PhotoMerge in CS

[pdpfilms]

I've been wondering this for a while...

Adobe's been including a little auto-app called Photomerge in Photoshop (I believe) starting with CS1. I've tried using it before, but have had pretty bad results. It seems every time I try to auto or manual merge a set of panoramic images, I get highly visible banding between shots, due to minor light changes. All the sets of shots were metered manually, so there is no exposure difference. But nevertheless, the shots are all a tad bit off, which messes up the final product.

How do you make a good panorama using CS2? Is photomerge not the solution? More specifically, is there any way that you can get the exposure of all frames to be exactly the same without trial and erroring each one? I'm just looking for some guidance.... iGary, I'd love a response from you!

 

[Over Achiever]

I've never gotten good results with Photomerge either. One workaround I've done is to meter the region where the photos overlap and adjust the exposure so that they are similar. Otherwise I usually work with a third party application that as auto exposure correction, which tends to blend the images better. Sometimes I'll blend the images together myself with layers, and get better results with an eraser brush.

The light banding may also be part of the image itself, depending on the camera. If the lens has significant vignetting, then the darkening of the edges and corners will be noticeable when blending multiple images together.

Anyway, that's all I know about merging images, altho' they are dear to my heart.

-OA

 

[pdpfilms]

The light banding may also be part of the image itself, depending on the camera. If the lens has significant vignetting, then the darkening of the edges and corners will be noticeable when blending multiple images together.

To clarify, the banding is simply th product of photomerge attempting to blend two unevenly exposed frames. And I've ruled vignetting out of it, as I'm pretty trusting of my 17-55mm f2.8 and haven't found any vignetting in the past.

 

[snap58]

To clarify, the banding is simply th product of photomerge attempting to blend two unevenly exposed frames. And I've ruled vignetting out of it, as I'm pretty trusting of my 17-55mm f2.8 and haven't found any vignetting in the past.

Go out on a cloudy day and / or maybe bracket each one then pick ones with similar exposures?

 

[OutThere]

Photoshop's "match colors" Image->Adjustments->Match Colors might help you.

 

[bartelby]

It could be just similtaneous contrast making the join seem more obvious than it actually is.

 

[HughJ]

why not use layer masks+graduation tool, or am i missing the point?

 

[TheMasin9]

photostitch

i personally use photostitch, granted there are going to be some visible merge lines in most programs, it looks like photostitch will do a better job with some of the stuff ur workin with