# panorama



## ray5 (Dec 27, 2014)

Hi,
I have attempted shooting a panorama. Never done it before. I have not stitched it yet, will be doing so shortly. They range from 5-7 shots with about 40-50% overlap. Will be using CS5. I have shot both in RAW and jpg. Questions:

- I would like to do the RAW first. I have no clue about layers, so normally do ACR and then into Photoshop. I assume I should apply the same changes to all the shots in one pano? Is there a simple way to apply the changes to the entire batch? How?
-Is there a specific aspect ratio, dimension or even a preferred one?
- Should I stitch them first before editing or the other way around?
- Is there a preferred format for saving the final huge file?
Any help would be appreciated. Any tutorials?
Thanks,
Ray


----------



## zim (Dec 27, 2014)

Been round the houses with stitching software, there is a particular member of cr got me totally hooked on the idea with his work. Download a trial copy of http://www.ptgui.com 

Good luck
Regards


----------



## ray5 (Dec 27, 2014)

zim said:


> Been round the houses with stitching software, there is a particular member of cr got me totally hooked on the idea with his work. Download a trial copy of http://www.ptgui.com
> 
> Good luck
> Regards


Thanks, will try it out. Will start out with using what I have before putting some more money unless you think it's that good to not even attempt Photoshop?


----------



## tolusina (Dec 27, 2014)

If you're using Windows, Microsoft ICE is pretty slick.
It's as easy is drag and drop your set of images, even CR2s directly into the interface, select your desired output format and go. I output to TIFF, rather large files are produced.
I suspect it's not so good with weak hardware PCs, but maybe it's fine but slow there.
There are five choices for 'camera motion', run them all one at a time, see what pleases.

It's free as in free, it's here....
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/

edit...
I've found stitching works fastest if you pan from left to right, images, file names, time of file creation then naturally flows from left to right, software will try aligning in that order first. Otherwise it has to go deeper analyzing the images to figure out which goes where, then align.
Best I can figure, this applies to most stitchers.
....edit.


----------



## ray5 (Dec 27, 2014)

tolusina said:


> If you're using Windows, Microsoft ICE is pretty slick.
> It's as easy is drag and drop your set of images, even CR2s directly into the interface, select your desired output format and go. I output to TIFF, rather large files are produced.
> I suspect it's not so good with weak hardware PCs, but maybe it's fine but slow there.
> There are five choices for 'camera motion', run them all one at a time, see what pleases.
> ...


I use Mac only. Thx


----------



## tolusina (Dec 28, 2014)

ray5 said:


> tolusina said:
> 
> 
> > If you're using Windows, Microsoft ICE is pretty slick.
> ...


Aren't things like this why God Jobs created Boot Camp?


----------



## ray5 (Dec 28, 2014)

tolusina said:


> ray5 said:
> 
> 
> > tolusina said:
> ...


 ;D


----------



## candc (Dec 28, 2014)

photoshop does a pretty good job of stitching a few or 5 photos. no need to convert the raws first. just click file/automate/photomerge. select your raws and it does the rest. if you want to do full 360 panos and convert to cubic and qtvr then ptgui is the way to go.


----------



## ray5 (Dec 28, 2014)

So I did it in CS 5. Why did this happen? Screen shot attached. So why is it not one panoramic image . :'(


----------



## privatebydesign (Dec 28, 2014)

When you get to this screen select something other than 'auto'.

Or just realign the two sections the merge has given you.


----------



## ray5 (Dec 28, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> When you get to this screen select something other than 'auto'.
> 
> Or just realign the two sections the merge has given you.



How do I realign?


----------



## privatebydesign (Dec 28, 2014)

ray5 said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > When you get to this screen select something other than 'auto'.
> ...



Just expand the canvas then select the layer for the bit that is wrong and use the move tool to put it in the right place.


----------



## Don Haines (Dec 28, 2014)

If you really go crazy and start thinking about 360 degree panoramas and multiple rows of shots, take a peek at AutoPano Giga..... It handles the big jobs quite well. So far, the biggest I have tried is 11 rows of 36 pictures (396 total) and it created a 40,000 by 115,000 pixel image (4.6Gpixels). It isn't cheap, but if you really get into panoramas, it's worth it.


----------



## Rocky (Dec 28, 2014)

ray5 said:


> So I did it in CS 5. Why did this happen? Screen shot attached. So why is it not one panoramic image . :'(



The red light and the red reflection on the 4th picture throws everything off. Therefore the 3rd and the 4th picture cannot be joint together. So you ended up having 1, 2,3 as one picture and the 4 and 5 becomes another picture.


----------



## ray5 (Dec 28, 2014)

Rocky said:


> ray5 said:
> 
> 
> > So I did it in CS 5. Why did this happen? Screen shot attached. So why is it not one panoramic image . :'(
> ...



So why did it do that?


----------



## ray5 (Dec 28, 2014)

Don Haines said:


> If you really go crazy and start thinking about 360 degree panoramas and multiple rows of shots, take a peek at AutoPano Giga..... It handles the big jobs quite well. So far, the biggest I have tried is 11 rows of 36 pictures (396 total) and it created a 40,000 by 115,000 pixel image (4.6Gpixels). It isn't cheap, but if you really get into panoramas, it's worth it.



Wow! 
This is my first and you can see I have a lot to learn with the software but perhaps in the future. Thanks


----------



## candc (Dec 28, 2014)

ray5 said:


> Rocky said:
> 
> 
> > ray5 said:
> ...


there a a few things that cause problems for stitching software. too much or not enough overlap, parallax and camera movement, movement in the scene. the problem in your set is that photoshop is probably having a problem with the reflections in the water which are moving and changing from shot to shot. most dedicated stitchers have some manual controls to pick matching points on the shots to force it together.


----------



## ray5 (Dec 28, 2014)

candc said:


> ray5 said:
> 
> 
> > Rocky said:
> ...


No way to circumvent it easily?


----------



## candc (Dec 28, 2014)

ray5 said:


> candc said:
> 
> 
> > ray5 said:
> ...



i would try it again but pick "cylindrical" instead of auto in the import options. maybe select "correct for geometric distortion" or you can take your 2 stitched images and combine them into one manually. sometimes when all else fails you just need to do it the old fashioned way. its the same thing if you have people moving around in the photo, you might need to manually mask them out of a layer

canons photostitch might work? i've tried them all and sometimes it will work with one stitcher and not another? if you post links to the files i can try it with ptgui.


----------



## Rocky (Dec 28, 2014)

ray5 said:


> Rocky said:
> 
> 
> > ray5 said:
> ...


What is "it" and "that"???
Try to crop #4 such that the red light and the red reflections are barely cut. Then stitch #1, #2, #3, #4 (cropped), and #5. The water reflection will not affect the stitching. The water will be slightly blurring in some area. Photoshop stitching works very well in the windows operating system. Do not use the stitching software from Canon.


----------



## mbj68 (Dec 28, 2014)

I find the PS merge works very well for me...I typically import the shots to LR and then go to PS without any adjustments, I do my adjustments after the merge and then back to LR.






http://www.mjphotographykc.com/panoramic/


----------



## mackguyver (Dec 28, 2014)

Ray,

The reason it happened is because you didn't overlap enough for PS to recognize and match similar elements. This has happened to me as well and I ended up with 3 rows! You'll read that 20% is enough, but I've read from Thomas Knoll (one of the creators of PS) that 33-50% will give more reliable results. Keep this in mind next time you try a pano...

Since you can't go back in time and fix the overlap, the way to fix it is to try a few techniques. First is to try cylindrical or other options to see if one of them works, the second is to pre-process in ACR with lens correction, then stitch the TIFFs or PSDs together. Both of these have worked for me, with the latter being more successful.

If those fail, go back to the auto and manually select the layers in the bottom row(s) and drag them and align them with the Move tool. You will probably need to rotate and even resize them slightly. The trick is to use the transparency setting for the layers you are positioning. Make sure they are on top and set the transparency of the layers from 25-50%. That way you can align them much more easily. You will likely have to use the eraser tool as well to fix the seams. You might have to correct other things like exposure as well if you didn't shoot in Manual mode.

It's tedious but nearly 100% successful unless the seams don't overlap at all or too much changed in the shot to overlap (i.e. movement, focus, aperture, or shutter speed change from not shooting 100% manual).


----------



## ray5 (Dec 28, 2014)

mackguyver said:


> Ray,
> 
> The reason it happened is because you didn't overlap enough for PS to recognize and match similar elements. This has happened to me as well and I ended up with 3 rows! You'll read that 20% is enough, but I've read from Thomas Knoll (one of the creators of PS) that 33-50% will give more reliable results. Keep this in mind next time you try a pano...
> 
> ...


I think you are right. Though my intent was to overlap by around 40-50% I obviously didn't achieve that. I am going to try the above methods. I did try perspective and align only methods so far but no luck. Will give cylindrical a shot. Will report back. If not I'll have to find some tutorials about layers and finally give it some effort. Thanks


----------



## BeenThere (Dec 29, 2014)

For a brain twister, try focus stacking, HDR, and pano in one combined image. Work flow is to do the focus stacked groups first in something like heilicon focus, then feed these into PTGui and save the high bit Radiance File. Open the high bit image in PS and crop rough edges to a rectangle. Process the result in Nik HDR plug-in and output a 16 bit image. Final tweaks in PS or LR.


----------



## ray5 (Dec 29, 2014)

BeenThere said:


> For a brain twister, try focus stacking, HDR, and pano in one combined image. Work flow is to do the focus stacked groups first in something like heilicon focus, then feed these into PTGui and save the high bit Radiance File. Open the high bit image in PS and crop rough edges to a rectangle. Process the result in Nik HDR plug-in and output a 16 bit image. Final tweaks in PS or LR.



,
I think I'd rather shoot myself! I am fast figuring out that spending time in the composition is not enough. Part of being a complete photographer includes some knowledge of editing.


----------



## mackguyver (Dec 29, 2014)

ray5 said:


> I think you are right. Though my intent was to overlap by around 40-50% I obviously didn't achieve that. I am going to try the above methods. I did try perspective and align only methods so far but no luck. Will give cylindrical a shot. Will report back. If not I'll have to find some tutorials about layers and finally give it some effort. Thanks


That was the best part of owning a PowerShot - it had a sweet little pano mode that showed you where to line things up for a good pano. It would be cool if Canon could add this feature to LiveView...

Alas, this is why a pano head is nice. You sort out the overlap at home with the markings and in the field you just rotate to the marks and get perfect overlaps. I have the RRS one that pops into the Arca/Swiss clamp which is mighty convenient.



ray5 said:


> BeenThere said:
> 
> 
> > For a brain twister, try focus stacking, HDR, and pano in one combined image. Work flow is to do the focus stacked groups first in something like heilicon focus, then feed these into PTGui and save the high bit Radiance File. Open the high bit image in PS and crop rough edges to a rectangle. Process the result in Nik HDR plug-in and output a 16 bit image. Final tweaks in PS or LR.
> ...


I have wanted to shoot myself. I was trying to do something very similar to what BeenThere describes when I ended up with three rows on my canvas in PS. I had such grand plans for the pano, but ultimately realized that I should hold off on that until I master the art of taking panos period!


----------



## ray5 (Dec 29, 2014)

mackguyver said:


> ray5 said:
> 
> 
> > I think you are right. Though my intent was to overlap by around 40-50% I obviously didn't achieve that. I am going to try the above methods. I did try perspective and align only methods so far but no luck. Will give cylindrical a shot. Will report back. If not I'll have to find some tutorials about layers and finally give it some effort. Thanks
> ...



I just started with this so will have to see how it goes. This year has been too much, new lenses, new tripod and trips. My better half will diemember me personally if I even drop a hint about buying anything else for awhile. Bribing won't work either!


----------



## tolusina (Dec 29, 2014)

ray5 said:


> ..... diemember ......


I think you've just typo'd a new word. Good one though, pretty much self explanatory.
Newspeak short for kill and dismember, or once dead, you'll be dis-remembered.

...

Now back to the regularly scheduled rumors............. ???


----------



## ray5 (Dec 29, 2014)

tolusina said:


> ray5 said:
> 
> 
> > ..... diemember ......
> ...



;D ;D ;D
Pretty accurate! Stubby fingers on a tiny screen!


----------



## paolo80 (Dec 31, 2014)

I use PTGui and I'm very happy with it. I export to tiff from LR without any adjustments and after stitching I reimport to LR for standard workflow.


----------

