Stitching to create a Panorama

[Photomaster]

Yesterday morning I took six photos of the beach, covering 180 degrees. I stitched them together in Photoshop and wasn't really pleased with the results.
I tried a very good, free, panorama, stitching program from HERE
and was able to come up with this image. I did do extensive retouching in Photoshop: color adjust, 50% gray overlay to adjust light and dark, smudgeing of the water and sky and cloning. Would make a good promotional piece for the condo we're staying at.

[philbach]

Hey I thought you were in Minnesota. But I don't blame you. Rumor has it that it still is cold up there.

Photoshop has a panaorama feature built in. To find it go to File/Automate/Photomerge.

Very nice picture/panorama that you constructed.

[Swampy]

What a glorious view!!

There is just something wonderful about an uncluttered, unpopulated beach. It's like you have to whole world to yourself!

My first stitching project was of a panoramic view of Los Angeles. I'm not an expert photographer by any stretch, but I did this with an Olympus 2.5 MP camera and no tripod. The vista is from the terrace of the John Paul Getty Museum and it was a pretty clear day. I got lucky!

I stitched this with PhotoShop's stitching feature.

[philbach]

This is a panorama of where I live on Seabrook Island near Charleston SC

Hey maybe we should have a panorama section on this site?

[Swampy]

Lovely, Phil. Charlston is such a photogenic city. :-)

[Gary Richardson]

Ski trip in La Plagne (France). No real touch up on this, just stitched them together, could probably do with some work.

[Frank Lopes]

I know this is not a photography forum but....

Many of us take landscape photos using wide angle lenses.

Wouldn't make more sense to shoot the photos to be used in a stitching project, using a longer lens? Since wide angle lenses tend to add spheric distortion to the images, wouldn't it be better with longer lenses since there is much less distortion?

Wondering...

[Photomaster]

Great work everyone! It looks like a lot of you have done a pano or two. Maybe a pano forum would be a good idea. With all the talent here I'm sure we'd see some great wall-hangers.

This particular panorama was a particular challenge for me because:

It covered 180 degrees;
The exposure varied significantly from left to right;
My vantage point was only 150 yards from the water so I had to shoot at wide angle which, as Frank mentioned, produced spheric distortion;
The waves were in motion;
The couple on the beach were moving;
The vegetation looked messy;
there were distraction like other signs, and a couple of trash cans.

The exposure was corrected using selective correction on the sky with appropriate feathering and smudging. The distortion produced a curved horizon line that I corrected by using a horizontal Guide line, then a rectangular selection along the horizon that allowed me to clone the water to get a perfectly straight line. The waves did not line up properly so I used a light touch with a smudge brush to "fix" them and also produced some nice breakers. (These are more prominent on the full size (42" W) picture.) The couple on the beach were indistinct so I cut them from the original photo, resized and pasted. I then touched up the vegetation and removed the trash cans and signs with the clone brush. And finally, I selectively adjusted light and dark with a 50% gray overlay. By the way, those tiny bumps along the horizon are oil drilling platforms.

Attached is the pano I started with.

[Kraellin]

as we all know, paint shop pro is the poor man's photoshop and sadly, this sometimes shows up in the quality of the routines. nonetheless, i gave it a shot.

craig

[studioj]

Well, what I do to create panoramics, of course this methods are good, but I think all it's in the camera.

As you can see, the Horizont always get lost.

In you sea, the horizon it's great, but the shore it's weird, so, I angle the camera shots

I usually take 30 pics for a panoramic view, and begin with a very angulated one like this: /

Let's say I shot a curve, Imagine a ball (football) that it's making a semi circle in the hair and you have to picture it, but the brand needs to be in the perfect middle of each shot

[Photomaster]

Craig,

A sewing machine! Of course, why didn't I think of that. You should have used colored thread though.

[Lorenzo]

Group,

You might want to try AutoStitch. It's a very powerful and so far free program developed at the University of British Columbia. I use it at my university to stitch large satellite image tiles and so far it is the most effective app that we've used.

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

Lorenzo

[Kraellin]

Originally Posted by Photomaster

Craig,

A sewing machine! Of course, why didn't I think of that. You should have used colored thread though.

all i had was yarn

craig