# Photostitch ain't perfect, or is it me?



## LovePhotography (Jan 28, 2015)

Practicing with photo stitch. Took three shots of this messy countertop. The seams are less than perfect. Is that the software and it's the best it can do? Or is my technique bad? Any ideas?


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## Jim Saunders (Jan 28, 2015)

It isn't too bad, I'm sure there are people who are more adept at panos here than I am. I got similar results from it, it is good for the price but PS really is better at it. :-/

Jim


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## LovePhotography (Jan 28, 2015)

Bigger picture


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## privatebydesign (Jan 28, 2015)

Your technique is bad.

When the subject is close you need to pay particular attention to parallax and rotating the camera/lens combo about the nodal/entry point.

This explains it. http://www.johnhpanos.com/epcalib.htm but there are a billion articles and how to's.


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## LovePhotography (Jan 28, 2015)

Using TS-E 24 shifting on a tripod. I realize that in a perfect world, the front glass would not move, and the tripod would shift back-and-forth. So, the question is would it merge better with better technique? Or is this common for Canon Photostitch?


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## LovePhotography (Jan 28, 2015)

So, Mr. Private, it can get better than this? Especially if my subject is farther away, reduce the effect of the moving front lens? That's good. I was kind of hoping not to have to drop $300 on Photoshop. I have an old one, but at some point I want to get the new one, but I don't want to sign up for that creative cloud extortion deal. Not yet.


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## privatebydesign (Jan 28, 2015)

LovePhotography said:


> So, Mr. private, it can get better than this? Especially if my subject is farther away, reduce the effect of the moving front lens? That's good. I was kind of hoping not to have to drop $300 on Photoshop. I have an old one, but at some point I want to get the new one, but I don't want to sign up for that creative cloud extortion deal. Not yet.



It can get perfect, especially when there is nothing too obvious closer to the camera. But with an adjustment to your technique the subject distance is not an issue, you can stitch macro shots, but if you pay closer attention to your entrance pupil then you will get better results all around.

The bigger issue I had with the Canon PhotoStitch was the unevenness of skies when the vignetting wasn't removed adequately.


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## Coz (Jan 28, 2015)

While proper technique is paramount, you don't need to spend $300+ or subscribe to Creative Cloud. Photoshop Elements v13 for about $75 (often on sale for less) can provide you with the same stitching power as full Photoshop.


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## LovePhotography (Jan 28, 2015)

Thank you for the assistance. Not quite sure how to pay more attention to the entrance pupil. I turned the little knob as carefully as I could. At first I was really excited that I got a result, then I started looking at the seams and kind of thought WTH!


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## jthomson (Jan 28, 2015)

I have had issues with photo stitch not lining up properly. I found a freebie from Microsoft called ICE which does a better job.


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## LovePhotography (Jan 28, 2015)

jthomson said:


> I have had issues with photo stitch not lining up properly. I found a freebie from Microsoft called ICE which does a better job.



Thanks,
I think I'll give it a try.
Here is the link.
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/


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## raptor3x (Jan 28, 2015)

jthomson said:


> I have had issues with photo stitch not lining up properly. I found a freebie from Microsoft called ICE which does a better job.



This is the correct answer. ICE isn't perfect but it's amazingly good for the vast majority of scenarios and requires essentially zero work from the end user.


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## Tabor Warren Photography (Jan 28, 2015)

First of all, I agree with Private. 

My 2 cents; distance, rotation, alignment, and most importantly (in my humble opinion) is the number of photos. Rather than 3, try 7. Rather than 8, try 15. I take most of my panos with the subject at least 10 feet away and typically aim for a 120 degree rotation and 11-13 photos keeping the shutter half depressed rather than refocusing as I go. I edit them all the same time in Camera Raw, use the photo merge option in bridge, check the boxes for blending the images together as well as geometric distortion correction, and leave vignette removal unchecked (I already removed the vignette in camera raw. After hitting OK, Photoshop goes to work and does an amazing job. I'll merge anywhere from 8 to 100+ photos together with very little error rate.

Experiment, have fun, and best of luck!

All my best,
-Tabor


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## Omni Images (Jan 28, 2015)

I do a fair bit of stitching. I use PTgui.
But the main issue would be getting it right at the start.
The wider the lens, the harder it is to stitch, as you have things close like rocks and bushes etc and things at a distance to try and line up, with any sort of lens curvature that causes issues. Things close at the bottom can skew the stitch.
The other thing is to use a pano head if you can. I have a Manfrotto 303+
You need to pivot it around the nodal point .. or basically around the front element . a pano head makes it precise.
Take small bites, take more shots .. so the program uses the middle of the shot rather make it use each image right to the edges.
Always shoot in manual, and switch off auto focus, otherwise as you turn your camera the auto will try and adjust exposure or focus and you will end up with different coloured sky and shots out of focus if you move by a tree or what ever. 
And yes batch process them in raw before merging.


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## sulla (Jan 28, 2015)

For stitching panoramas, I have very good experiences using the opensource software hugin ( http://hugin.sourceforge.net/ ) which gives you full control over the overlap points - if you wish. Often slight errors like in your stitch can be corrected by manually chosing better overlap points.

Technique is important, as mentioned, when you have nearby objects in the frame, to avoid the parallax-effect.

If you do a shift-panorama with a TS-E lens, it is strictly speaking necessary to shift the camera, not the lens. For this it would be necessary to mount the lens on the tripod (not the camera), but this is hard, because the lens does not have a tripod screw on the barrel, which is really a pity for TS-E lenses. You could try to fix a pendulum on the lens, mark the spot on the ground that the pendulum points to and then move the tripod a few millimeters so that the pendulum points to the same spot for each shot. If you also correct for vertical shifts by extending or retracting the tripod's center column, this should give you perfect images for stitching. You wouldn't even need special software, just repositioning the images should then be fine...
If you take your pictures with an ordinary lens by turning the direction of the camera+lens, you must take care to turn the lens around the right point, the entrance pupil (strictly speaking not the nodal point, but those 2 are normally close enough, and everyone always only talks about the nodal point...). It would be great if Canon marked this point on the lens or at least gave its location range in the manual. Because just form the look of a lens you have no idea of where this point is, normally it is in the front third of the lens. Also it shifts with zooming and focussing a bit, so marking it is difficult. For most practical purposes it suffices, however, to use a mounting plate and to move the mounting point from the tripod-screw of the camera into the first third of the lens. This should already avoid most of the parallax effect and make it easier for the stitching software. There ar special mounting-brackets available that additionally shift the turning point vertically into the optical axis, and this enables to shoot mulit-row panoramas parallax-error-free.


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## Don Haines (Jan 28, 2015)

When taking a panorama of close up items, parallax comes into play. It is present in longer distances, but as things get closer, it gets more prominent.

When you take the panorama, you set the camera up on a tripod, take a shot, rotate the camera, take another shot, and so on.... The less you rotate between shots, the less likely you are to get kinks in lines that should be straight. Better software, such as AutoPano (expensive) will curve those joints and they will be less prominent, or will allow you to select different projection models to minimize the curves.

The parallax problem mentioned above is because you want the focal point of the lens to be centered above the pivot point of the tripod, not the camera. To do this, you need a tripod mount that allows you to slide the camera back and forth until you find the spot. You can tell by looking through the viewfinder as you rotate the camera. If foreground objects move relative to background objects as you rotate, you have parallax problems and should slide the camera back and forth to minimize the effect. If you don't do this, you get differences between frames of your panorama and it will give you strange artifacts when stitched.

Hope this helps....


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## Tanispyre (Jan 28, 2015)

I have a couple of questions, what lens and camera were you using to take the photos, and were you using a tripod?


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## LovePhotography (Jan 28, 2015)

Mr. Haines,
The thing that sort of surprised me is I did this shot with the TS-E 24 but shifting left, center, and right. I am totally on board with the perspective changing and curving straight lines as you rotate. But, since I had the tilt shift vertical (as close as I could tell) and was merely shifting and not rotating, I didn't think the seams would fail to line up. But, they did.
Tanispyre,
I was using a solid all metal tripod, a 6D and a TSE-24mm that's new to me, but purchased new 6 months ago from B&H. 
I'll mess with it some more and see what happens next. 
Thanks for all the advice!


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## Tanispyre (Jan 28, 2015)

Couple of tips on my experience. I have a macro rail that I use to move the camera instead of the the lens with TS lenses when I am doing panos with one. For TS lenses I mount the camera with the rails parallel to the film plane. First I shift the lens, then I shift the rails by the same amount in the opposite direction, this keeps the front of the lens still and moves the camera so I am effectively capturing the same perspective. With non Tilt Shift lenses, I mount the macro rails perpendicular to the film plane and then shift the camera back so that the tripod is rotating under the lens instead of the camera. It is not as easy or precise as using a pano head but it works to reduce parallax errors.

The other tip I have is to shoot with the camera vertically. You have to take more photos to cover the same horizontal angle, but it allows me to capture more of the scene, and gives me the option to crop more off the top and the bottom where lens distortion is likely to be greater, and cause more problems with stitching.

The last thing is to experiment with the stitching style, my version of Photostitch offered two types. One where you rotate the camera and one where you actually slide or move the camera to a new position. I often found that the slide stitch gave me better results than the rotate version, even if I didn't actually move the camera.


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## Sporgon (Jan 28, 2015)

LovePhotography said:


> Mr. Haines,
> The thing that sort of surprised me is I did this shot with the TS-E 24 but shifting left, center, and right. I am totally on board with the perspective changing and curving straight lines as you rotate. But, since I had the tilt shift vertical (as close as I could tell) and was merely shifting and not rotating, I didn't think the seams would fail to line up. But, they did.
> Tanispyre,
> I was using a solid all metal tripod, a 6D and a TSE-24mm that's new to me, but purchased new 6 months ago from B&H.
> ...



Irrespective of the software you're using, what you are finding is how not to shoot a pano. Be aware that if you are both straight on to your subject and in the middle you are going to find it much harder to get a satisfactory result. Add the fact that you're very close to your subject, the subject is a straight line and you've gone quite wide; you'll need a fair bit of manual tweaking with any program.

My advice: don't try and do this type of thing as a pano.


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## sulla (Jan 28, 2015)

Yea, as said, also with TS-E shift panoramas you will have a parallax error for close subjects, if you don't replace the tripod for every shot in order to keep the lens at the same position, not the camera.

And try the software that lets you cusomise the matching points! This might help.


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## mackguyver (Jan 28, 2015)

Here's the solution, written by the late Uwe Steinmueller:

Workflow Technique #058: Avoiding Parallax while Stitching with Shift Lenses

You should probably PDF this page as I'm not sure how long his widow will keep everything online.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jan 28, 2015)

I also had trouble with photostitch, even with distant objects and many shots. It was just a trial, I tried 2-3 times and lost interest.

If I still have the original photos, I'll try photoshop and compare.


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## Coz (Feb 10, 2015)

By coincidence, Microsoft just released version 2.0 of ICE. Available for free:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/ice/

Lots of new neat features.


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