My first panorama and my first .tiff: I could use some help and advice. This is my first attempt at a panorama. It's 5 photos,hand-held, stitched together with PSE 11. I stored it as a...

photog11 Loc: San Francisco

I could use some help and advice. This is my first attempt at a panorama. It's 5 photos,hand-held, stitched together with PSE 11. I stored it as a .tiff file in case I wanted to return for more editing. This is the San Francisco skyline taken from Point Isabel, across the Bay.

It was a huge file, 694 MB. I resized it to about 54 MB. During editing my computer slowed down quite a bit. Any hints or tips would be appreciated. UHH will not accept the file. You can see it at: http://www.jaredgordonphotography.zenfolio.com under 'recent additions'.

Mr PC Loc: Austin, TX

Nice photo Jared. I don't really see much banding, which is good, you kept your exposures and white balance the same from shot to shot. Did PSE 11 help even that out as well? This is very nice for hand held. You would be scary with a tripod. Keep up the good work. My files have never quite gotten that big, so not sure what to tell you. But as a computer guy, I can tell you any file that size will slow down even the fastest machine. Did you make your panorama from RAW files or JPGs? FYI, when you post a link here, put http:// in front of it and the link will be clickable from your post.

photog11 Loc: San Francisco

Mr PC wrote:

Nice photo Jared. I don't really see much banding... (show quote)

Thanks Mr PC. Pano made from RAW files. After I stitched them, PSE asked if I wanted to complete the edges. I tried, but the program said I did not have enough memory, so I cropped it instead. I run Windows 7 professional, with dual intel quad cpu, 4GB installed memory. I store all my RAW files on an external drive. I usually convert everything to .jpeg for display and emailing.

Swamp Gator Loc: Coastal South Carolina

The pano process looks fine but I'm not thinking the subject is very compelling.
Besides being excessively blue, the city and bridge make up too narrow a part of the overall scene. Sky and water seem to be 90% of the image. If that's what you were going for fine, but it suffers from a loss of interest in my view.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

photog11 wrote:

Thanks Mr PC. Pano made from RAW files. After I stitched them, PSE asked if I wanted to complete the edges. I tried, but the program said I did not have enough memory, so I cropped it instead. I run Windows 7 professional, with dual intel quad cpu, 4GB installed memory. I store all my RAW files on an external drive. I usually convert everything to .jpeg for display and emailing.

Looked nice to me for hand held. I too have had the "want me to fill it - ohh sorry error... not enough memory..." but when I switched to PSE 12 I could use all my ram.... PSE 12 is 64 bit....and will handle those edge fills, as long as you have more ram for it to use ;) I run an IMAC with 16 GB of ram - wish I had went with 32 though :) I do all my stitching now either in PSE 12 or Photoshop CC. I had tried a freeware product called Hugin that provided pretty good results as well. It was very fast and did not seem to have memory issues.

Mr PC Loc: Austin, TX

Computer guy again. Throw as much memory at it as you can afford. 8GB or more would let you work through bigger files and do more things to them quicker.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Mr PC wrote:

Computer guy again. Throw as much memory at it as you can afford. 8GB or more would let you work through bigger files and do more things to them quicker.

Provided the program IS 64 bit and can see ram above 4GB.... a 32 bit program will only ever access under the 4 GB mark....

Rongnongno Loc: FL

No idea how you folks find any panorama.

Under new I find a gallery with multiple images. so...

I must be an idiot not to find since you have. Do post a direct link, please.

photog11 Loc: San Francisco

Rongnongno wrote:

No idea how you folks find any panorama.

Under new I find a gallery with multiple images. so...

I must be an idiot not to find since you have. Do post a direct link, please.

http://jaredgordonphotography.zenfolio.com/p373153461/e21688024

Rongnongno Loc: FL

photog11 wrote:

http://jaredgordonphotography.zenfolio.com/p373153461/e21688024

Thank you.

UtahBob Loc: Southern NJ

I think you need a foreground point of interest to make a shot like this work. If you crop the sky to the clouds, the light on the water in the foreground becomes more dramatic for me. As noted, it needs to pop more. I think the right and left sides need some cropping to focus the image.

I think I can see the seams in the water. These often disappear in larger versions.

This is probably really nice if I could zoom into the city. I bet it looks great in the original size in that respect. :thumbup:

alandg46 Loc: Boerne, Texas

Unfortunately, large panos don't work out very well when viewed on a monitor, maybe on a HD TV, they would be ok.

In any case, if you have a lap top buy a couple of eight gig sticks and to get to 16gb of ram. In a desktop get four, 4gb sticks for 16gb total or 4 8gb sticks for 32gb total, if the desktop has four slots. If only two, use the laptop method.

A work around, would be to convert all the raw photos to maximum size with at least a 240dpi(for printing) resolution jpgs. Make sure the raw processing is the same in all photos. Then stich the jpgs.

I get overly ambitious at times on panos and will stitch as many as 15 30mb raws together. I don't run out of ram, but it gets mighty slow even with all the ram, an eight core AMD processor, and a Radeon 7850 video card.

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

Check out the Microsoft free stitching program... free... Microsoft research. In the demo they stitch 200 random shots of an area and the program sees and make a huge panorama.

Bunko.T Loc: Western Australia.

Swamp Gator wrote:

The pano process looks fine but I'm not thinking the subject is very compelling.
Besides being excessively blue, the city and bridge make up too narrow a part of the overall scene. Sky and water seem to be 90% of the image. If that's what you were going for fine, but it suffers from a loss of interest in my view.

I'm no expert but maybe a complete bridge & only the hi-rise part of the city, to me would have been a more interesting pic. City to right of HR part is not so interesting. JMHO. FWIW.

Bob Boner

I agree with Swamp Gator. The city and bridge make up too little of the scene. I would try again with a longer focal length. You may have done this, but I would use the vertical camera position to maximize the pixels in the height of the final image.