HELP PLEASE - Pano Experts?

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Name
Paul
Edit My Images
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Hi All

I don't often take panorama's because I'm a fan of breaking out the wide lens, but the following 2 shots are the middle 2 from a 4 shot pano attempt from millenium bridge.

These 2 just wont merge in Lightroom or photoshop, and maybe I simply haven't left enough of an overlap for them?? Is there anything I can do to rescue this? Any other software to try?

Thanks in advance for any help offered

PanoHelp by Paul, on Flickr

PanoHelp by Paul, on Flickr
 
There isn't enough overlap to do it properly, especially given that you are on the edge of how wide a focal length works for panos, there will be lots of distortion to correct which requires lots of overlap. Can't imagine any other software would work either.
 
It may be that way our havent left enough overlap bu5 it seem quite a simple image, could you not stitch them yourself?

Haven’t thought about that and wouldn’t know where to start really, but I’ll look into it, thanks!
 
There isn't enough overlap to do it properly, especially given that you are on the edge of how wide a focal length works for panos, there will be lots of distortion to correct which requires lots of overlap. Can't imagine any other software would work either.

Thanks for this. Gives me something to think about for next time
 
Microsoft ICE?

Free and gets good reviews. Free is worth a shot I guess? :)
 
Especially when shooting at 28mm (on a crop body) you would want half a frame overlap really...

For me though, panos work best from normal to short-telephoto focal lengths, it makes the stitching much more straightforward.

Not the best photo, was just a record for me, but the 8 or so (as a guess) frames that made up this were shot at the equivalent of 55mm on your camera:

HCP by Ned Awty, on Flickr
 
Hi All

I don't often take panorama's because I'm a fan of breaking out the wide lens, but the following 2 shots are the middle 2 from a 4 shot pano attempt from millenium bridge.

These 2 just wont merge in Lightroom or photoshop, and maybe I simply haven't left enough of an overlap for them?? Is there anything I can do to rescue this? Any other software to try?

Thanks in advance for any help offered

PanoHelp by Paul, on Flickr

PanoHelp by Paul, on Flickr



I had no difficulty creating your pan in PTAssembler there is quite enough overlap.
The only problem is that you did not include the EXIF data in the files you downloaded
and the software needs the actual focal length and crop factor of the sensor so I used 28mm and 1.6 crop
I Selected my own control points and manually optomised rather than use the auto setting.

PTAssembler is a much more sophisticated and faster Pan stitcher than Photoshop and works in a similar way to PTGui.
Either program could have done this stich very easily.

tp pan by Terry Andrews, on Flickr


The process might look complex but it is very easy this is the preview stage. the area between the green and blue curved lines is the overlap area.


pan-snip web by Terry Andrews, on Flickr
 
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I had no difficulty creating your pan in PTAssembler there is quite enough overlap.
The only problem is that you did not include the EXIF data in the files you downloaded
and the software needs the actual focal length and crop factor of the sensor so I used 28mm and 1.6 crop
I Selected my own control points and manually optomised rather than use the auto setting.

PTAssembler is a much more sophisticated and faster Pan stitcher than Photoshop and works in a similar way to PTGui.
Either program could have done this stich very easily.

tp pan by Terry Andrews, on Flickr


The process might look complex but it is very easy this is the preview stage. the area between the green and blue curved lines is the overlap area.


pan-snip web by Terry Andrews, on Flickr

Thank you very much for taking the time Terry! [emoji1360][emoji1360]
 
It is quite interesting that the horizon I set is your eye level. which suggest you were quite high. On a bridge?
Photoshop has great difficulty with stitching large areas of featureless sky and water as it sets its seams to follow edges of objects.
PTAssembler and PTGui use control points and the focal length to curve each image to a section of a sphere. Then slide those images over the surface till the control points coinside with each other. Then blend the images. The last stage is to plot the new spherical image to your chosen projection as a flat surface in this case I used a cylindrical projection,
The red line represents the horizon and the blue one the central vertical line. Either can be adjusted to correct verticals and straighten the horizon . You can also make corretions to individual images.
I only set 4 control points but as far apart as I could on the overlap, they are the 4 blue dots near the center, you can set them to the nearest pixel.
 
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I had no difficulty creating your pan in PTAssembler there is quite enough overlap.
The only problem is that you did not include the EXIF data in the files you downloaded
and the software needs the actual focal length and crop factor of the sensor so I used 28mm and 1.6 crop
I Selected my own control points and manually optomised rather than use the auto setting.

PTAssembler is a much more sophisticated and faster Pan stitcher than Photoshop and works in a similar way to PTGui.
Either program could have done this stich very easily.

tp pan by Terry Andrews, on Flickr


The process might look complex but it is very easy this is the preview stage. the area between the green and blue curved lines is the overlap area.


pan-snip web by Terry Andrews, on Flickr

What an awesome post! (y)
 
I do wonder sometimes why photoshop is the industry standard? It does a crap job at panos and a crap job of focus stacking.
However it does a great job of stacking images as layers and turning layers into individual files. In fact it handles layers of all types very well.
 
I find turning them 90 degrees in lightroom then trying the merge again in lightroom or Photoshop sometimes works. As does intentionally overexposing the image for some reason.
 
I find turning them 90 degrees in lightroom then trying the merge again in lightroom or Photoshop sometimes works. As does intentionally overexposing the image for some reason.


That sounds a bit like folk lore to me.
As I demonstrated it is easy with an appropriate progam and information.
 
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There isn't enough overlap to do it properly, especially given that you are on the edge of how wide a focal length works for panos, there will be lots of distortion to correct which requires lots of overlap. Can't imagine any other software would work either.

It does seem a bit unpredictable what will work with automation and personally I would go with 1/3 overlap at least shooting wider.

You do have the advantage as well that you get a final image with fewer abnormally shaped edges as well.
 
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It does seem a bit unpredictable what will work with automation and personally I would go with 1/3 overlap at least shooting wider.

You do have the advantage as well that you get a final image with fewer abnormally shaped edges as well.

There are a number of reasons that this particular Pan was difficult to stitch. However the 28mm wide angle equivalent lens was not one of them as the focal length makes no difference to the difficulty of pan stitching.
The real difficulty is that 90% + of the overlap area is either sky or water, which is not suitable for placing and defining control points either automatically or manually.
the actual size of the overlap was no problem at all. in most circumstances 10% to 30% is perfectly satisfactory, especially if there is suitable static detail to select from.

Of course, unlike stitching programs based on PTTools, we have no Idea how Photoshop or Lightroom actually work as the details are not published. however we do know that in both the seams are set to run down the edges of features. ( you can see these in the masks it produces). so if there are no features it is somewhat hit and miss.

PTTools on the other hand works entirely differently. as it first creates images shaped to fit on a sphere, using the the equivalent focal length of the lens. it does this in part by matching control points on each pair of joins. These can then be slid around the sphere till they overlap and orientate. This now spherical surface is then plotted using the chosen projection to produce a flat images of each exposure. ( the shape and orientation of them can be seen in my post #8 above.) these are then blended to avoid parallax and colour and tonal differences into the final output.

The shape of the edges is defined by the Projection chosen.

Software based on PTTools can make perfectly stitched pans from a mix of images taken from the same viewpoint, even if the focal length , focus, or camera orientation is changed between shots. provided that they all overlap. With large skies it can be advantageous to use a wider focal setting for the sky, so that you get sufficient overlap with the ground, and a longer setting for the landscape detail. The reason being you can not set control points on the sky.

Even when a pan can be done automatically it is best to check where the control points are in case they have been placed on moving objects like people, animals, cars, leaves, sky or water.
as such points can result in strange and unacceptable stitches. (Unfortunately there is no way to check this in Adobe and some other auto programs.)
 
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