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Stitching woe example

Discussion

7 replies
Posted by Greg Maklae on August 25, 2009 at 7:00 AM
Stitching woe example
As stated in previous post, sometimes I have the diagonals. Here is a recent example. The problem seems more severe when skies (bright areas) are included. The camera settings are: manual exposure (f/16, 1/13 sec), manual focus, white balance set to cloudy (5850 degrees), UV filter only. I am using PS Elements 5 to stitch. Help!
Posted by Larry Puckett on August 25, 2009 at 10:12 AM
Try a shot without the UV filter.
Posted by SandyRichardsBrown on August 25, 2009 at 2:40 PM
I use the Panorama Factory softwear and it is pretty automatic and flawless.
I think they still have a free trial version. It automatically corrects all problems like this.
www.panoramafactory.com/

Good luck -

Sandy r
Posted by David Bostedo on August 25, 2009 at 4:04 PM
That's really weird Greg. If your exposure was set the same, I don't know how that could have happened. Even if your exposure wasn't the same, I don't know why you'd get such perfect lines. Is it possible that there are exposure adjustments of some kind turned on in the stitcher? Plus, it is a pretty old program as stitching algorithms go.

I would definitely try a different stitching program. Free trials are good, and there are also some free stitchers out there - AutoStitch, and PTGui are the two I know. I really like Autostitch for running quick jobs - just select the photos and go and it will produce a "quickie" output of about 1200 pixels wide so you can see what the final will look like. (Google for it to find the download.)
Posted by John Mumaw on August 25, 2009 at 7:04 PM
Never seen anything like it!
David is right...the first versions of panoramic stitching (Photomerge) in PS and Elements were pretty bad. One of the free apps he mentioned will tell you right away whether it's the software creating the problem or not.
Best of luck!
Posted by Peter Barnes on August 25, 2009 at 10:07 PM
If you like Elements, try doing the stitch in a trial of version 7.
Posted by Linnet Long on August 26, 2009 at 2:13 AM
Even in PSE7, I got a terrible "stitch" the other day - I could see the seams! Aargh.

I've used AutoStitch - you can also set output size to be more robust (but have to do it in Preferences before you start the stitch). Autostitch is also the basis for Serif's PanoramaPlus3, which is not a lot more sophisticated, but does a good job ($29).

Also, Windows Live Gallery does a fairly respectable stitch--but on some I got some artifacts I didn't like.

Anyway, I was so glad to get acquainted with AutoStitch and PP3...I just couldn't believe what I was seeing in PSE7.

Good luck!
Posted by David Bostedo on August 26, 2009 at 11:38 AM
Linnet - Quick question, could you see the seams even when zooming to different levels? I've found that an artifact of using PS stitching (in CS4 anyway) is that at certain zoom levels, you can see a thin line along the various stitching points. This isn't really there in the image, and is just an artifact of odd zoom levels. Zooming in and out makes it dissappear, and it doesn't show in prints.