Photomerge question

Aug 25, 2004

Hi Cindy!

The easiest way may be to edit the images individually, trying to even out the differences in exposure, then re-attempt the merge.

I’ve been caught by this phenomenom as well, and I’ve decided that when shooting a mosaic for eventual photomerge I’ve got to use the manual exposure on my camera, set to the brightest zone I’m going to shoot and working from there.

Here’s an example of a 2 high x 4 wide matrix that I photomerged in PSE2.

<http://www.pbase.com/image/31743310/large>

I used the top right for my reference exposure.

HTH

Kyle

Byron Gale

Aug 25, 2004

Cindy,

Maybe this could help…

Press CTRL-SHIFT-N to bring up the New Layer dialog. Set the Mode to Overlay, and select Fill with Overlay-neutral color. OK.

You won’t see any difference… yet.

Using a soft brush, with a LOW opacity, paint on the gray layer with white where you want to lighten your image, or black where you wish to darken.

You can use any variation of this, depending on your needs… i.e. use Soft Light instead of Overlay mode, or use multiple ‘gray’ layers to target different areas of the image so that each layer’s opacity can be adjusted independently.

HTH,

Byron

Byron Gale

Aug 25, 2004

Cindy,

I was thinking that you should try these things after the panorama is created… but then, you could also try it on the individual panes before merging, too… as you wish.

Byron

Wendy_E_Williams

Aug 25, 2004

Cindy,

Once you have lightened your images and done the photomerge you will still need to blend it in a little. Usually the sky shows the line most … I tend to clone across it using a low opacity (say aound 60%).

Wendy

C_Mohr

Aug 26, 2004

Thanks everyone for the help. I was able to get it to work out by playing with the brightness on the individual photos first. It was tricky since looking at them individually, the difference was barely noticable–until I merged them. The cloning took care of the remaining overlapped sections.

Wendy_E_Williams

Aug 26, 2004

Cindy,

Some merges are easier than other and the difference in light does cause a few problems … Glad you finally managed to get a good merged image.

Wendy

Beth_Haney

Aug 26, 2004

I was reading this thread and reminded of a technique Susan S. shared a while back. I searched the forum and found it, in case anyone is interested. Susan is extremely talented, so if she’s found this to be a good way to work with panoramas it’s probably worth a try.

William Law "Help with panorama" 9/2/03 2:07pm </cgi-bin/webx?13/1>

Susan_S.

Aug 26, 2004

<Blush>….Thanks Beth! Wendy’s approach with cloning or patching joins in the sky is easier if the exposure isn’t too different – it usually shows up worse in the sky than anywhere ales and often cloning the gap is all that is required.

Jim_Hess

Aug 26, 2004

I have done an 8-photo photograph photomerge, the camera was in portrait position. The finished photograph covers about a 170 degree view across from where I live. I have Photoshop CS which has a Match Color option that is very useful when creating panoramas. It allows you to open 2 photographs and choose which photo is the source, and it does a pretty good job of matching the colors (although it isn’t perfect). After I have stitched the image, I often use the healing brush and sometimes the clone tool to even things out. Personally, I think panoramas present quite a challenge, but they are worth it if you have the patience.

Carl_Wegner

Aug 28, 2004

I can’t take credit for this (except keeping it alive), original advice came from D Andrew Barclay in April 2002…

1. Adjust images separately (levels) to approximately match overall tone.
2. Photomerge.
3. Open the merged image. If it still has a diagonal band…
4. ALSO open one of the pre-pano images. Use elliptical (or lasso) to select the overlap area with non-zero in the feather box (I use 50px with 2000dpi). Edit – Copy the selection. Edit – Paste into the pano image’s window. Use the Move tool to align it (can zoom in).

This trick is amazing. Thanks again to D Andrew!!

Carl

Susan_S.

Aug 29, 2004

That’s a good one Carl – I’ve used this copy and paste trick to rescue those bits of a merged pano where a piece from one image isn’t in the corresponding place on the next (figures wandering through the scenery, cars in the wrong place) to either add them back in or remove them completely depending on whether I want them or not. But I never actually thought of using it to smooth out the join….!

Ron Hunter

Aug 30, 2004

wrote:

I used Photomerge to combine 3 photos of the Chesapeake Bay into a panoramic photo. However, the exposure was slightly lighter with each photo the further it got away from shore. So, after the merge, (and using the advanced blending), I have 2 obvious diagonal sections where the exposure changes. I’d appreciate any advice on how to even out the exposures across these three photos so the blending is less obvious.

Thanks! Cindy

This is a major weakness in the photomerge feature. As far as I can tell, advanced blending does nothing. The only way I have found to minimize this problem after taking the pictures is to expose all of them to the automatic enhancement before starting the photomerge operation, and then adjusting the whole picture after it is merged. Not a complete solution, but it helps.

The better solution is to make sure the camera is set on a manual setting when the pictures are taken so that exposure is as consistent as possible.

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