Lighthouse Pano

Here's a pano I just finished stitching together from three images.
Sorry for the small size, it's tough to fit on the screen (unless you're blessed with a huge monitor )

Pentax *istD
DA 16-45mm F4 ED AL
Prince Edward Island, Canada

Gorgeous colours, Joshua, and a nice composition.

G

Excellent!!

Hi Joshua,

Firstly, great shot!

Secondly could I please ask some friendly advise. I'm just starting to play with pano's and I'm just not quite nailing it. I'm getting decent shots but not great ones, perhpas all the fancy stuff is beyond me.

With your pano's (such as the lighthouse pano) how do you determine the focus and the shutter/aperature settings? I always seem to get part of the pano in focus but then parts out of focus, and I get some areas perfectly lit and others not.

Do you pick one point and centre the image around that or do you adjust each photo as an inidivdual shot and hope they glue together without too much hassle? When I take each shot as an individual it is very obvious when I try to glue them together

Any advise would be great.

Thanks

Jimmy

One important thing with panos is to use Manual exposure and make sure all the shots are shot at the same settings. Focus is another matter, but if there are different settings the photos won't mate together very well.

Here's an editorial I wrote up a while back, if there's still something you find a little foggy, don't hesitate to ask.

STEP 1
Before anything, the camera work needs to be done accurately. Keep these in mind when shooting and make your PS work such easier:
a) use a tripod with a head that pans to keep things in line horizontally
b)shoot each segment with plenty of overlap (I like 50% to give me lots of room)
c)find the best exposure for all segments and set on manual, AE will cause variations between segments which will make blending difficult.

STEP 2
Open a blank canvas sized higher and longer than the rough estimated final size.

STEP 3
open each segment to be used in the project and use the Move tool to drag and drop each segment into the main canvas. Just drop them anywhere for now. Close the other windows WITHOUT saving.




STEP 4
In the Layer palette label and order the layers with the middle segment on the top... call it "Middle", the others "Left" and "Right". Or if you are using four segments put the middle two at the top of the Layers palette. Using the Move tool place the segments into their positions as close as possible. In the layers palette select the "Middle" layer and lower the opacity to around 50% to 70%, whatever allows you to see the layers underneath as well as the Middle.




STEP 5
Select the Left layer with the Move tool and fine tune your placement of the Left into the Middle. It's only critical to get a close match along the edge of Middle layer, the rest won't fit no matter what, just concentrate on the edge. Using the Arrow keys on your keyboard will allow you to do a much more precise job. Because the opacity of the Middle layer is lowered it will look a little blurry until you bring the Left into place. When it's "locked in" the image will look sharp. Remember you have the options of Transform> Skew, Rotate, Perspective, Distort all at your disposal to get that thing to line up as best as you can all the way along the seam. Take your time at this, don't go quick, spend an hour on each side if you have to. You'll never get it "perfect" but aim for it anyway. Simply do the same for the Right layer.




STEP 6
Select the Middle layer and give it a Layer Mask by clicking on the button with the grey box and white circle in it.



STEP 7
Select the Paintbrush tool and press d on your keyboard to set the foreground colour to black. Now whatever you "paint" with the Layer Mask selected will actually erase or paint through the Middle layer to reveal the one below it. You can soften that hard line between two segments by varying the opacity of the brush. Don't worry if you remove too much, press x on the keyboard and the foreground and background colours will switch from black to white. Using white you can "re-paint" (de-erase) the areas and bring back parts of the Middle layer. Here's the look of the Middle layer after the masking is done (the other two layers are not showing in this view)




STEP 8
when you have it the way you like it, save it as a PSD so you can have the option of coming back later if you noticed something you missed. Do a final crop and Flatten, Save As TIFF. Do your levels and colour adjustments at this stage. You can do small adjustments on each layer at anytime through the process for tweaking and getting them all to look the same in density, but do the artsy stuff on the final product.

Thanks guys. You've answered my question.

Bringing the photos together using PS isn't a problem and I've been using a tripod etc. The problem I've had is the difference in aperature between the shots, it makes the join very obvious.

Just to confirm, you select an "average" aperature and shoot all of the shots with that - yes/no?

What do you do when there is a significant light difference from one side of the pano to the next (ie when shooting a large city-scape)?

J

The other tip I saw regarding aligning panos in PS was this:

When the colour doesn't match, do the adjustments channel-by-channel. i.e. Press Ctrl-1 to select the red channel and use Levels/Curves to blend, then press Ctrl-2 to select the green etc. This is a much faster way of matching differing exposures... apparently

(Think it might have been in one of Katrin Eismann's excellent books, or could have been Russell Brown's... I'll check it out )

For me, I shoot RAW and just apply the same settings to all the images Gives quite a bit of lattitude on exposure too.

Matt