Hey folks. Im on a Macbook and I currently have Aperture, and a trial for Silver Efex. I particularly want editing capabilities including: Stitching Panoramas & B&W work. I believe that CS4 stitches? (How easy is it? Quality of results?) and i will obviously be able to process to B&W.

Does buying CS4 over the other 2 sound logical? (It comes out to roughly the same cost if not slightly cheaper)

Is the stitching function in CS4 going to give me good quality results (all from handheld shots)?

Regards
Rowan

the pano stitching capabilities of PS have been getting better, esp. since CS3. That said, what's your time worth? There's nothing that Efex will do that you can't do w/ enough time in PS. I think it boils down to how far you want to go w/ each task? I'd think that ultimately, a dedicated pano stitcher would give better results in tricky situations than a general purpose stitcher like PS

rowan57 wrote:
Hey folks. Im on a Macbook and I currently have Aperture, and a trial for Silver Efex. I particularly want editing capabilities including: Stitching Panoramas & B&W work. I believe that CS4 stitches? (How easy is it? Quality of results?) and i will obviously be able to process to B&W.

Does buying CS4 over the other 2 sound logical? (It comes out to roughly the same cost if not slightly cheaper)

Is the stitching function in CS4 going to give me good quality results (all from handheld shots)?


Have you already tried using Hugin?

EDIT: fixing url typo

well you still wont have silver effects pro if you go with cs4. autopano pro will solve your panos. no they will most likely flaws if you do hand held panos with cs3, not sure of 4, hand held panos with autopano are not as good than tripod shots. surprise, you'll just wish you had a tripod with you.

I have just started with PTGui and have found it to work quite well with minimal work. I process the images in CS3 and stitch them in PTGui. I get better results with less distortion shooting at about 50mm and stitching compared to using my 17-40.

I have SilverEFX and you can create more compelling BW conversions in Photoshop (CS3+) with a little work. Silver EFX gives you speed and can save a little time ... I actually use it with Photoshop. I find that Photoshop does a nice job with handheld panos. I also own Autopano, but would be happy using CS3/CS4. Sometimes I will use both packages to process an pano and compare results.

Just coming back to this real quick before i go to sleep, i probably should have pointed out that im a student so in £'s, Photoshop costs me £160ish which is roughly the cost of the other 2 programs combined.

I will have more time in the morning to read and reply to the rest of the comments, thanks for the input so far

Regards
Rowan

Ok am back

@ Howard: I think you make a very valid point about time. I do enjoy using SilverEfex, and i guess if i were to get PS i could manage without for a while until i could afford the plugin, this may even help my PP. Good point about the Pano's, i'll have to look at the ones i have backed up ready to stitch and decide about complexity etc.

@ Invalid: (Your link came straight back to the thread but i know what ya meant ) I havent tried Hugin, i think i need a bit of time to get my head around their install method, i may have a go this weekend. Thanks.

@ Louis: Thanks, I dont have a tripod at the moment and dont really have any intention of getting one, so my pano's maybe a bit trickier to stitch i guess, i'll have to see how it goes.

@ Beach: Thanks for the feedback on PTGui, i have tried it very briefly and liked it which makes my decsision very hard.

@ UCSB: I guess like i mentioned above, if i find B&W conversion too hard without silverefex later, i can always get the plugin for PS. That kind of helps make up my mind a bit.

Cheers for the feedback everyone, i'll probably decide in a few days.

Regards
Rowan

I believe it was on lynda.com or kelbytraining.com .............

Katrin Eisman (PS Goddess) did a video series about PS B&W conversions. You would do well to view that and get a better handle on conversion. Improving your PS PP skills will only help and really, PS is the foundation of it all whether it be cool plug-ins or straight PP tasks.

rowan57 wrote:
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@ Invalid: (Your link came straight back to the thread but i know what ya meant ) I havent tried Hugin, i think i need a bit of time to get my head around their install method, i may have a go this weekend. Thanks.

Well, I went back and fixed it, just in case others need a direct reference. It should be easy enough to install if you don't want to build from source.

As far stitching goes CS 4 does a fine job. Here's one where I did everything wrong. It's three hand held shots all on aperture priority auto exposure. CS 4 had no problems just putting them into one dam fine shot.

Well for better or worse, i lumped for CS4, it should be here monday hopefully and results will be posted shortly after.

Cheers
Rowan