how to stitch photos together

wersal gummage

i've taken three photos that i want to stitch together.

i've googled it and found instructions for photoshop cs2. however, when i line the images up they dont match quite correctly - i think its possible that the clouds have slightly moved or something between the time i took the shots.... ??? (it wasn't a particularly windy day!).

is there any other (free) software i could try to stitch the photos with ?

thanks very much.

AnCatDubh

i've had reasonably good results with hugin. It's open source so free to download, use, and modify if you are brave enough.

5uspect

In photoshop you can use layer masks with a soft brush to ease the shots into each other.
You may have to use free transform to distort the images a small bit too.

I've heard some folks here mention a good app for stitching that currently esacpes me but I'm sure someone wil be along soon to remind us.

Illkillya

I use the PhotoMerge function in Photoshop CS4 which is very good... but I have heard of people using Autostitch a few years ago - http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html - never used it so I don't know if it's any good.

robbie_998

with a needle and thread :rolleyes:

do what the little kid does on the ad if you have vista and use the windows tools

kjt

I used Autostitch years ago and it was really good back then! CS4's photomerge is great along with another program called PTGui

Brando_ie

Regularly use Autostitch to create enlarged backgrounds for architectural photo montages. I think it is an excellent and free utility.

CabanSail

A few years ago I tried a program called Panorama Factory which really worked very well. I did not have a huge need for it, so did not buy it but had fun playing with an evaluation version.

Later there was an updated one which seemed better but the evaluation copy puts text into the final image. It takes into account the focal length of the lens used & then adjusts the image, it also allows you to tell the software various points in the image which are exact matches to help it get the stich more accurate. It will then adjust exposure differences in the images to be stitched. It's worth a look anyway.

gary82

I use Microsoft ICE for stitching photos. It's free and usually does a great job - give it a good bit of overlap in photos to get the best results. Few shots I've done with it:

12 photos


8(ish) photos


6 photos


3 photos

wersal gummage

gary82, thanks for that. the ICE works a treat. However, i've noticed that after i've converted the RAW (19mb) files to JPEGs (15mb) and put three of them into ICE - the end result is a 1.7mb file......

is that the same for you? for printing etc i'd have preferred a larger file as the end product.

i'll try some of the other suggestions as well.

gary82

Sounds like your scale or quality are set low in the Export section. They're set very low as default so you need to pump them up.

Ghost Train

gary82 wrote: »

I use Microsoft ICE for stitching photos

Have used autostitch and few other programs, just tried Ice tonight and it does a really nice job.

Hearvee

Thanks Gary, tried ICE quickly last night and it seems to work well.


17 shots

gary82

Microsoft ICE - the poor man's wide angle lens!

peckerhead

Yeah, thanks Gary, tried this out for the first time yesterday and was well pleased with the result. I know beachscapes are probably not the most interesting kind of subject to work on, but I had a reason for wanting a pano of this particular place (Kilfarassy beach, near Tramore):





Now another noob question for y'all, if I may — how can I most easily "stick" the two of these together into a single file so I can order it as, say a 12" x 16" poster, and then cut it down the middle to get two 6" x 16" prints?

gary82

I assume that's a scaled down version of your final files!

peckerhead wrote: »

how can I most easily "stick" the two of these together into a single file so I can order it as, say a 12" x 16" poster, and then cut it down the middle to get two 6" x 16" prints?

What software do you use?

In most software you can increase your "canvas size" to free up blank space under your image. Open the second image, copy that, then paste it below the first on the large canvas. Then save that as a file.

5uspect

peckerhead wrote: »

Yeah, thanks Gary, tried this out for the first time yesterday and was well pleased with the result. I know beachscapes are probably not the most interesting kind of subject to work on, but I had a reason for wanting a pano of this particular place (Kilfarassy beach, near Tramore):





Now another noob question for y'all, if I may — how can I most easily "stick" the two of these together into a single file so I can order it as, say a 12" x 16" poster, and then cut it down the middle to get two 6" x 16" prints?

You can do it in paint easily enough if you don't have photoshop.
Open one file in paint and resize the background. Open the second file in another instance of paint and copy it onto the original and position.

peckerhead

gary82 wrote: »

I assume that's a scaled down version of your final files!

God, yeah — I just uploaded them quickly to Photobox. But in fact I'll have to replace those anyway, the ratio is way too long and skinny. I'll link to clearer copies once I've edited them a bit.

gary82 wrote: »

What software do you use?

An old version (6.0) of ACDSee, with the FotoCanvas editor built in. But I think I'll have to install something a bit better. As far as I can see, the largest it'll let me set the canvas to is 4000 pixels, which is smaller than the original length...?

Tried it in Paint, too — thanks, 5uspect — but I can't see where the option is to resize the background? Under Image/Attributes? (again, the original files are way bigger than the background itself)

gary82

You could try it in the likes of Picasa which is free.

peckerhead

Kewl, thanks again. Here they are again, resized to fit a 12" x 18" print and with a splash of John Hinde on the colours...



Incidentally, for any Photobox.ie users, they're doing a BOGOF on posters until Thursday midnight (but not on their 20" by 8" panoramic size):

Get 2 for 1 Large Posters Prints Offer ends midnight 06/08/09
Offer code: AUG241POSTERSIE

cleeek

AnCatDubh wrote: »

i've had reasonably good results with hugin. It's open source so free to download, use, and modify if you are brave enough.

I'd second AnCatDubh's mention of Hugin. I use it also. It does look a little "hard" to use, mainly because it can do alot.

Examples of some of my panoramas can be seen here:





EDIT: Also, I ment to say, those panos were created with 7-8 photos, which is something you're not really supposed to do (since the panos don't turn out properly), mainly 3-4 photos.

There is a Hugin Flickr group for more examples, and a good series of tutorials.

For the price, I think it is fantastic. Just spend a little time (1, 2 hours) to get a handle on it.

Hope that helps,
bernard

emrk

hello there!

By stitched do you mean something like a collage?

if you do, you can download picasa from google for free, it does different types of collages, its very handy!

it sort of like photoshop or gimp but very basic, it has its own photoalbum that finds all the photos on your computer, like if you've any hidden or forgotten about any it find all of them!

hope this helps

cleeek

wersal gummage wrote: »

i've taken three photos that i want to stitch together.

i've googled it and found instructions for photoshop cs2. however, when i line the images up they dont match quite correctly - i think its possible that the clouds have slightly moved or something between the time i took the shots.... ??? (it wasn't a particularly windy day!).

is there any other (free) software i could try to stitch the photos with ?

thanks very much.

A good idea is to give a good wide overlap (I use something like 25% of the whole shot). A tripod might have helped.

There are alot of good softwares recommended in the thread above, give some of try them.

bernard

xprepairs

gary82 wrote: »

I use Microsoft ICE for stitching photos. It's free and usually does a great job - give it a good bit of overlap in photos to get the best results. Few shots I've done with it:

12 photos


8(ish) photos


6 photos


3 photos

Thanks for mentioning this great program! I use Panorama Maker 4 and this definitely excels that!
xprepairs