How to control photo placement in perspective panoramas

[JBatDEVLINK]

I've been using Lightroom for years, ever since beta. When they first brought in the merge to panorama module I remember you used to be able to edit the focal point and so pick which photo was the centre of the merge set. For quite a while now this option has no longer been available, however, for spherical and cylindrical merges that hasn't been in isuue.

Perspecitve (rectilinear) merges are a different matter. They almost always get screwed up because of Lightroom picking the wrong image to set as the focal point of the merge. In the example attached I tried to merge four vertical photos from my iPhone 14 pro max main back camera. As you can see, once again, Lightroom butchers the merge while Hugin and Panorama Stitcher get it right straight away.

Is there any way of tweaking the photo layout in Lightroom (or photoshop for that matter, it's almost as bad with rectilinear merges) before compelting the merge?

[GoldingD]

 I remember you used to be able to edit the focal point and so pick which photo was the centre of the merge set.

I do not remember that at all. The photo merge PANO and the photo merge HDR have always been feature poor compared to third party apps where such things as selecting image for ghosting, selecting images for calculations, etc exist.

Perspecitve (rectilinear) merges are a different matter. They almost always get screwed up because of Lightroom picking the wrong image to set as the focal point of the merge. 

Was your bracket for that PANO a single row? I rarely touch perspective for a single row, might not be correct, but I think LrC does not call for perspective use in single row. More likely Cylindrical.

Looking at your Panorama Stitcher result. Was that handheld?

oh, this:

from my iPhone 14 pro max main back camera

so handheld, Ok.

Hmm, I see that was using Spherical, not Perspective, if single row, that may have caused that bow tie appearance, does Cylindrical work better?

[JBatDEVLINK]

Howdy,

I was using perspective because I broke the 17mm lens for my DSLR 😢 These photos didn't need to be super high quality so I thought I'd use the iphone 14 pro max. However the ultrawide camera is pretty noisey so I was trying to replicate the field of view of the ultrawide by taking vertical images (on a tripod) and then stitching them using rectilinear projection so as not to get curved distortion of the images.

I took exposure brackets of between 3 and 5 images, merged to HDR, merged to panorama (using Hugin or Panorama Maker - hence this post) and then tweaked the final 16bit TIFF in LR to even up the lighting. The end result works well for an iphone (see attached example). Just wondering why Adobe don't add in a "select focal point" option to their panorama merge?  That way I could have kept the images in LR for the whole workflow and not had to do the tedious export to tiff, open in another app, blend, save, delete temp files, re-import into LR routine for every batch of photos.

[Ian Lyons]

Like David, I have no recollection of LrC having the ability to edit the focal point. Below are screenshots of the UI when it was originally added in Lr6 and then updated to include 'Boundary Warp' in Lr Classic CC. Both are very basic.

[JBatDEVLINK]

Maybe it was an early itteration of the photo merge in photoshop? Or Gigapano? It was quite a while ago and I've slept a few times since then 😅 Maybe it was Gigapano now I think of it, probably because PS kept failing back then as well 😂 However, the lack of ability to select the centre point of the panorama is the main question here. Is there any way of getting LR or PS to pick which photo in a rectilinear set should be the centre option. Something which Hugin and Panorama Sticher get right every time.

I've tried starting the photo sequence with the shot I want to be central and then panning (on a lens centred tripod) left and right. And I've tried starting with the left most or right most image and working in a line. Around 20% of the time LR get's it right, the rest of the time I end up with the mess shown in the attached example?

[Ian Lyons]

I'm 99.9% sure it wasn't in Photoshop, and I've never used Gigapano.

The answer to your question is no. As others have already indicated, Photo Merge in LrC and Ps is very basic. 

[GoldingD]

Generally, in a multi row pano, I  pick a corner, top or bottom, shot sequentially across the row, then start the next row on the same side as first pic, shoot across that row in same direction, repeat for any remaining rows. Oh, and in portrait mode (covers more vertical in each shot, rather have more columns than more rows)

Also, if at all possible have that camera on a leveling base on that tripod as to nail the left/right level. (need to avoid "steps") And use a head appropriate to the workflow, with nice marks for degrees of movement, both up and down. And during the shoot do not put of bounds, you want a nice clean rectangle. Lots of arguments as to a proper tripod head. Generally a ball head will not do. Something designed for pano.

With a nice logical flow to the sequence the photos are taken, with no misses in overlap, and no awkward out of bounds shots, the software should not have issues.

Mind you, my pan is are landscapes.

Their are several arguments as to up/down, left/right, same/opposite direction. But mainly, do not jump around, or go back and make up goofs while shooting.

[JohanElzenga]

The human mind works in mysterious ways. After every update we see complaints from people who are absolutely convinced that Lightroom used to have a feature that is now removed. In reality this is almost always wrong. They simply remember this incorrectly. This is an example of that too.