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Question

Photomerge issue: incorrect crop selection

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
November 27, 2021
6 replies
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Hi all,

Just wanted to ask if anyone else has experienced funny issues when trying to merge panoramas. I'm using it to merge two photos so that none of the three subjects is blinking in the combined photo.

Set up: Three subjects, exactly the same scene, camera settings and position. Crop out the left third of the first image, crop out the right third of the second. Merge; resulting preview appears to have ignored the crop on the second photo, and the finished pano appears to have ignored both of the crops, resulting in a pano that has both unwanted portions of the two composit images... (This worked correctly before the last update...)

System: Mac, OS Big Sur 11.6, 2019 16" Macbook Pro

Anyone have experience and or a workaround? (Can attach photos if necessary...)

macOS

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GoldingD

Legend

Well, went and did a test shot. Nothing nice, not partiicular about setting.

Mine using a FujiFIlm X-T4, RAF., Copy as DNG

It does not work at all for me.

LrC v11.0.1 Windows 10 / 19044

Also tried using the RAF, and tried with selecton the other way.

J

Jan21967507wq6mAuthor

Participating Frequently

@GoldingD Ah, so you were trying to get both bears to face forward and it wouldn't work? I found a workaround, based on @johnrellis suggestion, but using photoshop to set the two images as layers (not using the merge function). Once the two images are layered in Ps, use the alignment tool to auto-align, and then simply erase the portions of the offending layer (In my case, it was the eyes of the father I "erased" so that the correct ones on the layer below would show up in the right spot.

Thanks for your suggestions and advice btw; you made a frustrating afternoon result in a somewhat acceptable finish. Hope Adobe addresses this issue soon. It's a convenient way to make those small edits, without having to head into Ps.

johnrellis

Legend

"using photoshop to set the two images as layers (not using the merge function). Once the two images are layered in Ps, use the alignment tool to auto-align, and then simply erase the portions of the offending layer (In my case, it was the eyes of the father I "erased" so that the correct ones on the layer below would show up in the right spot."

Right, that's exactly the process that Photoshop Elements Photomerge Group Shot makes easier.

[This post contains formatting and embedded images that don't appear in email. View the post in your Web browser.]

"it convinces me further that its a bug/undesired behaviour."

I don't think Adobe will think this is a bug (not behaving as intended by the product designers). In general Photo Merge ignores almost all edits you've made to the input photos. I don't recall past discussion about crops, but there have been lots of discussion about other sorts of edits.

I tested this in LR 6.14 (December 2017) and it behaves the same way:

I think the guy who did that video about this was just lucky that the Photo Merge algorithm put the blend boundary where it did.

You can submit feature requests (requests that LR behave different from its currently designed behavior) here:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic/ct-p/ct-lightroom-classic?page=1&sort=latest_replies&filter=all&tabid=ideas

johnrellis

Legend

[This post contains formatting and embedded images that don't appear in email. View the post in your Web browser.]

It appears that LR 11 Photo > Photo Merge ignores the crops of the inputs. Here's an example:

The input photos are on the left and right, and the merged panorama is in the middle. Notice the chair is missing entirely, and only the upper-half of the suitcase is there! Interestingly, the Merge Panorama Preview shows a different blending than the final result, which includes the lower-half of the chair and the upper-half of the suitcase:

Two methods that work:

1. Export the cropped inputs as TIFFs and then merge the TIFFs.

2. Do Photo > Edit In > Merge To Panorama In Photoshop:

johnrellis

Legend

[This post contains formatting and embedded images that don't appear in email. View the post in your Web browser.]

Using your screenshots, here's the result of method 1 (exporting the cropped photos as TIFFs and merging the TIFFs):

johnrellis

Legend

Photoshop Elements has a very useful tool that lets you do blending of multiple photos, selecting the people/faces you want from each of several similar photos:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/using/guided-mode-photomerge.html

This provides more flexibility than the crop/panorama method.

I don't believe the tool is available in Photoshop proper. Photoshop has all the underlying tools to do the exact same thing of course, but it's just more painful unless you're a Photoshop wizard.

GoldingD

Legend

Well, that is a new technique to me, always thought Photo Merge Pano would ignore pre crop.

Anyhow, two images, what happens if you change which one of the two is the active (a.k.a. most selected) image?

J

Jan21967507wq6mAuthor

Participating Frequently

@GoldingD I have to admit I don't know whether it was a function on previous versions of Lr... before the video was made in 2017 I don't know if it was possible.

However, when I found that video over the summer, I used it to create a composite image because I had two very similar shots in which a dog's face was blury due to motion. I used it to create a version in which the dog was still and focused (that portion of the previous frame, stitched to its neighbour).

I just tried changing the 'more selected' photo and attempted the task twice to no avail.