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Photography Question 

Andrew Laverghetta 		 

Panoramic Composition


 
 
Hi! I have a question about putting a panoramic photo together on Photoshop CS. Since I don't actually have CS, but 7.0, I have to go to a library to put these pictures together. By the way, I shoot with film right now because my camera was cheaper than something like the digital version of my camera, Canon's Digital Rebel.
I recently took a picture of the visitor side stands at an IU football game, I took three shots and at 1/125 but I don't know if the F/stop stayed the same. Probably not, anyway, I put them together with photo merge and they have obvious lines where one picture stopped and the other started, also, many horizontal lines appear to be broken like the sidelines and the top level of the stands. Any help? Thanks!


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September 27, 2004

 
- Gregory LaGrange

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Gregory LaGrange's Gallery 		  Why go to the library if you have 7.0? Use a tripod with a bubble level. Use manual, so your exposure stays the same.
Better to use a 50mm, but take several pictures across. Cut mostly the center part of each picture and use Photoshop to connect them (like 3/5 if you had a 50mm; a wide angle maybe the middle 1/3 due to distortion).
Leave some room for overlap when stacking layers, and use a feathered eraser tool to blend the edges.
Once the layers are lined up and flattened, you may have to do a slight crop to get the very top and bottom edge straight.


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September 27, 2004

 

Chris Howarth 		  No reason to go to the library, Andrew. Even the cutdown version of Photoshop (Elements) will allow you to stitch multiple images into a panorama. It won't save you, however, from having to make sure that when you are taking the shots to form the pano that you keep the aperture and shutter speed constant for each image.


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September 28, 2004

 

dipesh 		  Hi. I would like to add my query to it: Do we need to keep the exposure the same for every shot we take? What if we are in interiors - some areas might be darker, then the other ... will it render OK?
Also, how to we get the right exposure for overall compositions for pano? Do we need to move our tripod head - 30 degrees, 12 times - so we get a complete 360-degree turn?
What should be the focal length of the lens: 50mm or lower? Thanks, and regards.


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September 28, 2004

 
- Gregory LaGrange

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Gregory LaGrange's Gallery 		  Keeping the exposure the same will hide light to dark lines. But if dark areas need to be brought out to show detail, you'll have to use other tools to make it look even. You move the tripod head as many times as it takes. The horizonal curvature that wide-angle lenses have make it harder for each section to line up evenly.


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September 28, 2004

 

Lewis Kemper 		  Also, there is a button in PhotoMerge that says Keep as Layers. If you check that button, the image will not be flattened and you can adjust the separate layers to make the blending smoother.
I have a whole lesson on PhotoMerge in my class, Photographer's Toolbox for Photoshop: Toolbox #2. I teach you some exciting techniques for matching colors, and using layer masks to help with the blends.


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September 30, 2004

 

Steve Mescha 		 
 
 
I just put together a panorama of my remodeled bathroom to send to friend and broke most of the rules but got the job done. I hand held the camera, did not lock exposure, but I did use mostly the center of the images as Gregory suggested and feathered the edges. This was a really small room so I set the lens to wide and used a total of 9 images. I did some tweeking of brightness and contrast but the real challenge came when I got to the tiled walls around the tub. None of the tiles lined up so I simply used the "free transform" tool to distort those sections. If you hold down the ctrl key as you drag a corner you can change the perspective and with a little patience you can make things line up. Where there's a will there's a way. Be creative. See attached photo.


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October 05, 2004

 

Steve Mescha 		  I forgot to mention, I did this using Photoshop 6.
Steve


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October 05, 2004

 
- Gregory LaGrange

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Gregory LaGrange's Gallery 		  your toilet paper's going the wrong way.


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October 05, 2004

 

David King 		  Simple panos can be done like this but to do excellent ones takes a more serious approach. In addition to the exposure issue, both the lens's natural barrel distortion (common in ALL rectilinear lenses) must be flattened and, as importantly, the perspective changes due to moving camera positions must be minimized or eliminated by shooting with a spherical panorama head or some home brew device that lets you pivot the camera NOT on the tripod mount but at the lens nodal or center point. A dedicated program such as Panorama Tools, can then remove the distortion and by taking into account the lens field of view and a reference point (the point in the frames that is dead level and looking straight ahead) will correct for the optical problems including some keystoning. From there you can either complete assembly in Photoshop or use a PT Tools interface such as PT Assembler or PT GUI to select control points where the images connect and let IT do the assembly. With such a tool you can do both wide view panoramas as well as incredibly high resolution mosaics of normal views created from many frames aligned in a table. I do lots of these and have done it manually just to be able to show students how to do it but it is SOOOOO much easier and better to let the computer do the math and sort out the distortion and optical issues.

David


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October 06, 2004

 
- Gregory LaGrange

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Gregory LaGrange's Gallery 		  http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/nodal.html

that says there's a front and rear nodal point and that you should actually rotate around the entrance pupil. Which you look in the front of the lens and see where the diaphram is.
But, depends on how far you want to go with it. Think most can swivel the tripod head around and do a good enough job with cut and erase.


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October 06, 2004

 
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