Cheese

When stitching multiple photos into panoramas, do you:

1) shoot RAW, post process, convert to JPG and then stitch into pano?
2) Or do you shoot JPG and then stitch?

Reason I ask is that when shooting RAW and post processing, I find it difficult to maintain the same exposure between the photos. Also, the resulting JPG images are fairly large, and the pano image is enormous.

However, when shooting JPG I can simply lock AE to keep the same exposure levels.

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

For me, I shoot in manual. Same settings for the grouping. I stitch, post process and then convert. Never occurred to me to post process and then stitch, why PP each file separately when you can stitch and PP once?

Whether shooting raw or jpeg, can you not lock AE? Camera settings don't care what type of file you are saving.

Cheese

Thanks for the response. I too shoot in manual, but while the camera settings are the same, there are light variations as you swivel around, particularly for things like large continuous expanses of sky, etc. So you stitch these and try to smooth out color variations in PP?

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

I have usually had great results in the auto-stitch mode of PSCC and it's predecessors when I shot handheld. I can remember only one or two where I needed to adjust one or more files to allow PS to complete a gradated transition.

Now, I shoot handheld sometimes, but I tend to use a TSe lens for shifting, or a panorama head if I want to capture a wide or stacked view. I still run the resulting files through PSCC and it comes out seamless for PP.

The file size is what it is while I am working on it, I save as psd or tiff files. I only output to jpeg as required for a specific usage.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I always shoot raw, manual exposure, merge the images in Lightroom which results in a fully editable raw (dng) file, which I then edit as I would a single image. Panos are often huge, 150mp and bigger. This one is comprised of 15 images in 3 rows of 5 shots. Manual exposure and focus (I use back button focus most of the time) ensures consistency across the set. There is no reason why you can't use AE Lock when shooting raw. I used a 45mm PC-E because it has consistent image quality across the frame, which is very important for landscape. I am a bit of a contrarian, in that I don't own a pano head. I use a sturdy tripod (Feisol CT 3472), and a really sturdy ball head (Arca-Swiss Z1). I first level the tripod with it's bubble level, then I level the camera (D800 in this case) using the in-camera leveling display. Once the camera is level I can turn the camera left or right, up or down without any issues. I overlap about 50%, to avoid the slight unevenness in exposure at the corners, which can sometimes result in uneven results in skies and water.

Pano heads are great when you are in close quarters and have foreground stuff that obscures background stuff - to avoid parallax error. If I were doing architectural interiors and even outside shots with lamp posts, signage, etc. I'd use a pano head.

I also don't typically use a lens wider than 45 mm since the inherent barrel distortion and the loss of image quality at the edges can lead to less desirable results.

About 40% of my panos are hand held. The second one below was hand held, single row, 150mm, D810.

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(Download)


(Download)

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

I create a lot of panoramas using Photoshop's Photomerge function. I shoot RAW and then let Photoshop do its thing. It doesn't matter what differences there are between individual photos, the resulting panorama is perfectly awesome. The only thing I sometimes need to do is crop, although sometimes I don't even do that.

The first picture below is uncropped from my trip yesterday to The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marina, California. The Gardens comprise 120 acres, 20 acres larger than the San Diego Zoo. The Desert Garden is one of the largest and finest cactus gardens in the world.

The second panorama was created by taking 33 photos and letting PS Photomerge stitch them together and seamlessly blend them. I took 33 pictures to ensure that I got enough sky and water to make a complete panorama without having to crop and without having a very wide but not very tall panorama.

The third panorama was created with 16 photos. The house owner bought a 12'x4½' (yes, feet, not inches) metal print for $6,000. It hangs in the Great Room, and is the reason why I decided, in my old age, to dedicate myself full time to Photographic Art by Russel Ray Photos. If I did this one again, I would photoshop the trash bags out of the picture or crop them out.

Gitchigumi Loc: Wake Forest, NC

There are some excellent videos on this topic for Lightroom & photoshop users. I haven't done it yet, but recall that the images are raw and are processed together, in order to get color balance and exposure the same for all the images. Once they are merged, you process as you normally would. Check out videos from Julienne Kost (Adobe) and others to get the exact process. Let us know how you make out!👍

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

It's not even necessary to process them together. I quite often don't because I get interrupted by the cats, the dogs, the phone, email, etc. Photoshop CC 2018 does a superb job of blending the photos together seamlessly regardless of when they were processed. I have even stitched photos together that were taken years apart, usually of buildings. If, say, a new tree has been planted in front of the building, Photoshop always includes the tree. I guess I would photoshop the tree out if I didn't want it.

Gitchigumi Loc: Wake Forest, NC

Yes... This is the method I was trying to describe.

fourg1b2006 Loc: Long Island New York

You do very nice work.

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

Gene,

What is your process using a 45mm PCe lens in the panorama? Do you shift left, center, right and then rotate the camera and repeat? Or what?

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

It's even worse when the cat is using the phone and the dog is going through your email!

Rich1939 Loc: Pike County Penna.

In reply to one part of you question; you can create panos from raw, jpg, scanned negatives and scanned prints, tiff, dng or whatever.. Once you have worked a bit with the process and become familiar with what is required, using different images will be no problem. While I prefer to work with RAW files I have put together panos from 15to20 year old prints and negatives.
Visit the panorama section here at UHH for information (and inspiration. )

steveg48

Here's the trick. I suggest you pan through the entire scene before shooting and set the exposure so that the highlights in the brightest position don't blow out. Shoot in manual exposure mode so that the exposure will not change. Do not use a polarizer because it will have different effects at different angles.

johntaylor333

I use Lr CC Classic and it takes care of everything for me, exposure included. Work directly from RAW, only use .jpg for sending to printers