Making Panoramas

[Bob]

Responding to my London Panorama in the Photopost area (http://www.ukexpert.co.uk/photopost/...php?photo=4051), Andy asked:

"That's an amazing picture Bob. What did you use to take the images and what time of day? My attempt here:
http://www.ukexpert.co.uk/photopost/...php?photo=1548 is very hazy in comparison."

I replied on the photo's comments thread:

"I took it on 5th October, probably about 3pm, with the Minolta 7i.

The panorama was assembled in Photoshop - each frame on separate layers, which were nudged until the alignment was correct, then about half of the overlap was cropped, with a 5 pixel feather. The levels for the frames were then adjusted to match, and the layers were flattened. Finally, I applied a judicious amount of unsharp masking. "

But I thought that this kind of technique might have a wider interest.

Do others make panoramas? Do you assemble them manually like me, to have the highest degree of control, or do you use a simple stitching program and accept what it gives?

Bob

[Paula]

Originally posted by Bob
Do others make panoramas? Do you assemble them manually like me, to have the highest degree of control, or do you use a simple stitching program and accept what it gives?

Bob,

I agree with Andy's assessment of your panorama, it is very good.

I never even thought of making panoramas manually.

The "Panorama Maker" software that came with my Nikon produces very good results so, I've stayed with that. If the images I want to combine are "off" in color or brightness, etc., I adjust the levels, curves, and/or brightness for each image in Photoshop before I make the panorama. Some examples of my panoramas are at:

http://www.ukexpert.co.uk/photopost/...php?photo=1341
http://www.ukexpert.co.uk/photopost/...php?photo=2400
http://www.ukexpert.co.uk/photopost/...php?photo=2683

One thing I don't like about the software I use is that is removes the EXIF info but, I guess it would be hard to combine EXIF info from the different images. I'll have to experiment with Photoshop and see what, if any EXIF info it keeps.

Paula

[Andy]

Paula,

There are some neat utilities that will save EXIF info to a file and then put it back in to the JPG image when you have finished changing it. I'll add some info to the FILES area on UKEXPERT.

Andy