in body, my brain appears still to be somewhere in transit between Heathrow and Australia… I had a lot of fun on the trip, but took but disappointingly few good pictures – it’s hard, I find when doing the tourist thing to strike the right balance between doing stuff and taking pictures – I like to take a good long time composing my photos and the four and seven year olds find that waiting for mummy to stop playing with her camera gets a bit tiresome. And I also like to experience things at first hand rather than through the lens of a camera sometimes….
We visited every children’s playground in Ontario I think – I loved Toronto, and we are thinking of going back for a semester long stay in a couple of years time. The UK was fun – the children loved seeing their grandparents and are now old enough to start really taking in some of the English tourist attractions.
My only camera related purchase was a canon 380EX flash for 2 pounds in a Cash Converters store in North London……it was slightly cracked but I bought it as the lights came on when I turned it on. Turns out the zoom mechanism had come off its little ratchet and it was just a matter of opening up the front and poking it experimentally with my finger to put it back into place. Works perfectly as a dedicated flash for my G3.. Given how much a new Canon EX flash would cost I think that was a bargain.
I’m actually busy putting together some of the panorama shots I took using Elements (to reurn to the topic) I still can’t make up my mind whether I prefer the Canon software or Elements, and I’m not altogether happy with the results of either.
Susan S
Welcome, back, Susan!
Patti, before you try this with your pictures, you might want to try doing the tutorial in PE Help. If you enter "tutorial" in the PE Help Search box, one of the results you get should be "stitch together a panorama."
That way you can practice with images that aren’t yours first.
Susan,
I have not found a consistent winner between Canon’s Photostitch and Elements Photomerge. If I’m not happy with the results of one, I try the other.
Let us know when you have some of your photos from your trip posted.
I’m going to Hawaii in two weeks and I am very much looking forward to some new opportunities to use my camera.
Okay, I went to the Photomerge and it said PSE was not able to automatically merge them, and there as nothing I could do to make the two pictures look like one continuous one. I did the tutorial with the cars and theirs looks great. I wonder why it can’t do that with my pictures. Any ideas?
Oh, and when it said it couldn’t do it automatically, I tried doing it manually, but I wasn’t able to do anything.
Hi, Susan – welcome back! I have a 380 EX which I bought new many years ago; I’ve been having some trouble getting it to work reliably with my Canon digitals, but I’ll be trying it again now that I know that you have one and can answer my questions about how to use it!
Best wishes…Chuck
Patti, open each of the two images on your desktop, look at their sizes, and then decide how big the new picture should be after merging. Now open a new blank canvas at that new size. Move the individual images on to the new canvas and just use the Move tool to shift them around until you get a decent looking match.
It occurs to me that you might have to do some work on each "half" first, because it’s quite likely the portions you want to blend might be different in size – either physical size or resolution. They’ll both have to be the same resolution, and you might have to massage one or the other in order to get this to the point where you have any chance of blending them. It’s a tricky proposition, so anticipate having to do a lot of experimenting on your own. We can give you the techniques, but you’ll have to figure out the sizing for yourself, since we can’t see what you’re working on. 🙂
Patti – I’m not sure where you are having problems. I’ve just done a "panorama" of two poorly matched shots (I was foolish enough not to take a tripod with me on my trip) which wouldn’t line up automatically, by lining them up individually in the panorama work area. (use the little arrow tool to drag both images onto the work area and overlap them as desired). As Beth says they may need to be fiddled with first to match size, resolution etc.
Chuck – as far as I can see (I don’t have a manual for the flash!) on the G3 it’s simply a matter of sticking the flash on the hotshoe and turning it on – the only control on the flash is the choice between normal and hi speed sync. It uses E-TTL, zooms in and out with the lens and contrary to the G3 manual, if set on manual or shutter priority with the flash on hi speed sync it can take photos at shutter speeds on much faster than 1/250. As I have my old flash set up as a slave, it makes a nice set-up. I think there were some problems with a green cast on early versions of the G3 with this particular flash unit, but a firmware update fixed it.
Susan S.
