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Archive 2017 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

bs kite
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

Who has done this? And please feel welcome to show us your work.

I have not done a panoramic yet (Dec 27, 2018). I have wanted to learn how. I will be using the D850 on a tripod. I will first level the tripod. Do I overlap images?

I plan on shooting RAW's first, giving each image a quick post process and converting to JPEG's before merging. Then, using PSCC, File, Automate, Photomerge. Is this ok ?

Is that about it?

Thanks

Robert

posted in two forums: "Post Processing" and "Nikon"

Edited on Jan 08, 2019 at 05:31 PM · View previous versions

Dec 27, 2017 at 07:57 AM

jharter
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

Stitching is pretty simple. Level your tripod. Overlap your images by about a third - too little overlap and there is not enough bite for the software to line up the edges.

For starters, just stitch the images in Lightroom. No need to do any pre-processing because the stitched file will be a RAW file that can be processed with your usual workflow. To stitch the files, simply select them. On a Mac, press and hold the Command key while clicking on each image you want to stitch. Then Right-Click on any of the selected images. Select Photomerge|Panorama. Then you will get to a wizard.

Don't select any ghosting options until you have tried a few panos. Ghosting helps if there is movement of leaves, people, etc. between images. Toggle between the options for "Perspective, Spherical, etc" to see which option look best, but doing so can take some processing time. Using the boundary warp option will help fill in the empty areas caused by distortion.

Click enter and the computer will grind away, merging the images into a new file. Can take awhile so don't panic. LR will insert the new file immediately after the original images. If you can't find it, LR might have inserted the new file a the end of all the images so you might have to look there. You can determine the default name of the new file in LR preferences. My convention is to use the original file name with the suffix " pano."

If you do many panos you will want to get a nodal rail to use between the tripod and your camera. When used properly, a nodal rail will reduce the bowing, or distortion if the stitched image thus requiring less cropping and giving you much more undistorted real estate in your final image.

Also, you will probably want a different ball head. Leveling the tripod is a pain. Much easier to level the ballhead and then use a panning clamp. My favorite is the Acratech GP-SS used in its inverted position as well as the Area Swiss P0 head.

You will also want an L-Bracket specific for your camera model so that you can shoot the frames in vertical orientation.

Don't forget to try some vertoramas with your camera in landscape orientation. LR will stitch those as well. Sometimes a few stitched frames from a 35 mm lens can yield a nicer image than the same shot with a single image from a wide angle lens.

Dec 27, 2017 at 08:26 AM

ckcarr
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

Be aware of changes in your exposure and white balance as you shoot the pano. As the lens moves across the scene while you are shooting the frames, these can and will change unless you have everything in manual mode. If you are aware of white balance changes when you stitch, you can correct that, but exposure is trickier. Always shoot in total manual mode. You want the frames the same.

I don't shoot many panos anymore, but always used my Really Right Stuff pano elements kit when doing it. Since the pano base is marked in degree increments, once you have a lens figured out it's super simple to rotate (for example from 0 to 30 to 60 degrees) and keep it level. If you level a tripod alone, without a leveling base, the possibility that the lens won't be level as soon as you rotate/pan it to a new direction is about 95%

You'll probably get more and better advice by researching sites like Really Right Stuff or othersas they have instructions and videos on how to do it.

Dec 27, 2017 at 08:54 AM

NightOwl Cat
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

Leave plenty of leeway at the edges too, for cropping what you actually want for the final image. This was shot with my tripod set low, and one sweep left to right. There wasn't enough room to back up, I was against a building. Stitched in PS/CS 6


	© NightOwl Cat 2017

Dec 27, 2017 at 09:32 AM

Photozack81
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

The above posts have covered it pretty well. Keep settings consistent between frames, leave plenty of overlap on all sides to allow for stitching and cropping.

Lightroom and photoshop do a fine job most of the time.

There's also the Microsoft ICE - Image Composite Editor - it's pretty good at complex panoramas. Better than photoshop in some cases.

Dec 27, 2017 at 09:36 AM

cputeq
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

Yeah I was about to vote for MS ICE but Photozack mentioned it

Great piece of free software, something I rarely say about MS products

Also, for panos, I always forget to leave myself leeway on the verticals (up and down) so I end up cropping too much out of the foreground or sky, etc. That's probably because I zoom in a bit too tightly on my compositions. Leave some space because inevitably the vertical dimensions get cropped -- sides too, but that seems really dependent on the scene and how I composed it (usually I don't lose too much).

edit -- Usually I leave about 1/3 of the scene (between photos) for overlap, which seems to be plenty.

Edited on Dec 27, 2017 at 09:57 AM · View previous versions

Dec 27, 2017 at 09:54 AM

Vcook
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

you can do it handheld, just make sure you're in manual so the exposure is exactly the same in each frame. This is a 5(I think, might be 6) frame pano of Denver I took this summer handheld. I generally just use lightroom to stitch them together, then process it as a single image.


	https://i.imgur.com/NOQPmIl.jpg

Dec 27, 2017 at 09:55 AM

jharter
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

I should have mentioned to use manual exposure mode and manual focus. You can use aperture priority and autofocus to get your starting points, then with to manual focus to lock focus and use the exposure settings to set the manual aperture and shutter speed. Make sure you take the exposure from the "dominant" part of the frame which you consider most important. For example, if there is a sunset, you might have to sacrifice highlights or shadows depending on your preferences.

I would not use pano software, or even photoshop, in the beginning. Just use LR until you become aware of limitations.

The advice about about handheld panos is good. No need to make the process to difficult, especially if there is good light. But don't just sweep the camera or else you will have massive distortion. Imagine the nodal point of your lens and rotate its axis around the nodal point between shots. In other words, act as if your thumb is under the aperture ring and rotate the camera as if it were affixed to the thumb between shots rather than keeping the camera at your eye and rotating your head.

Dec 27, 2017 at 10:06 AM

bs kite
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

Amazing! Fascinating!

Thanks to all for the advice. I read every single word of all of your posts. I really appreciate the advice.

Teamwork! FM rocks!

Robert

Dec 27, 2017 at 10:12 AM

lighthound
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

One more thing to add to the great info you have already received that I haven't seen mentioned.

Don't use a polarizer if your doing a large angle view pano on sunny or even partially sunny days. You'll hate yourself when you get home and see the results and there isn't much you can do to fix it in post.
I learned this the hard way. If you're shooting just a few frames say 90 deg's total then you might get away with it, but I simply remove my CPL now whenever I shoot a pano.

Dec 27, 2017 at 11:04 AM

Photozack81
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

This is now a post your panoramas thread

The full size of this one is *huge* but the details are astounding. Standing on top of a skyscraper in Makati, Philippines looking out towards Mandaluyong. Shot this with a D7100.

Panorama Test by Zack, on Flickr

This was on Biliran Island in a little town called Naval. D7100 again. The full size stitch of this is 81MP +/- a bit

DSC_2020_stitch small by Zack, on Flickr

This one was here in Metro Manila. Shot with a D750. Pretty crappy conditions all around.

_DSC2744-Pano by Zack, on Flickr

I've got a ton more buried in the external drive, these were the ones I could find quickly. Panoramas are fun.

Dec 27, 2017 at 11:09 AM

jharter
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

Quickly finding panoramas: that is one reason why I like to append "pano" to the file name.

Dec 27, 2017 at 12:09 PM

gpelpel
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

Some good info here. Wish I had these before processing my latest pano of 12 images (2 rows of 6 portrait images).
One thing I would add that will prevent major distortion and cropping. It is important to find the nodal point of your lens (optical center) and pan or tilt around this nodal point. Really Right Stuff (RRS) sells special plates and brackets for panos but also have nice technical tutorials on their website.
I didn't use my lens nodal point or any specialized equipment for that matter and ended up with lengthly post processing session to obtain the result I was looking for.
I first processed each image in LR. My first attempt was to stitch the two rows of images at one. I did it directly in PSCC and ended up with a mess. The final and successful approach was to stitch each row individually and then merge them.

Nikon D850 w/ 14-24mm f/2.8G, ISO 3200, f/2.8, 30s for each image.


	http://logisoftinc.com/photos/2017/Bristlecone%20Pano.jpg

Dec 27, 2017 at 12:18 PM

cputeq
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

lighthound wrote:
One more thing to add to the great info you have already received that I haven't seen mentioned.

Don't use a polarizer if your doing a large angle view pano on sunny or even partially sunny days. You'll hate yourself when you get home and see the results and there isn't much you can do to fix it in post.
I learned this the hard way. If you're shooting just a few frames say 90 deg's total then you might get away with it, but I simply remove my CPL now whenever I shoot a pano.

*unless* one likes dark blue 'V's or 'M's, etc. in one's photo

I ran into this same thing once and actually managed to fix it (there's a hell of a lot of coolness that multiple LR gradient brushes can do) but I swore to never use a CPL again for a pano.

Dec 27, 2017 at 01:25 PM

cputeq
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

gpelpel wrote:

Some good info here. Wish I had these before processing my latest pano of 12 images (2 rows of 6 portrait images).
One thing I would add that will prevent major distortion and cropping. It is important to find the nodal point of your lens (optical center) and pan or tilt around this nodal point. Really Right Stuff (RRS) sells special plates and brackets for panos but also have nice technical tutorials on their website.
I didn't use my lens nodal point or any specialized equipment for that matter and ended up with lengthly post processing session to obtain the result I...Show more →

Very nice photo.

Question -- I know stars, etc. are going to move from the time you get your first frame till the last one. Does normal, human-usable stitching software take this into effect, or are you having to mess with layers in PS also to manually align or use astro-centric stitching software?

Dec 27, 2017 at 01:27 PM

cputeq
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

bs kite wrote:
. Then, using PSCC, File, Automate, Photomerge. Is this ok ?

Is that about it?

Thanks

Robert

posted in Post Processing and Nikon thread

One more thing Robert, PSCC's and LRCC's photomerge (at least when I still used them, which was just before this recent update) have *different* Panorama algorithms.

I would have never guessed this, but I've had multiple pano's in LRCC fail somewhat (stitching errors) that worked fine in PSCC, even though I did the exact same steps for each one. Just an FYI in case you get errors in PSCC, try LRCC and see if it comes out better (and vice versa).

Dec 27, 2017 at 01:29 PM

notherenow
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

Simplest way is to use a PC/Tilt shift lens and keep the camera in the one spot and shift the lens. Then in MS Ice, Import photos, hit stitch, hit crop (Then move the dots where you want), hit export. Easy and works well.

I would love to see some from the 19 PC-E (I use the Canon 17 TS-E) but the Nikon should be great.

Some of the cheaper and older PC lenses or shift adapters should work well too.

Dec 27, 2017 at 02:39 PM

gpelpel
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

cputeq wrote:
Very nice photo.

Question -- I know stars, etc. are going to move from the time you get your first frame till the last one. Does normal, human-usable stitching software take this into effect, or are you having to mess with layers in PS also to manually align or use astro-centric stitching software?

Thanks.

All the stars move together so only the lower row was affected by the earth movement. This row took 6 times 30s so 3 minutes resulting in a slight variation considering I was using a super wide angle (14mm). So yes, I needed a little bit of tweaking to end up with a straight horizon but really not much.
As the upper row only included sky the stitching was very easy. I only had to rotate the final result of the upper row a bit in order to align it with the lower row.
Total time between first shot (bottom left corner) to the last (upper right corner) was no more than 7 minutes.

Dec 27, 2017 at 03:29 PM

Arka
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

I just did one of these for the first time with my D850 on a tripod. Simple 2-shot stitch. I overlapped the original images by a little over a third, resolved DoF stacking on the foreground images, and then told Photomerge to make lens and perspective corrections in the merge process. In the field, I made sure exposures were well matched, and matched up white-balance settings in post.

Mine was a vertical stitch, so one (silly) thing I learned as a first-time stitcher was the need to rotate the images sideways, since apparently Photomerge can't do vertical stitches. It's a little thing but important to know if you're trying to get this to work - wasted about 10 minutes trying to figure that out.

Also, the stitch appears in PS as a layered file with opacity masks. This is a helpful format as it really lets you dig in and non-destructively fix the inevitable stitching artifacts. I try to avoid doing any significant color or selective exposure processing until after I've resolved all stitching issues. Also, I think it best to resolve any DoF stacking (if applicable) before the Photomerge stitch.

On another note, I was surprised how costly the whole process was for resolution. I stitched the images because it was the only way I could get a wide enough perspective, but wasn't thinking that I'd lose so many pixels. Out of two 46MP files, the final image is about 48MP after stitching and cropping to clear distortion artifacts. I expect you'll get better results if you don't start with image files captured through a wide angle lens.

Dec 27, 2017 at 04:51 PM

bs kite
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Stitching or Merging Images. Your Panoramas are Welcome!

Super image of nature!

Dec 27, 2017 at 07:20 PM

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