How to make a basic masked panorama

Messages
7,901
Name
Terry
Edit My Images
Yes
have noticed recently that a number of basic questions have been asked about producing Panoramas. Many people are using the simplified sub-program found in Photoshop and Lightroom.
However it is almost completely “Dumb” with virtually no options and virtually no alternative projections.
This is a short demo showing how easy it is to make undistorted panoramas and remove duplicated or unwanted people from the image.

This example uses PTAssembler (Max Lyons) and incorporates Smart Blend as the blender and Panomatic as the control point picker, as my preferred options. (PTGui works almost identically for this type of pan)
The Shots were taken very recently when familiarising myself with my new Fuji Xe2 They were taken hand held and the images chosen were from a selection of three taken each side.
The camera was set to “manual everything” including colour balance.

1) this image shows the two files that are dragged on to the GUI of PTAssembler it is only necessary to click “Auto Create” to start the process.
The images were converted from raw as 8bit tiffs. (PTAssembler makes a temporary Jpeg set of files to use for all its calculations, and only replaces them with the original tiffs for the final output, this saves considerable processing power and time.

page pan 1.jpg

2) in a very short while a screen will pop up asking if you want to create a “Prerview or a Final image… Click PREVIEW
page pan 2.jpg

3) This will bring you to this screen…
page pan 3.jpg


It shows a preview of the pan so far.
There are a number of problems with it the buildings on the left and right are not truly vertical. And the centre group of people are duplicated.
it is easiest to do the straightening first .
To do this hold the-Control and Alt- keys down and drag a line down the building along one of the wall edges or other part that should be vertical. Release the mouse and you will see you have drawn an orange line. Repeat the operation the other side.
I then noticed that the Projection set in the table on the right, was set to cylindrical so I changed it to Equirectangular. At this point you can press redraw and it will change the image from cylindrical to Equirectangular.
To make the lines you had marked in orange to a true vertical you simply press Re-optimise

4) we now come to the sorting out of the duplicated people and masking one set out
this is done by clicking on the third tab at the top of the Gui.
In this image you see both shots and both sets of people.
You draw around the section that you want to hide, by holding down “Control and Alt” and making a series of dots by clicking the mouse where you want each point of the mask to fall, to end click back on the first point. You will find that the points have changed to the masked area.
You can make a number of masked areas in the same way, on either of the images provided they are in the overlap area.
page pan 4.jpg

5) Now move to Tab 5 select blended single layer tiff. And Press “Create”
page pan 5.jpg
 
Last edited:
Continued-----------------



6) You will see the process screen do its stuff and very shortly…… on my computer only 15 seconds later…..
page pan 6.jpg

7) The intermediate and final image files will appear in the folder along side the two original files.
You will note that where there is a masked area is shows white in the thumbnail.
page pan 7.jpg

8) almost simultaneously the final un-cropped image will appear
page pan 8.jpg

9)the final image showing all corrections and cropped to size

page pan 9.jpg




QED



PTAssembler is available from http://www.tawbaware.com/ptasmblr.htm as a free trial.

And the two helper programs I use are available here http://aorlinsk2.free.fr/panomatic/?p=releases
http://wiki.panotools.org/SmartBlend

You need to tell PTAssembler that you want to use them. and where they both are on your computer, by pressing configure and locating them.

page pan 10.jpg
 
Last edited:
Thanks. I had a look at this when you first posted it.
Now I'm far from a geek and got completely confused as to what to do with smartbland and pantomatic. What do I do with them? You say the assembler thing needs to refer to them. How?
In short how do I get everything to work together? I want something that I set up and then just run. If I have to start loading and directing pathways every time then I won't use it.
Can you give some techy directions for the idiots like me?
 
Back
Top