Panorama

AN
Posted By
Andrew_N_Kavanagh
Oct 27, 2005
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601
Replies
26
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Closed
HELP PLEASE! I am trying to create a panoramic image from a series of photos (12) with limited success, perhaps too many photos? I am unable to get the joins to align correctly and I as hope to create a 360 degree video from this, it needs to be near perfect. I have been using photomerge from within Photoshop CS2. Any tips for improvement or different methods of doing this?

Thanks,

Andrew.

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C
chrisjbirchall
Oct 27, 2005
The pictures have to be shot with Photomerge in mind. Overlap each by 50% of the previous shot. A spirit level on your tripod can help too.

Most of all: don’t let Photomerge do all the work. Save the result UNflattened so you can adjust the joins manually after wards.

Oh! and don’t try to merge all twelve at the one time. Do it in two six-image chunks (or even three four-image chunks) and then merge these together at the end.

Chris.
MV
Mathias_Vejerslev
Oct 27, 2005
I have done many panoramas. Believe me when I say Photomerge is in the bottom of the heap of software you can use for this purpose. I use PTAssembler for mosaics, which is based on perhaps the most powerful panorama solution, the free Pano Tools. Several other GUIs are also based on Pano Tools.

I can highly recommend checking out this package. It is low-cost, and can give you very high quality and full control.

<http://www.tawbaware.com/ptasmblr.htm>
AN
Andrew_N_Kavanagh
Oct 27, 2005
Appreciated Chris, I’ll try what you have suggested. The images I am using were taken using a function of the camera that automatically makes the joins but it appears to overlap by about 20%. And, I WAS letting photomerge do pretty much all the work with all 12 images!
ND
Nick_Decker
Oct 27, 2005
What Mathias said.
FN
Fred_Nirque
Oct 27, 2005
Ditto.
EZ
Earl_Zubkoff
Oct 27, 2005
Add me to the "Mathias is right" chorus. Photomerge will not do what you want.

If you’ll be doing this regularly, you should consider investing in an application which is dedicated to panoramas. Many sites have information on these apps; this one has a pretty good roundup: <http://panoramic.net/panoramicnetwork/>
JJ
Joe_Joe_Smith
Oct 27, 2005
PTGui is by far the best pano software.

I regularly create printed panos and 360×180 (QTVR) panos, and have tried nearly every software out there.

<http://www.ptgui.com/>
AN
Andrew_N_Kavanagh
Oct 27, 2005
Mmm, I don’t know if some of you guys are trying to sell your own products here but this is a Photoshop forum and Photoshop is what I’m using.
C
Clyde
Oct 27, 2005
wrote:
PTGui is by far the best pano software.

I regularly create printed panos and 360×180 (QTVR) panos, and have tried nearly every software out there.

<http://www.ptgui.com/>

Actually, you won’t find much difference between the two shareware programs (PTAssembler and PTGui) and the freeware frontend to PanoTool (Hugin). There will be a bit of a learning curve, but once you have it, it will be very powerful.

Clyde
MV
Mathias_Vejerslev
Oct 27, 2005
Lol. Good luck.
RB
Robert_Barnett
Oct 27, 2005
Get yourself some decent software. Adobe’s PhotoMerge pretty wells sucks. I like and use Panorama Factory. It is easy to use, powerful and does a good job.

http://www.panoramafactory.com/index.html

Robert
C
chrisjbirchall
Oct 27, 2005
Andrew: I don’t dispute what any of these guys are saying – and if you’re going to be making lots of panos, get some trial versions and buy the best.

HOWEVER – if you are just doing one or two, Photomerege WILL do the job.

I’ve done some pretty impressive panos of shop interiors for a couple of clients. But yes – I did have to work on them. Maybe if I started getting a lot more commissions I would look to getting some specialist software. But if another job came in tomorrow I would happily use Photomerge again.

Chris.
EZ
Earl_Zubkoff
Oct 27, 2005
Chris, did you actually use Photomerge for a full 360-degree, 8-to-12-frame composition?
R
RobertHJones
Oct 27, 2005
Andrew,

If you are using Windows, just for fun, try out the FREE demo program from the University of British Columbia:
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

They’re hoping to get a company to develop a commercial version. If you like what it can do, write Adobe and tell them they should look into licensing the technology. It would do wonders for Photomerge.

To use it, go into file>open and select all 12 images. You’ll also want to use edit>options to set the size and jpeg quality.

Photomerge is fine for small numbers of fairly linear photos but if you are using many images, overlapping rows, or wide angle images, you need somthing that will correct for the geometry. My personal preference is Panorama Tools using a front end — PTGUI and PTAssembler are both good.

The Autostitch program I pointed you to is interesting because they have an entirely automated control point selection algorithm which can actually determine which photos fit within the panorama set, i.e. you can actually have other non-related photos mixed in the selection and it will omit the ones that don’t have overapping areas. In fact, it’s possible to even mix multiple panoramas together and it will select the groups. The demo doesn’t take advantage of the multiple groups but a commercial version could if desired. It also has a nice blending capability.

Bob
AN
Andrew_N_Kavanagh
Oct 27, 2005
I appreciate that there are many alternatives to Adobe’s products but for this project I HAVE to use Photoshop, other software is not an option.
AN
Andrew_N_Kavanagh
Oct 27, 2005
Chris

It was a lot of work (re-sizing, cropping, aligning, even repeating the shoot) but I now have a satisfactory result. However, is there a quick way to uniformly alter the colour and brightness of the layers to compensate for the dark and light areas of the room?

Andrew.
ND
Nick_Decker
Oct 27, 2005
Andrew, whether you use Photomerge or some other application that’s been mentioned here, you’ll find it easier to merge/blend the various components if all photos were shot at the same settings (i.e. manually setting the exposure).

Hope that helps, and no, I’m not trying to sell anything.
AN
Andrew_N_Kavanagh
Oct 27, 2005
Thanks Nick,

It may be that I have to do the actual shoot again but I REALLY don’t want to do that after all the adjustments I’ve made to my current images.
ND
Nick_Decker
Oct 27, 2005
Know what you mean, Andrew, but I’m guessing you’ll find that there are fewer adjustments to make the second time around.
C
chrisjbirchall
Oct 27, 2005
did you actually use Photomerge for a full 360-degree, 8-to-12-frame composition?

The largest I have done was a nine shot 180 degree pano. But each was a high res (4256x2848px) file, and I did it in two panos then stitched them together.

is there a quick way to uniformly alter the colour and brightness of the layers to compensate for the dark and light areas of the room?

Nick’s suggestion is the correct way of getting the colours/tones to blend. Otherwise you are such with Levels/curves and "Match Colour" to get the blending right (Much quicker to reshoot!)
MD
Michael_D_Sullivan
Oct 28, 2005
For matching the exposures and colors of the shots, try this, before merging (could probably also do it after merging to layers, with some modifications):

1. Pick the one shot that is the standard that the others should match.

2. Use a marquee to select the area in the standard that overlaps the next image.

3. Use a marquee to select the area in the next image that overlaps the standard.

4. Make the next image the active window. Click Image > Adjustments > Match Color.

5. Check "Ignore Selection when Applying Adjustments". Under Source, pick the standard image. Make sure the two checkboxes above that are checked. The Image Options should be 100,100,0, with Neutralized unchecked. The preview should show the two images matching; if not, tweak settings. Click OK.

6. Now proceed across the pano, using the corrected "next image" as your new "standard". Repeat as necessary.

Oh, and all of this can be handled automatically by PTgui, which also does a much better job at lining up the images to be seamless than Photomerge could ever dream of doing. But you have to use Photoshop.
AN
Andrew_N_Kavanagh
Oct 28, 2005
Thanks Michael, that worked to a certain extent but sometimes behaved unexpectedly. Certainly a marked improvement but I fear that the only way to be certain of good results will be another shoot with more control of the shots.
D
deebs
Oct 28, 2005
Hey! That autostitch looks very interesting and seems a great reason for maintaining Open Source stuff.

I hope it does not, eventually, cost an arm and a leg 🙂
MV
Mathias_Vejerslev
Oct 28, 2005
?

Autostitch is not open source.

Also, although the technology behind autostitch is great and relatively new (SIFT), the only current output from it is equirectangular. But it should not be difficult for a future program to have cylindrical and rectilinear projections. It would indeed be smart of adobe to purchase this technology.
C
Clyde
Oct 29, 2005
wrote:
I appreciate that there are many alternatives to Adobe’s products but for this project I HAVE to use Photoshop, other software is not an option.

Why?

Clyde
IM
Ian Moore
Oct 31, 2005
I seem to have better results with arcsoft panaroma maker. I think theres a free trial so worth a go – not sure if limited to number of shots. I use mynikon 7900 for 360’s rather than D70 due to panarama settings, reduces need for tripod etc.

wrote in message
HELP PLEASE! I am trying to create a panoramic image from a series of photos (12) with limited success, perhaps too many photos? I am unable to get the joins to align correctly and I as hope to create a 360 degree video from this, it needs to be near perfect. I have been using photomerge from within Photoshop CS2. Any tips for improvement or different methods of doing this?

Thanks,

Andrew.

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