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Question

low-edge-detail panoramas

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
July 14, 2021
5 replies
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I want to create panoramas of very gray, very low-contrast scenes containing minimal edge detail. Is this possible, and if so, how? I assume the automatic software relies on matching edge detail to stitch images together. What if everything's soft, without edges? I'd like to do it in LR, so the resulting pano is still RAW. But if it can't be done automatically in LR, is it possible to manually position the images in PS and use the PS blending function to do the merge?

How to

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H

hbortmanAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks to everyone for your feedback and suggestions. Here's what I've learned by spending way too many hours stumbling my way through.

1. LR's automatic panorama stitcher said, "Sorry, can't do that." So did PS's auto-stitcher.

2. Here's that I ended up doing:

a. selected the images in LR and used the "Send to PS as layers" command;

b. increased the horizontal canvas size and manually positioned the images; and

c. used PS's Auto-Blend Layers command, with "Seamless Tones and Colors" selected to merge the images.

And it worked.

Part of what made it work was that I had looked up the angle of view for my lens and sensor, and used the rotational-angle indicator on my tripod to be precise about getting a 1/3-frame overlap between adjacent images. With that information, I could semi-automatically position the images in PS pretty accurately. I only had to move them around a little bit.

I've attached a lo-res jpeg of what I'm declaring a successful test. The actual image is 36.5 inches wide at 360 ppi, composited from four original images. I haven't made any tonal adjustments to the images at all yet.

Jill_C

Community Expert

Wow, I see the problem and why LR said "no way"; there's very little detail for the program to work with. But it's nice to know that there's a manual way to do it after all. What are you thinking of doing with this image? I can see a large canvas on the wall - it would be very soothing to look at.

Jill C., Forum Volunteer

H

hbortmanAuthor

Participating Frequently

Jill,

Glad you like the image. This was just a test, though, so I don't plan to do anything with this one. But now that I know I can make it work, I will be making other, similar images. And yes, big, and in a float frame, but probably with a smooth matte laminate that I've been exploring, rather than canvas. I haven't had much luck using canvas for images with a narrow tonal range. Plus, images like these are so low-information that the texture of the canvas tends to overwhelm the image content.

/hb

GoldingD

Legend

is it possible to manually position the images in PS and use the PS blending function to do the merge?

You can select the images desired and send over to PS to merge, but, no, you cannot rearrange what frames go where.

I think what you are describing requires a more capable Pano stitch software meant for the purpose. Something more robust. Not Adobe at all.

PTGUI perhaps?

GoldingD

Legend

What if everything's soft, without edges?

An situational example where that would fail is say a nice multi frame sequance of mountains, river, sky, etc, where a lot of sky is in many of those frames, just sky, with no clouds. The stitching might fail, and you might have an odd missing area in the merge.

GoldingD

Legend

Panoramic stitching needs overlap between frames, left/right, and if multi row, up/down. Nothing to do with edges.

This might be a syntax misunderstanding, to me, edges means just that, the outer edge. Pano stitching needs more than the edge, it needs about 30% overlap (some can go with less)

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

@GoldingD wrote:

Panoramic stitching needs overlap between frames, left/right, and if multi row, up/down. Nothing to do with edges.

This might be a syntax misunderstanding, to me, edges means just that, the outer edge. Pano stitching needs more than the edge, it needs about 30% overlap (some can go with less)

I assume the OP is talking about edge detail (the edges that get more contrast when you sharpen the image), not the edges of the images.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Did you try to do it in Lightroom? Maybe you'll get lucky...

-- Johan W. Elzenga

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