photmerge question

[rodneyr]

What causes this? I have been playing with merge today, some work fine, but many end up like this

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Tips would be greatly appreciated.

I overlaped about 40% on the images.

 

[dmwphoto]

looks like too many images and CS2. CS3 handles this much better.
I could be wrong

 

[rodneyr]

Doh

looks like too many images and CS2. CS3 handles this much better.
I could be wrong

OH, I forgot to give that important piece of information. I did this is CS2. Sorry

 

[dmwphoto]

unfortunately CS2 does not handle this well. 2 or 3 images it seems to do ok.
Take a couple images out of that stack and it may do better.

 

[rodneyr]

Let me guess, the solution to this involves me and money parting company.

 

[dmwphoto]

10-4 gud buddy

 

[JMartin]

Actually you can go in and manually move some of the images around and it will often fix the problem. It has to do with the photomerge not getting the image overlay just right. I am often doing this at work for panos of our job sites.

But Dave is right too, looks like you have more photos than you may need too.

As bad as it does in CS2, I couldn't imagine going back to doing it the "old" way before they introduced it! :biggrin:

 

[rodneyr]

Actually you can go in and manually move some of the images around and it will often fix the problem. .....................................................................
But Dave is right too, looks like you have more photos than you may need too.

:biggrin:

I will try and figure out how to do the manual moving. Question: do I have to many images or to much overlap between images (which would add to the number of images). Just wanting to make sure I understand you.

 

[rodneyr]

Here it is with one less frame

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Im still uneasy about how flakey this is. I dont want my panos to be a toss of a coin on wether they will come out or not.

 

[JMartin]

That looks much better, nice job!

 

[rodneyr]

That looks much better, nice job!

Thanks I guess, but not really understanding why this worked leaves me somewhere short of satisfied.

 

[JMartin]

It is hard to explain how photomerge works, I have some info on it at work and will look for it tomorrow.

Basically what it is doing is looking for similar edges in each photo to merge them at that point. Since it doesn't know any better, it will often times try to line two photos up on a perceived "same" edge and screws them up. And as you noticed from your first post, the "merge line" is not a straight verticle, it is a slight angle so that it will blend in better... or in your case, create a dark overlap. That overlap is how I learned to manually move items until it finally blended the photos correctly.

Hope that helps a little and didn't just confuse you more. :redface:

As for CS3 being better, I will do some tests and let you know. I have been WAY too busy at work to go out and shoot any of our project sites lately, but will try to combine an old one again in CS3.

 

[rodneyr]

I appreciate that Joe, I am getting ready to head out west and one of my primary goals is to do panos. I dont like the idea of having no idea if how I am doing them will pan out.

 

[JMartin]

This is an older article on Photomerge, but Matt is a good guy and usually really detailed in his tutorials.

I will still check at work tomorrow to see if I can find the info I was refering to earlier.

Off to bed now!

 

[rodneyr]

How well do prints made from merged photos hold up? Do they look ok, or can you generally tell where they are stitched? Ideally, I would like to be able to make some reasonably large pano-prints. Is this realistic?

 

[dmwphoto]

If they are done right they are great in print. Look back through some threads started by RFC nikon (member name) and you will see some of the best around. He uses (and convinced me to use) PTGui software (rmember the money parting ways thingie??)
Dont give up on your objective.

 

[dmwphoto]

here is a link to some of RFCNIKON images. NOT for dial up!

 

[rodneyr]

Am I correct in the understanding that PTGui is a plug in for PS?

 

[dmwphoto]

I bought the stand alone product. I am not sure if it is offerred in a plug-in. HERE is the site

 

[rodneyr]

Thanks, I was asking because the site seemed ambigious on the point to me. I notice the price is in pounds, how does that work for US customers?