Help with Panoramas please

Pete Gl

Pete Gl

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Errr Pete?
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Firstly, which is the best software for stitching photo's for pano's? I have Elements 8 and Canons own Photo Stitch, which I think does a slightly better job. (I don't mind shelling out a bit for well recommended piece of software, but please don't suggest CS5!!).

Secondly, I always shoot raw. I currently PP my shots and save to JPG, then create my pano from those JPG's. Is creating my pano's from the original raw any better, and if so, will it make any permanent change to my original raw files.

Any and all advice will be much appreciated :).

Pete
 
Ive just checked in my Elements 8 guide book and it this software does it, and it seems quite simple to do. Think you have to overshoot by 20% to get the software to merge correctly, but it does do it.

Have you tried this and it not work or not knew that it would do it?
 
Photo Elements or the Free canon pano software should be fine

I'm by no means any good at this, but these are some of the tips passed onto me by friends who have had far more success at this an me

Overlap images by 15-30%.
Keep the image level otherwise for example foreground detail meets up but not the distant horizon.
Choose you metering well, very important because certain parts of the pano will be exposed differently to others, so use manual exposure, scan the whole area of the pano taking note and choose the middle settings.
Check the scene for movement, this could ruin the shot.
Avoid UWA lenses it doesn't always create a good image, chose something like a 50mm lens instead
Take as many images as you want and as many passes, you may have missed something
Use RAW, then process the images and finally convert to jpeg, then stitch them together.
 
HornetSting said:
Have you tried this and it not work or not knew that it would do it?
Click to expand...

Hi Ben,

Sorry if I wasn't clearer, yes, I know the two programes I mentioned both do stitching, but I meant the Canon programme did a slightly better job.

Pete
 
pete.rush said:
Use RAW, then process the images and finally convert to jpeg, then stitch them together.
Click to expand...

While processing the RAW files, if you shot with manual exposure in the camera, it's worthwhile making sure that any exposure adjustments you apply to one image are applied equally to all of them. Also, if you left the camera on auto WB, pick a white point and use the same one on all of the images.

The idea is to get as much consistency between the parts as possible so that they will fit together more easily.
 
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PT Gui is probably the best stitching program out there. Have you tried Microsoft ICE ( Image Composite Editor)? It's free and I've found that it does a pretty good job of stiching single row pano's even up to 360's. Just search for it online.
Don't know about Raw/JPG, as my remote software won't allow Raw shooting.
Just use manual exposure and set the white balance rather than using AWB. I've never had much problem with auto focus issues, but then again none of my stuff involves close work.
 
PTGUI will directly load RAW files and will also load multiple exposure shots.

As mentioned above, I always use manual exposure, manual white balance, manual ISO, and manual focus, non of which I change between shots.
 
Using a polarizing filter is liable to produce undesirable changes of tone across a blue sky, BTW.
 
Thank you very much everybody, all very helpful. I'll certainly have a look at PTGui, you can down load it for a free trial.

Pete
 
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