Hand_held time lapse

[daygraphics]

Can anyone help me? I have been taking daily pictures of the Civic Arena (Penguins Hockey Arena) being torn down. My vantage point is not an easily accessible area and I can't leave a camera out and on a tripod. So I am hand holding from basically the same picture. Which if you've ever done, you know it's basically impossible to get the "exact" same perspective day to day. So my question is. Is there any software that would take layers and layers of Photoshop files and using an algorithm of common points - line these up??? I can do a pretty good job using distort with the working layer at a 50% transparency level. But I need to do it on a big screen and play around with distort quite a bit to get really really good alignment. Any suggestions...

[daygraphics]

I've een taking shots every day (sometimes a couple a day) for 2 months now. I hope to e able to gain access to this spot for at least a year until completion. I am about 40 shots behind my tasks. I hope to get caught up and then jut align these new ones on a daily basis.

[John Wheeler]

Hi DayGraphics
You did not mention what version of Photoshop that you have.

I cannot remember what versions have this functionality yet with PS CS5 you just select all the layers of interest and use the Edit > Auto-Align Layers. It does a great job for me. Let us know if you have this capability on your version of Photoshop and if it works for you.

[daygraphics]

John,

Thank you for pushing me back here (CS5). I started with this and it was around in varying formats for a while, but I used it mostly to stitch a panoramic together. BUT... I went back to it based on your suggestion and used the PERSPECTIVE choice and it is perfect. I imagine it will take quite a bit longer on the full size imagery (large format camera). I just tested on a small scaled down sampling - and it worked miraculously!!!

Now to try with the large ones. Thanks,

Dan

P.S. Auto worked too! Now will it work by adding one or two more a day.

[John Wheeler]

Glad it worked for you. I have been pretty impressed on the accuracy of this functionality even with changes in the image. Once in a while I have had issues yet always found workarounds. Let us know if you need anymore help.

[mistermonday]

Originally Posted by daygraphics

John,

Thank you for pushing me back here (CS5). I started with this and it was around in varying formats for a while, but I used it mostly to stitch a panoramic together. BUT... I went back to it based on your suggestion and used the PERSPECTIVE choice and it is perfect. I imagine it will take quite a bit longer on the full size imagery (large format camera). I just tested on a small scaled down sampling - and it worked miraculously!!!

Now to try with the large ones. Thanks,

Dan

P.S. Auto worked too! Now will it work by adding one or two more a day.

Yes it will. But I would suggest you once you have a number of images aligned, create a merge layer and align the next days layer to the merged layer. If you just keep the entire stack and then try to align a stack of 50 layers you may run into some trouble - active RAM, processing time, PS ability to perform its alignment magic because of too many variables.

Regards, Murray

[daygraphics]

Murray,
Yes, it certainly would crash the system or simply take far too long - and after a year, I am going to with crashing. I was going to try a slightly different means of dealing with all that calculations, but I like your idea better. I will have to add some additional "Canvas Size" as any images I might introduce that exceed the current canvas format seems to disrupt the process. Thanks for your added input!

Dan

[daygraphics]

Thanks again Murray and John,

Got it cooking now. Murray. I just used a 6 image sampling of alignment - opened the canvas to accommodate the largest frame capture (areawise) and flattened it and saved as a JPG. This one, I simply open and use it as my alignment base. Then it does its thing - fast, only calculating two. Now since the multi-layered file is the exact same canvas size. So I can just hold down the shift key on the 2 layered file, grab the just aligned layer and drag and drop it onto the multi-layered file. Since the are the exact same dimensions - it will drop it right in place. I am thinking I will be caught up in a couple of hours... but I got to go to bed right now!!!

Thanks again folks!

Dan

P.S. These are lores to get on the site, but the super hires are totally awesome - seeing the workers faces, etc.

[mistermonday]

Dan, nice to see you have a good solution.
Regards, Murray