Night-time photography - image sharpness issues

[chauncey]

A couple of other points when working with panos in Photoshop...there are six different methods to merge them and they usually will cough out different results, sometimes bazaar in nature. And, repeating the "merge" the same way, will sometimes produce different results. There is a distinct lack of consistency in the way that Photoshop "sees/processes" those virgin images.

Then, once you're semi-satisfied with the merged image and flattened it...there is no rule that says that you cannot return to the source images, do some cloning/cut & paste/whatever, various parts of them into the final image. Using the transform tool may be needed to make things "fit".

Of course, as has been pointed out, all of that isn't as necessary if one is meticulous as possible in his original shoot. I learned those techniques because I'm just not that meticulous.

[Manfred M]

Colin / Dan / Wm - I am becoming more and more convinced that this is a Photoshop CC Photomerge issue. After fighting with the new images last night, I went back to the original panos that were a bit soft and had a look at the images that went into the pano.

These extracts (pano on the left and image that went into the pano on the right) were taken fairly close to the centre of the image (minimal lens distortion). The original is very, very sharp (done with the focus indicator, rather than the next series that I did with Colin's suggested method). The pano is not at all sharp. It seems that this is a software, rather than photo technique issue.



I remember my initial assessment was that it looked like more than just a focus issue. I guess I should have gone to the RAW images first to confirm.

[DanK]

Manfred,

Thanks. This is helpful information.

Dan

[FrankMi]

Hi Manfred. I have also noticed subtle differences with the panoramas which is why I suggested comparing the SOOC to the panoramic result in post #8. Particularly with landscape images you will see that the Auto-Align Layers result doesn't always match the Auto-Blend Layers, Panorama exactly. Usually the difference is seen in the changes made by Photoshop to minimize the differences in brightness, vibrancy, colour, and alignment most noticeably where the panels merge. When I did the Lady in Red panorama, I had to blend the images manually from the Auto-Align Layers result as I couldn't get the Photoshop panorama close enough for my taste.

[chauncey]

The more meticulous with the original shoot the better outcome might be to use the reposition option.

[ajohnw]

It looks like it's applied blur to me Manfred. It might do that to get round the possibility of pixel level matching errors from 1 shot to the next. Perhaps there is an option to turn it off or down.

John
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[Manfred M]

Hi Manfred. I have also noticed subtle differences with the panoramas which is why I suggested comparing the SOOC to the panoramic result in post #8. Particularly with landscape images you will see that the Auto-Align Layers result doesn't always match the Auto-Blend Layers, Panorama exactly. Usually the difference is seen in the changes made by Photoshop to minimize the differences in brightness, vibrancy, colour, and alignment most noticeably where the panels merge. When I did the Lady in Red panorama, I had to blend the images manually from the Auto-Align Layers result as I couldn't get the Photoshop panorama close enough for my taste.

Looks to me that I will have to explore that option as well. This is my first serious foray into nightime shots / panos. Photoshop is a funny tool; it either surprises one (the content aware tools fall into that category for me) or disappoints (some of the selection tools). I am starting to think that the photo merge functionality might fall into that category as well.

That being said, we merged images before Photomerge, much like that beautiful guitar image of yours. I will have to do some testingi and exploration here.

[chauncey]

Do it manually...I'm aghast at the concept.

[Manfred M]

It looks like it's applied blur to me Manfred. It might do that to get round the possibility of pixel level matching errors from 1 shot to the next. Perhaps there is an option to turn it off or down.

John
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Unfortunately, there are limited options with the tool, and that is not one of them. Photomerge seems to work the images differently than I had thought.

[Manfred M]

Do it manually...I'm aghast at the concept.

That's what layer masks are all about... I'm going to give it a try, as I have spent hours working with Photomerge and have not gotten the results I hoped for.

[ajohnw]

There always Hugin Manfred free and open source. There are some tutorials on the site and about on the net. People do seem to obtain good results with it. I understand it will do horizontal and vertical panoramas at the same time even from mixed focal length lenses.

This is the gallery

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/tag...n/interesting/

Some such as Osaka can be viewed full size. 8 shot panorama with a 50mm. Click recent.

I must grab a copy very soon the wiki docs have even been updated

http://wiki.panotools.org/Hugin

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

John
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