Posted by Grant Collier on August 14, 2006 at 1:49 PM
On a rather blah, overcast day in the San Juan Mountains, I decided to experiment with stitched images. I first did one with 3 images, then with 6, and then I went crazy and tried one with 60+ images. Somehow, they all fit together and the resulting image (above) is about 320 megapixels. So if anyone is in desperate need of a 10 foot x 30 foot print, I'll be happy to oblige .
Posted by Craig Schultz on August 14, 2006 at 1:50 PM
Can you show a crop from the same area in each one? I'd love to see the difference in resolving capability based on the number of images in each.
Perhaps you could explain the steps taken to stitch the images together. My limited experience with P'shop hasn't been that great.
Thanks!
Posted by Grant Collier on August 14, 2006 at 7:56 PM
Okay, I've posted a revised version showing a small portion of the image (in red on the top picture) at 100%. If you can't see the new image, just refresh your browser.
Admittedly, I don't have the two smaller stiched images. The lens I used was too wide-angled, so it distorted the image, making it difficult to match up. So I deleted those once I got a good version of the much bigger one.
I didn't really know what I was doing, so it was mostly trial and err. When shooting the large one, I used about a 110mm lens and left plenty of overlap in each image to make sure there were no gaps. I shot nearly 70 images, but the final image was about 25x larger than the standard 12.8 MP from my camera.
In Photoshop, I went to File > Automate > Photomerge. Photoshop tries to automatically fit the pieces together, but in my experience it usually fails. So I grabbed the individual pictures and put them about where they were supposed to go. If you get it close, it will snap it into place. Sometimes you have to fiddle around with it for a while and merge them in different orders to get them right. For the large one, the image was composed of about 13 pictures in width and 5 pictures in height. So I merged them one row at a time. I merged the 13 images and when I had 5 of those, I merged those five one at a time. It didn't always merge perfectly, so I had to use the healing brush a little in areas of imperfection. Also, I have 2 gigs of RAM on my laptop and I hooked up an external hard drive to use as a scratch disk.
I have no idea if this was the best way to do things, so if a person smarter than me knows a better way feel free to chime in.
Posted by Ken Einig on August 14, 2006 at 10:23 PM
Grant, You placed your tripod legs in my holes again. (remember the Porphyry waterfall and indian paintbrush shot last year).
Aanyway I stitched a series of shots last year from Engineer Pass using this software
Posted by Craig Schultz on August 15, 2006 at 11:53 AM
Excellent Grant, thanks for updating your post and the detailed explanation on how you accomplished your stitched image. This looks like an impressive amount of detail, especially the mountain in the background considering it's distance. I have not used PS CS for stitching as I have also used PT Assembler and an open source stitcher called PT Open Gui.
So I guess this begs the question, was the increase in detail worth the effort? At 60+ images this stitch is extreme, but do you think a more managable number would be worth the effort?
Thanks again.
Craig
Posted by Les Barstow on August 15, 2006 at 5:50 PM
Thanks for the info on this, Grant. What equipment did you use to maintain the correct level position of the camera? Geared head, level, ???
Posted by Grant Collier on August 15, 2006 at 8:26 PM
Ken, I shot this from the top of my truck. So I guess that begs the question: how did you get your tripod holes on the top of my truck?
Les, I just had a ball head w/ a bubble level. Since I was shooting quickly, I didn't always get them perfectly level and had to rotate a few images while doing the Photomerge.
Craig, I think doing a few of these is worth the effort. But for the most part, I prefer to just take a single shot. It's hard to do these if there's rapidly changing light or clouds. And that's often when you get the best pictures. It also takes enough time that you can get quite a few more good images with a single shot. But it is fun to experiment with and it's nice to have a few higher-res shots. I think I'd only do a really big one every few years. But stitching 3-6 images together would be fairly easy once you get the hang of it. Doing this with my EOS 5D would give comparable results to a 4x5 camera. So I might do a few a year. But I don't think I'll ever make a regular habit of it. If you want to shoot a large number of hi-res images, I think it's still better to use a 4x5 or 8x10 film camera.
Discussion
7 repliesCraig
Perhaps you could explain the steps taken to stitch the images together. My limited experience with P'shop hasn't been that great.
Thanks!
Admittedly, I don't have the two smaller stiched images. The lens I used was too wide-angled, so it distorted the image, making it difficult to match up. So I deleted those once I got a good version of the much bigger one.
I didn't really know what I was doing, so it was mostly trial and err. When shooting the large one, I used about a 110mm lens and left plenty of overlap in each image to make sure there were no gaps. I shot nearly 70 images, but the final image was about 25x larger than the standard 12.8 MP from my camera.
In Photoshop, I went to File > Automate > Photomerge. Photoshop tries to automatically fit the pieces together, but in my experience it usually fails. So I grabbed the individual pictures and put them about where they were supposed to go. If you get it close, it will snap it into place. Sometimes you have to fiddle around with it for a while and merge them in different orders to get them right. For the large one, the image was composed of about 13 pictures in width and 5 pictures in height. So I merged them one row at a time. I merged the 13 images and when I had 5 of those, I merged those five one at a time. It didn't always merge perfectly, so I had to use the healing brush a little in areas of imperfection. Also, I have 2 gigs of RAM on my laptop and I hooked up an external hard drive to use as a scratch disk.
I have no idea if this was the best way to do things, so if a person smarter than me knows a better way feel free to chime in.
Aanyway I stitched a series of shots last year from Engineer Pass using this software
http://www.tawbaware.com/ptasmblr_tutorial.htm
http://www.cardinalpointphoto.com/ken/forum/EngineerPano.jpg
So I guess this begs the question, was the increase in detail worth the effort? At 60+ images this stitch is extreme, but do you think a more managable number would be worth the effort?
Thanks again.
Craig
Les, I just had a ball head w/ a bubble level. Since I was shooting quickly, I didn't always get them perfectly level and had to rotate a few images while doing the Photomerge.
Craig, I think doing a few of these is worth the effort. But for the most part, I prefer to just take a single shot. It's hard to do these if there's rapidly changing light or clouds. And that's often when you get the best pictures. It also takes enough time that you can get quite a few more good images with a single shot. But it is fun to experiment with and it's nice to have a few higher-res shots. I think I'd only do a really big one every few years. But stitching 3-6 images together would be fairly easy once you get the hang of it. Doing this with my EOS 5D would give comparable results to a 4x5 camera. So I might do a few a year. But I don't think I'll ever make a regular habit of it. If you want to shoot a large number of hi-res images, I think it's still better to use a 4x5 or 8x10 film camera.