I love stitching together panoramic photos and such and was wondering if anyone here was into it as well. Right now I've got a nice pile of stuff I need to get finished, but I keep snapping new photos before I get a chance to finish the older ones.
A lot of the stuff I've done so far is up on here, so feel free to browse it. Almost none of it has actually be finished though, so there's unsightly seams, stuff improperly cropped, and weird inconsistancies with the lighting in pretty much all of them. A few have mad ghosting going on as well. Really, I need to sit down and clean some of them up in photoshop while others I just need to restitch in Hugin (the two newest ones, Lake and Bird on Fence were just outright Autostitched with zero cleaning up of the original image files and such)
So yea, post your panos that you've done.
Panoramic Photos (might become very non-56k safe soon)
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SheSaidDutch
- Posts: 1092
- Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2005 12:46 am
I've taken a few panoramas over the years. Here's a couple I took from the pinnacle in Cumberland Gap back in 2001. The first one faces southwest, showing Harrogate, Tennessee, and the second one faces northeast, showing Middlesboro, Kentucky and Fern Lake.
...and a full 360 of the local community college campus...
...and a full 360 of the local community college campus...
Panoramic is used to describe a type of image that is extremely wide, or extremely tall. The technique used in the creation of these images - called Stitching - is very simple: you stand in one spot and take a series of photos, which you later stitch together using automatic software like Stitcher, or manually using Photoshop. Using a tripod is a good idea when taking panoramics, although you can do it by hand, and carefully realign the images using Rotate before you stitch them together.SheSaidDutch wrote:What exactly is panoramic?
It's very time consuming to do (if you are a manual stitcher like myself) but the effect can be beautiful, especially if you manage to mask out all the joins carefully. The most difficult thing about making panoramics is that there can be a lot of random elements in your setup pictures, such as people moving from place to place, or trees swaying in the breeze, or changing light sources. Trying to get them seamlessly joined in a panoramic is tough, but very fun if you have patience, and great to learn Photoshop (or whatever image editing software you use).
Here is a very good tutorial on panoramic stitching. Search Google for panoramic and you'll come across a lot more.
As for my stuff...
(click thumbnails to open picture - 2MB JPEGS!! WARNING!!!)
Here's one I took on my holiday in Japan. This was at Nijoji (Nijo Castle) in the heart of Kyoto. Nijo castle is beautiful, and consists of a set of inner castle buildings surrounded by a few sets of barrier walls (presumably to keep out intruders during the ancient era). I took these panoramic pics from just inside the first main wall, before the main gate into the castle itself.
This one was at the Kyoto Imperial Palace Gardens. The Palace Gardens is a massive expanse of parkland and several palace buildings, walled off from the city, accessible from numerous gates located along each wall. Right in the middle of the gardens is a small shrine area surrounded by open parkland and small patches of forest. I was stood at the central junction when I took this panoramic.
I was most proud of managing to take a pic of the old lady while she was busy weeding along the path next to the shrine gate. It took a bit of time to get her into the panoramic, as the photos overlapped where she was, so I had to clone her into a different position in the photo.
This one is at Nijoji again, but inside the inner wall, where all the beautiful castle buildings and gardens were. I enjoyed making this one, as it was a challenge trying to stitch in all the randomply placed trees and rocks without leaving any visible seams.
All pictures stitched in Photoshop using Layer Masks, the Healing Brush and Clone Stamp. I still have another ten or so from Kyoto to do at some point, as well as five or six from Venice. I'm well aware that there may be a few mistakes in these ones, but I'm still learning
Soon...
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GaijinPunch
- Posts: 15872
- Joined: Mon Jan 31, 2005 11:22 pm
- Location: San Fransicso
Wow, impressive work, guys.
When I get lazy I just throw everything together in autostitch, see how it comes out, and then tweak in photoshop. When I get really involved, I manually tweak each and every photo in photoshop and then stitch in Hugin (which is powerful as hell but not very intuitive).
Here's a handy Hugin Tutorial for anyone interested
and Here's Autotstitch.
Right now I'm doing some test stitches on the Lake panoramic still
When I get lazy I just throw everything together in autostitch, see how it comes out, and then tweak in photoshop. When I get really involved, I manually tweak each and every photo in photoshop and then stitch in Hugin (which is powerful as hell but not very intuitive).
Here's a handy Hugin Tutorial for anyone interested
and Here's Autotstitch.
Right now I'm doing some test stitches on the Lake panoramic still
Autostitchers only ever seem to work if there isn't much variance between the different photographs, and if there are clearly defined edges it can recognise. If there is a lot of randomness in each pic - like trees and stuff - then it tends to botch everything up.
They are pretty good at giving you an 80% which you can finetune, or to make a quick guideline for manual stitching though.
The key is in how you take your initial photos. A pro photographer I'm affiliated with said to me that it's best to use a tripod for taking panoramics, set on a hard, level surface, so that the pictures are correctly aligned with no shifts in view. Although horizontal pics are okay to use, the best ones are vertical aligned pics, so you can eliminate the "bumps" that can often appear from horizontal stitched pics (see my first panoramic above, plenty of "bumps"), and only move a bit for each pic. These tips should also aid autostitchers in making more accurate panoramics.
Most cameras nowadays should come with a setting for aiding panoramics (my Nikon Coolpix 3700 has one such setting).
Good stuff you guys
I'll pop some more up when I get back to doing them 
They are pretty good at giving you an 80% which you can finetune, or to make a quick guideline for manual stitching though.
The key is in how you take your initial photos. A pro photographer I'm affiliated with said to me that it's best to use a tripod for taking panoramics, set on a hard, level surface, so that the pictures are correctly aligned with no shifts in view. Although horizontal pics are okay to use, the best ones are vertical aligned pics, so you can eliminate the "bumps" that can often appear from horizontal stitched pics (see my first panoramic above, plenty of "bumps"), and only move a bit for each pic. These tips should also aid autostitchers in making more accurate panoramics.
Most cameras nowadays should come with a setting for aiding panoramics (my Nikon Coolpix 3700 has one such setting).
Good stuff you guys
I'll pop some more up when I get back to doing them -
shadowstar
- Posts: 62
- Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2005 4:36 am
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/1552680/
This one isn't mine, but I used this gorgeous backdrop across my two LCD monitors for the longest time. This guy has some other great panoramic shots in his gallery.
BTW, if you want to be able to stretch a single wallpaper across two monitors, check this out - it's an absolute must-have for people with dual monitors.
www.ultramon.com
This one isn't mine, but I used this gorgeous backdrop across my two LCD monitors for the longest time. This guy has some other great panoramic shots in his gallery.
BTW, if you want to be able to stretch a single wallpaper across two monitors, check this out - it's an absolute must-have for people with dual monitors.
www.ultramon.com