Posted by Kevin Trinkner on November 20, 2008 at 1:08 PM
Who's using Photoshop for making panos?
I would love some suggestions on this technique. I've tried this a few times just using the photomerge feature of photoshop, but I often seem to lose so much of the individual frames when they align that it becomes way too much of a pano.
Maybe I need to be doing something different in the field when I shoot?
Tips/suggestions would be appreciated.
thanks
Kevin
Posted by Steve Foss on November 20, 2008 at 1:22 PM
Kevin, I'm a little unsure of your wording. If you are panning horizontally to compose a pano and losing a lot of each image due to overlap when stitching, wouldn't your final image be less of a pano instead of too much pano? Or are you saying you're losing so much off the top and/or bottom of the images that it narrows the pano out considerably?
Lately, I've taken to orienting the camera vertically when composing horizontal panos. It takes quite a few more images that way to pan through the scene than if I left the camera in the standard horizontal position, but the final product yields more detail that way and results in a larger final file with more detail.
Kevin, you haven't really detailed the technique you use to capture your images, so it's hard to give you specifically directed tips. I'm assuming that you're using a tripod that's level, first off. That's a very good starting point. In some situations, it's a must. I generally look very carefully at where I want to overlap before moving the camera for the next image, and typically use small overlaps. If you are losing a lot of data off the tops and/or bottoms of the images when you stitch, I'd look carefully to your panning technique. If you are using the leveled tripod already, try the vertical orientation approach for starters.
It's also important to use a lens that doesn't have much distortion or vignetting, because it becomes a bit tougher to stitch those images together. You can reverse specific types of distortion (and of course vignetting) in PP before stitching, but I like to keep it simple. For example, when using my 17-40, (typically on a 1.6 crop body), I set it up so I'm out at or near the 40mm reach, because there's a small bit of distortion at 17mm even on a crop body. Normally not enough to matter on a single image, but when stitching it can become an issue.
I haven't used Photoshop to stitch. I've just relied on the PhotoStitch software that came with my Canon camera to do the stitching, and so far it's worked wonderfully.
Don't know if that helps you or not.
Posted by David Bostedo on November 20, 2008 at 1:41 PM
Sounds like you need to either be more careful with levelling and framing, take multiple rows of shots, or use a wider angle lens, or, as Steve said, shoot vertically.
I find that the usual reason I end up cropping too much off the top and bottom is because I didn't take a level set of pictures around what I wanted to take. If you're on a tripod, and it's not level, you'll get a diagonal row of shots, or each shot will be tilted and you'll lose the top and bottom of your image. If you're hand held, it becomes trickier, and perhaps just taking a wider field of view and cropping is the better way to go then.
The other alternative is to take multiple rows of shots - but the same issues can still creep in. PS shouldn't have much problem with multiple rows though.
Posted by Jim DeWitt on November 20, 2008 at 3:12 PM
Kevin, if I understand your question, the most likely cause of what sounds like excessively skinny panos is a failure to keep the camera level as you are shooting. I suppose there are photographers on the planet who can do this by hand, but I certainly can't. Use a tripod. Make certain it is level. Shoot vertically, as Steve suggests. Overlap extensively. If your tripod doesn't have a degree plate on it, make one with a drug store protractor. I use a jury-rigged nail as my pointer. My brother-in-law, based in McCall, ID, does pano shots from various mountain peaks in the area with essentially this rig and does pretty well.
Finally, if you really want to show detail, you have to use a printer that can print serious pano shots. If you need recommendations, let me know.
Posted by Kevin Trinkner on November 20, 2008 at 3:49 PM
Thanks for the tips guys.
I think one of my issues was trying to do some handheld shots. I have with a tripod as well and still had some issues...
how much overlap to you shoot in each frame?
do you re-level before each shot as pano the tripod head?
do you focus once for the first shot then leave the focus the same for all the shots?
when doing the merge are you just using the photomerge feature in interactive mode?
Posted by David Bostedo on November 20, 2008 at 4:28 PM
Kevin -
1) You can certainly do handheld panos (I've done a bunch) but I'll usually take in a very wide view - like maybe double the height of what I expect the final pano to be. Sometimes I've gotten away with much less, but been very careful about holding the camera in the same spot in space and stepping around it.
2) I try to get about 1/3 of the previous frame overlapped in each shot
3) If your tripod head has a panning adjustment, you shouldn't need to re-level for each shot. You should be able to turn the camera left and right with it already level. If this is a problem with your head, you could a panoramic bracket which would allow you to rotate the camera, and provide graduated markings (and probably also make it a bit easier to do multi-row panoramas).
4) I have done both focus locking, making it the same in all shots, and allowed for re-focusing. It depends on the subject. Usually I'd imagine you want the same focus across the pano.
5) I've used both PS and Autostitch, both in fully automatic mode. I haven't had to do anything interactive.
Posted by Rick Dunn on November 20, 2008 at 4:30 PM
I would think handheld would be much more difficult to pull off successfully; tripod is the way to go.
I like to overlap as little as possible, but making absolutely sure not to leave 'gaps' in the scene. Pay careful attention to the top and bottom of the frame, not just the middle. When panning, I look for a easily discernible 'landmark' near one edge, then pan until it's at the opposite edge. The more overlap, the more images you have to merge and that can slow things down.
If I'm creating a horizontal pano, I almost always shoot vertical images to give plenty of room for cropping the final merged image. Depending on how you're shooting, the altered perspective as you rotate the camera/lens will force you to subsequently crop out some of the image. If you were 'shifting' with a shift lens or large format camera, that wouldn't necessarily be the case.
I try to level the tripod before attaching the camera. This makes it much easier to keep things level as you pan/rotate. But if the camera does get out of level, I re-level before shooting the next image.
I always adjust focus as necessary and use a small aperture to ensure optimal dof. Trying to match/merge oof areas would be a real challenge, especially if they're in focus in one exposure, and out in the next.
Be sure to set white balance manually so that it doesn't change between exposures, and I always just one exposure setting.
I always use auto for merging. It hasn't failed me yet.
Posted by David Bostedo on November 20, 2008 at 5:53 PM
I like to overlap as little as possible, but making absolutely sure not to leave 'gaps' in the scene.
I've found sometimes that this makes it harder on the stitching to assemble correctly. Not if I'm only taking a 2 or 3 shot pano - then it doesn't matter so much. But when I've done 10 - 30 shot (usually multi-row) panos, it's had trouble stitching correctly at times with very small overlaps. I'm not sure why and haven't gone interactive or anything, but it has had trouble.
Posted by Wayne Jones on November 20, 2008 at 8:56 PM
Kevin,
Here’s a checklist of some of the advice already mentioned, AND something new (# 7 below)that will help perfect panos...
1. Make sure tripod is level. This means the shaft or top plate of the tripod – not just the head, unless you are using some kind of leveling device between the tripod and the ball head or panning head.
2. Make sure camera on the tripod is level, too. (either horizontal or vertical, but vertical gets better results.) [HINT to check the whole set-up, swing the camera throughout the whole width of the pano. If the bubble level on the camera is not perfect on both ends and the middle, you need to re-level the tripod.]
3. Avoid lenses or focal lengths with lots of distortion. (See #6 for the reason for this.)
4. Shoot totally in manual mode to make each exposure is identical (exposure, white ballance, focus).
5. If possible, back off so you have some extra room on top and bottom, and shoot a wider pano than you need, because you usually loose a little around the edges when you stitch.
6. OVERLAP 20%-30% -- WHY? software needs to match up the same points that appear in adjacent images. (This is harder to do if the lens "moves" points on the edges of the frame due to barrel or pincushion distortion. Note – I think CS3 or CS4 handles distortion and leveling errors better than some other programs, so this may not be such a big problem. (See the note on my pano in the Weekly Picks gallery a couple of weeks ago.)
7. LINING UP FOREGROUND AND BACKGROUND ELEMENTS IN A PANORAMA: As you swing the camera though the picture, anything close to the camera is likely to line up with objects in the distance differently in different frames if you are not set up perfectly. This makes it very difficult to match up the adjacent images in a pano, because the overlapping parts don’t match up. (Example: A small foreground rock that appears in two frames may have a distant tree on it’s left side in frame 1, but the same tree may appear on the right side of the rock in the next frame because the camera is pointing in a different direction.) To avoid this, you can do two things:
a. Make sure that any foreground element appears in ONE frame only – in the center area of of the frame so it does not appear on the edge of the next frame.
b. A better solution is to make sure the camera rotates around the nodal point of the lens. (In most cases, this is somewhere between the middle of the lens and the camera’s tripod socket.) That’s the purpose of panorama brackets that allow you to set the point around which the camera rotates, instead of rotating around the camera’s tripod socket. For a good explanation of this, as well as instructions for finding the nodal point, see:
http://www.kaidan.com/nodalpoint.html
You can buy excellent pano brackets, but if you want to see the basic principles of how they work (or even make your own crude but effective pano bracket)see:
http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/panhead_d60.htm
If you do everything right, you should not have to use the interactive positioning in Photoshop. The automatic choice usually picks the best of the other modes to use. However, if it picks "perspective" instead of cylindrical or reposition only, you will have to crop a lot of the distorted edges. In that case try reposition only or cylindrial to see which one looks better.
Posted by Kevin Trinkner on November 22, 2008 at 3:43 PM
Thanks everyone for the tips, I plan to do some test shooting here soon and see what I can come up with...
Just to be clear (probably show my inexperience here) you are leveling the tripod itself and not just the head?
I was just leveling with the bubble indicator on the head, might be way I had so many problems while panning the scene and it going out of level?
Posted by Rick Dunn on November 22, 2008 at 4:17 PM
Exactly - level the tripod, not just the head. Otherwise, as you experienced, panning will result in the camera going out of level. You can always re-level the head/camera, but it complicates the process.
Posted by Wayne Jones on November 23, 2008 at 9:42 PM
Kevin,
As I said, the tripod must be level "unless you are using some kind of leveling device between the tripod and the ball head or panning head." That's because the only thing that is really important about tripod leveling is that the HEAD that rotates for the pano is level (as well as the camera sitting on the head). Fiddling with tripod legs to make the head level can be a real pain, so if you do a lot of panos, you may want to get either a tripod with a leveling base (they make them for the bigger Gitzos, for instance) or something like the Bogen-Manfrotto 3502 - Compact Camera Leveler (http://www.bogenimaging.us/Jahia/search/site/bius/lang/en_US/cache/off?searchKey=3502). It fits under the head, so you can level it even if the tripod is off-kilter.
Discussion
11 repliesWho's using Photoshop for making panos?
I would love some suggestions on this technique. I've tried this a few times just using the photomerge feature of photoshop, but I often seem to lose so much of the individual frames when they align that it becomes way too much of a pano.
Maybe I need to be doing something different in the field when I shoot?
Tips/suggestions would be appreciated.
thanks
Kevin
Lately, I've taken to orienting the camera vertically when composing horizontal panos. It takes quite a few more images that way to pan through the scene than if I left the camera in the standard horizontal position, but the final product yields more detail that way and results in a larger final file with more detail.
Kevin, you haven't really detailed the technique you use to capture your images, so it's hard to give you specifically directed tips. I'm assuming that you're using a tripod that's level, first off. That's a very good starting point. In some situations, it's a must. I generally look very carefully at where I want to overlap before moving the camera for the next image, and typically use small overlaps. If you are losing a lot of data off the tops and/or bottoms of the images when you stitch, I'd look carefully to your panning technique. If you are using the leveled tripod already, try the vertical orientation approach for starters.
It's also important to use a lens that doesn't have much distortion or vignetting, because it becomes a bit tougher to stitch those images together. You can reverse specific types of distortion (and of course vignetting) in PP before stitching, but I like to keep it simple. For example, when using my 17-40, (typically on a 1.6 crop body), I set it up so I'm out at or near the 40mm reach, because there's a small bit of distortion at 17mm even on a crop body. Normally not enough to matter on a single image, but when stitching it can become an issue.
I haven't used Photoshop to stitch. I've just relied on the PhotoStitch software that came with my Canon camera to do the stitching, and so far it's worked wonderfully.
Don't know if that helps you or not.
I find that the usual reason I end up cropping too much off the top and bottom is because I didn't take a level set of pictures around what I wanted to take. If you're on a tripod, and it's not level, you'll get a diagonal row of shots, or each shot will be tilted and you'll lose the top and bottom of your image. If you're hand held, it becomes trickier, and perhaps just taking a wider field of view and cropping is the better way to go then.
The other alternative is to take multiple rows of shots - but the same issues can still creep in. PS shouldn't have much problem with multiple rows though.
Finally, if you really want to show detail, you have to use a printer that can print serious pano shots. If you need recommendations, let me know.
I think one of my issues was trying to do some handheld shots. I have with a tripod as well and still had some issues...
how much overlap to you shoot in each frame?
do you re-level before each shot as pano the tripod head?
do you focus once for the first shot then leave the focus the same for all the shots?
when doing the merge are you just using the photomerge feature in interactive mode?
1) You can certainly do handheld panos (I've done a bunch) but I'll usually take in a very wide view - like maybe double the height of what I expect the final pano to be. Sometimes I've gotten away with much less, but been very careful about holding the camera in the same spot in space and stepping around it.
2) I try to get about 1/3 of the previous frame overlapped in each shot
3) If your tripod head has a panning adjustment, you shouldn't need to re-level for each shot. You should be able to turn the camera left and right with it already level. If this is a problem with your head, you could a panoramic bracket which would allow you to rotate the camera, and provide graduated markings (and probably also make it a bit easier to do multi-row panoramas).
4) I have done both focus locking, making it the same in all shots, and allowed for re-focusing. It depends on the subject. Usually I'd imagine you want the same focus across the pano.
5) I've used both PS and Autostitch, both in fully automatic mode. I haven't had to do anything interactive.
I like to overlap as little as possible, but making absolutely sure not to leave 'gaps' in the scene. Pay careful attention to the top and bottom of the frame, not just the middle. When panning, I look for a easily discernible 'landmark' near one edge, then pan until it's at the opposite edge. The more overlap, the more images you have to merge and that can slow things down.
If I'm creating a horizontal pano, I almost always shoot vertical images to give plenty of room for cropping the final merged image. Depending on how you're shooting, the altered perspective as you rotate the camera/lens will force you to subsequently crop out some of the image. If you were 'shifting' with a shift lens or large format camera, that wouldn't necessarily be the case.
I try to level the tripod before attaching the camera. This makes it much easier to keep things level as you pan/rotate. But if the camera does get out of level, I re-level before shooting the next image.
I always adjust focus as necessary and use a small aperture to ensure optimal dof. Trying to match/merge oof areas would be a real challenge, especially if they're in focus in one exposure, and out in the next.
Be sure to set white balance manually so that it doesn't change between exposures, and I always just one exposure setting.
I always use auto for merging. It hasn't failed me yet.
I've found sometimes that this makes it harder on the stitching to assemble correctly. Not if I'm only taking a 2 or 3 shot pano - then it doesn't matter so much. But when I've done 10 - 30 shot (usually multi-row) panos, it's had trouble stitching correctly at times with very small overlaps. I'm not sure why and haven't gone interactive or anything, but it has had trouble.
Here’s a checklist of some of the advice already mentioned, AND something new (# 7 below)that will help perfect panos...
1. Make sure tripod is level. This means the shaft or top plate of the tripod – not just the head, unless you are using some kind of leveling device between the tripod and the ball head or panning head.
2. Make sure camera on the tripod is level, too. (either horizontal or vertical, but vertical gets better results.) [HINT to check the whole set-up, swing the camera throughout the whole width of the pano. If the bubble level on the camera is not perfect on both ends and the middle, you need to re-level the tripod.]
3. Avoid lenses or focal lengths with lots of distortion. (See #6 for the reason for this.)
4. Shoot totally in manual mode to make each exposure is identical (exposure, white ballance, focus).
5. If possible, back off so you have some extra room on top and bottom, and shoot a wider pano than you need, because you usually loose a little around the edges when you stitch.
6. OVERLAP 20%-30% -- WHY? software needs to match up the same points that appear in adjacent images. (This is harder to do if the lens "moves" points on the edges of the frame due to barrel or pincushion distortion. Note – I think CS3 or CS4 handles distortion and leveling errors better than some other programs, so this may not be such a big problem. (See the note on my pano in the Weekly Picks gallery a couple of weeks ago.)
7. LINING UP FOREGROUND AND BACKGROUND ELEMENTS IN A PANORAMA: As you swing the camera though the picture, anything close to the camera is likely to line up with objects in the distance differently in different frames if you are not set up perfectly. This makes it very difficult to match up the adjacent images in a pano, because the overlapping parts don’t match up. (Example: A small foreground rock that appears in two frames may have a distant tree on it’s left side in frame 1, but the same tree may appear on the right side of the rock in the next frame because the camera is pointing in a different direction.) To avoid this, you can do two things:
a. Make sure that any foreground element appears in ONE frame only – in the center area of of the frame so it does not appear on the edge of the next frame.
b. A better solution is to make sure the camera rotates around the nodal point of the lens. (In most cases, this is somewhere between the middle of the lens and the camera’s tripod socket.) That’s the purpose of panorama brackets that allow you to set the point around which the camera rotates, instead of rotating around the camera’s tripod socket. For a good explanation of this, as well as instructions for finding the nodal point, see:
http://www.kaidan.com/nodalpoint.html
You can buy excellent pano brackets, but if you want to see the basic principles of how they work (or even make your own crude but effective pano bracket)see:
http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/panhead_d60.htm
If you do everything right, you should not have to use the interactive positioning in Photoshop. The automatic choice usually picks the best of the other modes to use. However, if it picks "perspective" instead of cylindrical or reposition only, you will have to crop a lot of the distorted edges. In that case try reposition only or cylindrial to see which one looks better.
Just to be clear (probably show my inexperience here) you are leveling the tripod itself and not just the head?
I was just leveling with the bubble indicator on the head, might be way I had so many problems while panning the scene and it going out of level?
As I said, the tripod must be level "unless you are using some kind of leveling device between the tripod and the ball head or panning head." That's because the only thing that is really important about tripod leveling is that the HEAD that rotates for the pano is level (as well as the camera sitting on the head). Fiddling with tripod legs to make the head level can be a real pain, so if you do a lot of panos, you may want to get either a tripod with a leveling base (they make them for the bigger Gitzos, for instance) or something like the Bogen-Manfrotto 3502 - Compact Camera Leveler (http://www.bogenimaging.us/Jahia/search/site/bius/lang/en_US/cache/off?searchKey=3502). It fits under the head, so you can level it even if the tripod is off-kilter.