Panorama/photomerge help in CS2

[jmrnavydoc]

I've been experimenting with panoramas and photomerge automation on PS CS2 and recently, i took several panned shots (on a tripod) of a sunrise using Aperature priority on my camera. When i got back and uploaded them and looked closer, the colors between the several photos don't match well at all. That is, when photomerged, I can clearly see where the program stitched them together due to darker/ligher/grayer/brighter sky/water/land, etc. I tried adjusting hue/saturation/brightness/contrast but it was all trial and error, without any success. All the files are still in RAW so i do have a lot of adjustment capability, just wondering if anyone out there knows of a good way to match the colors (in the sky and water, etc) to make it much more seamless.. once close, i think i can use the healers, clone, dodge and burn to get it where i want it, just can't even get to that part now.

Also, any thoughts to avoid this in the future? do i need to do full manual from the brightest area of the sky or something?

Thanks!

 

[bearbo]

I've been experimenting with panoramas and photomerge automation on PS CS2 and recently, i took several panned shots (on a tripod) of a sunrise using Aperature priority on my camera. When i got back and uploaded them and looked closer, the colors between the several photos don't match well at all. That is, when photomerged, I can clearly see where the program stitched them together due to darker/ligher/grayer/brighter sky/water/land, etc. I tried adjusting hue/saturation/brightness/contrast but it was all trial and error, without any success. All the files are still in RAW so i do have a lot of adjustment capability, just wondering if anyone out there knows of a good way to match the colors (in the sky and water, etc) to make it much more seamless.. once close, i think i can use the healers, clone, dodge and burn to get it where i want it, just can't even get to that part now.

Also, any thoughts to avoid this in the future? do i need to do full manual from the brightest area of the sky or something?

Thanks!

You might want to take a look at Autopano Pro

 

[Kamera RAWr]

I'm still pretty new to photography, so please take anything I say with a large cube of salt . I would personally suggest using full manual mode when making panos or some sort of exposure lock so that once you meter the scene, the settings are the same for every photograph. I've made a few panos myself and find that keeping the settings exactly the same can produce great results. I'm sure you'll get others to chime in too, thats just my 2 cents

 

[djbahdow01]

Yup shot in full manual, therefore everything blends together nicely. I started out shoting in aperture priority and had some good results but after a while I later learned that it was best ot shoot in manual.

 

[jlcharles]

Exactly. The exposure on each frame has to be exactly the same or things won't line up easily if at all.

 

[zioxide]

Get CS3. CS3's photomerge is 10x better than CS2. It matches pictures perfectly.

 

[Kamera RAWr]

I second the vote for CS3. If you can afford to upgrade, photomerge in CS3 is absolutely FANTASTIC.

 

[zioxide]

I second the vote for CS3. If you can afford to upgrade, photomerge in CS3 is absolutely FANTASTIC.

There's the 30 day free trial on Adobe's web site.

 

[jmrnavydoc]

Thanks, going to be getting CS3 in about a month.. guess i wait til then to see if it'll fix these pics. No matter what, there will always be another sunrise... just waking up early enough to get to the spot, that's the tough part.

 

[djchristie]

Try Image-Adjustments-Match Color. You can set one image as the target, and the other as the source. It then tries to match one to the other in terms of colour etc, so when you photomerge they all look like they were exposed the same.

 

[jmrnavydoc]

Tried the color match with no avail... still has brightness/contrast/hue/saturation issues.