Programs for photo-stitching / panoramas

[ijohn.8.80]

Howdy All,

I'd like to explore the Brenizer method a little and am wondering if any of you can suggest what program (for mac obviously) to use for such complex photo-stitching?

I tried a few thirty five shot panoramas with photoshop and it just doesn't quite make it! There's always one or two errors with complex or regularly patterned background areas.

Is the secret to success keeping the background relatively simple, with no regular patterns as such?

Thanks for any suggestions.
John

[sflarc51]

Never heard of this method until I saw your post. Then I happen to visit a frequent site of mine, photographylife.com, and what do you know, they had an article on it sitting right in front of my face!
http://photographylife.com/advanced-...ethod-panorama

[paolo-]

I found that sometimes it's only one or two image that Photoshop can't align and that throws the whole panorama out the window.

I find that if the initial panorama fails, try starting with the pictures around the in focus element. Then save that as a tiff file. Try building from there with a new panoramas and add some of the pictures around that initial part and saving. You'll probably find which image fails every thing. You can then manually place that image in and then add the rest with the panorama function. It's a bit of a pain when it doesn't work.

I also found that when you have too many pictures and you have a few that are superfluous, Photoshop throws a hissy fit. I also found that when the background isn't busy enough, Photoshop doesn't know where to put things.


For example, on this test I did, the two pictures that made up the part to the right of the shed wouldn't get into place with photomerge. There was some repetition in those two pictures and it's not like there's a whole lot going on in there.

[ijohn.8.80]

Originally Posted by sflarc51

Never heard of this method until I saw your post. Then I happen to visit a frequent site of mine, photographylife.com, and what do you know, they had an article on it sitting right in front of my face!
http://photographylife.com/advanced-...ethod-panorama

I had read that article over the weekend, they only suggest photoshop to stitch it together with, but thanks for the link, I'm sure it may well help others to investigate this technique.

Originally Posted by paolo-

I found that sometimes it's only one or two image that Photoshop can't align and that throws the whole panorama out the window.

I find that if the initial panorama fails, try starting with the pictures around the in focus element. Then save that as a tiff file. Try building from there with a new panoramas and add some of the pictures around that initial part and saving. You'll probably find which image fails every thing. You can then manually place that image in and then add the rest with the panorama function. It's a bit of a pain when it doesn't work.

I also found that when you have too many pictures and you have a few that are superfluous, Photoshop throws a hissy fit. I also found that when the background isn't busy enough, Photoshop doesn't know where to put things.


For example, on this test I did, the two pictures that made up the part to the right of the shed wouldn't get into place with photomerge. There was some repetition in those two pictures and it's not like there's a whole lot going on in there.

I like the shot of the football on the arm of the chair! It's with items of all manner and type that I'll be using the technique, not people.

I had arrived at almost this same method for construction that you suggested above through trial and error over the last couple of days! Build the object or item of focus first, then work other block shaped sections together, then stitch them all together at the end. That gives me the best results in photoshop CS6 thus far. Trying to put together rows or columns doesn't work very well in photoshop.

Has anyone tried PTGui Pro, Calico 2.1 or Hugin? These were the other programs I could find recommended elsewhere for this sort of panoramic photo-stitching.

[BillMidwest]

I've used Hugin for several years with very good results. Calico is also an excellent program, however only the trial version is available. See his website for more info.*
Hugin does allow you to manually make numerous adjustments to a panorama if it's not acceptable, or if you wish to experiment, and the tutorials are very good. Give it a try.

[joelk2]

Originally Posted by BillMidwest

I've used Hugin for several years with very good results. Calico is also an excellent program, however only the trial version is available. See his website for more info.*
Hugin does allow you to manually make numerous adjustments to a panorama if it's not acceptable, or if you wish to experiment, and the tutorials are very good. Give it a try.

i would second the above for Hugin

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

its great and free which is a bonus.

the brenizer method when done correctly can produce so amazingly shallow dof photos.

[Richard Peters]

I use AutoPano Pro.

Hands down the best solution I've used for image stitching

[TonyK]

Hugin at one time was just a front-end to PanoTools. I've used PanoTools with a different GUI and with Hugin and will say I like the way it works. These days PanoTools is compiled in to Hugin.

Looking at AutoPano Pro it looks like it would do a great job too.

[apple-ette]

I've used DoubleTake with success a few times.