Help with photo stitching please

Doca

Doca

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Brett
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I'm going to be a part of a presentation at work & for my part I thought it would be good idea to have a stitched collage (like panoramic view) of our production line running across the top of our display board to help explain the process to visitors to our stand.

I thought this would be pretty easy but it turns out not.

The production line is about 20m long and there is only about 1.5m of space in front of the machines. I used a 17-135 lens set at 17 on my 7D (widest I have) on a tripod & took shots every 30" down the line (moving the tripod).

At 17mm the very top & bottom of the machines is missing but that is ok.

I thought I would be able to merge and blend the photo's in photoshop to make 1 continuous picture of the line. Photoshop or any other software I have tried can't merger the photos.

The problem I think is the amount of perspective or keystoning? so wide at such a short distance makes merging not possible. Even if you try manually overlapping the shots it is not possible to get anything that looks right.

Does any one have any suggestions how I can make this work?
 
Im no expert but I believe you need to keep the camera in the same location and rotate it, ideally with the axis of rotation going right through the sensor.

It may also be better keep the camera in a portrait position, as this would give more top and bottom space, the stitch providing length.
 
I have used the camera in the portrait position. Unfortunately the distance to the machines is too short to be able to leave the camera still & rotate it & get enough of the line in.
 
Doca said:
I'm going to be a part of a presentation at work & for my part I thought it would be good idea to have a stitched collage (like panoramic view) of our production line running across the top of our display board to help explain the process to visitors to our stand.

I thought this would be pretty easy but it turns out not.

The production line is about 20m long and there is only about 1.5m of space in front of the machines. I used a 17-135 lens set at 17 on my 7D (widest I have) on a tripod & took shots every 30" down the line (moving the tripod).

At 17mm the very top & bottom of the machines is missing but that is ok.

I thought I would be able to merge and blend the photo's in photoshop to make 1 continuous picture of the line. Photoshop or any other software I have tried can't merger the photos.

The problem I think is the amount of perspective or keystoning? so wide at such a short distance makes merging not possible. Even if you try manually overlapping the shots it is not possible to get anything that looks right.

Does any one have any suggestions how I can make this work?
Click to expand...

you'll need to be as far away as possible - and go in closer than 17mm to avoid inevitable distortion.

don't forget you can stitch in every direction, not just a single row - make it 3 photos tall and 30 photos wide rather that 1x10 if you need to.
 
Have plenty of overlap - I try to get about 1/3 overlap to allow the software a better chance of a seamless stitch. A 50mm lens shouldn't have any distortions and is ideal to do a multi row panorama.
 
Doca said:
...the distance to the machines is too short to be able to leave the camera still & rotate it & get enough of the line in.
Click to expand...
Instead of rotating camera over a point, why not move it along the line...?
 
Jan K. said:
Instead of rotating camera over a point, why not move it along the line...?
Click to expand...


That is exactly what I have done, moved the camera 30" for each shot on a line exactly the same distance from the machines.
 
Tryhttp://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/brown/autostitch/autostitch.html
 
The best stitching program is PTGUI, by far. There's a free trial version that is fully functional , but watermarks the image, so you can see if it works for you before you buy.
Not sure if it works for this type of pano but I'd be surprised if it didn't.

Another alternative would be Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor) which also usually does a pretty good job of stitching images. It's free too, although not supposed to be used commercially.

These programs analyse the images and select common "Control Points" in each image and then transform the images so the stitch without any errors. That's why it's usually best to overlap by about a third to make sure there are plenty of contol points, as more points means better results.
 
Ok I got this done in the end so I thought I'd report back.

I don't think its possible to do what I was asking in the 1st post, for example you can see both sides of the machines in different photos so it is impossible for software to work out what to include.
In the end I got a picture of each machine (stitched from multiple shots) cut them out from the background them photoshoped the line together.
I'm quite happy with the results.

The custom lens correction in photoshop is the key to being able to adjust close up wide angled shots so the will auto adjust & blend together nicely.
 
Skyviews100 said:
The best stitching program is PTGUI, by far. There's a free trial version that is fully functional , but watermarks the image, so you can see if it works for you before you buy.
Not sure if it works for this type of pano but I'd be surprised if it didn't.
Click to expand...


I know you managed to sort this, but yes, another vote for PTGUI, its a great program for panos and stitching.
 
1Final+Stitched.jpg
 
I use microsoft ICE , to make panoramas, very easy to use and works well.
I have stitched 10 pictures taken with a slight overlap using a tripod and it works automagically to join them together.

Shame the quality of the originals are so bad.
 
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