Photo Stitch

Fireman

Could anybody help me with some photo stitching as it is my first time attempting it, I took two group shots last night of a 120 people in total (60 each group), the committee asked me is it possible to put the two photos in one, I have canon zoom browser and Photo Shop 7, I have tried to stitch the two shots together in Zoom Browser with no joy because the overlap wasn't enough as there were side by side. when i did overlap them it would work but the overlap was too much. has anyone any tips for zoom browser or PS 7

Regards Fireman

Fenster

Shoot with the intention of stitching

Calina

I'd have to see the two photographs to know if what you want to do is possible.

What you want to do is probably not possible with Zoombrowser, or if it is, you'll still do better with Photoshop.

Basically, for it to work, I find it is vital to have some overlapping common area between the two photographs so that you can line them up correctly. If you don't have that, then the odds are you can't do it neatly and it'll always look as though you tried to glue two photographs together.

What I do in this case is I

1) create a new file which is big enough to contain both images.
2) put each image on a separate layer and line them up.
3) crop off any redundant empty space
4) save as psd
5) merge layers and save as jpeg.

Again though, need to see the photographs.

phog

Try Autostitch.net. I have never used it but a guy gave me a demo of it once and it seemed simple. Though as Fenster says he took the photos with stitching in mind and they were of a landscape whether this make it easier or not I'm not sure.

DaireQuinlan

You can do it as Calina said, or theres a ton of free tools available on the net to do the same thing, as well as handle things like lens rectification on the images and perspective correction and what not. It might not be possible though. If I was taking a bunch of pictures with the intention of stitching them together I'd shot a whole pile of them ensuring 50% overlap between adjacent shots, and shoot above and below the subjects aswell to ensure I'd get enough space for a crop after whatever corrections were necccessary were made. I'd tentatively suggest that given just the two shots you're probably out of luck. Post the two up here and somebody I'm sure can give an opinion on it.

panorama tools : http://www.all-in-one.ee/~dersch/
and an (overly complicated ! read the tutorial !) GUI for it : http://www.tawbaware.com/ptasmblr.htm
GUI is 30 days trial, shareware.

I put this together using the above:

JMcL

Fireman wrote:

Could anybody help me with some photo stitching as it is my first time attempting it, I took two group shots last night of a 120 people in total (60 each group), the committee asked me is it possible to put the two photos in one, I have canon zoom browser and Photo Shop 7

As others have said, you need a fair deal of overlap in general. Also try to avoid using a very wide lens - preferably nothing below 30mm - it'll make life easier when it come to stitching. Have a look at Autostitch.

On the downside, trying to stitch group shots is always going to be difficult as people will invariably move. I'd recommend something with more control than Autostitch like PTAssembler. It's not free, but has an unrestricted 30 day free trial