Preserved Topic: How to make 3 split images into a panaromic?

I took these 3 overlapping shots of a mural on the side of a building in my town. A friend I work with created it, and I wanted to get a panaromic shot out of these 3 put together.

I'm a n00b at photography, so any tips you guys have would be appreciated.

I placed the 3 pics side by side on one image, and they don't seem to line up top and bottom, even with some rotating and transforming. Are there any easy ways to do this?

Files are linked below if you would like to take a look.

PSD file with layers (12 mb) http://www.2gmedia.com/spring garden/spraywall.psd

Full size .jpg (419 kb) http://www.2gmedia.com/spring garden/spraywall copy.jpg

Smaller .jpg (60kb) http://www.2gmedia.com/spring%20garden/spraywall%20small.jpg garden/spraywall small.jpg

*Edit, I'm a n00b at posting links too, just copy and paste the link and it should work.

--no information provided--

[This message has been edited by j00 h03 (edited 10-10-2002).]

[This message has been edited by j00 h03 (edited 10-10-2002).]

[This message has been edited by kretsminky (edited 10-10-2002).]

Here is my attempt at this,
garden/spraywall.psd http://www.2gmedia.com/spraywall2copy.jpg

Clearly there are errors with this one, both perspective wise and color wise and what not. Any tips or strategies would be appreciated. Thanks


*edit, fixed my attempt link

--no information provided--

[This message has been edited by j00 h03 (edited 10-10-2002).]

i don't think your links are working...even with copying and pasting. Atleast not for me.

edit -- i take that back, the upper links are working, but i couldn't see your attempt.



[This message has been edited by sharma (edited 10-10-2002).]

here's my 10 minute attempt. Just basically used transform with the modifier keys. Alt and ctl mostly. Then did a bit of masking on the edges to get rid of harsh borders. Added in some adjusment layers to try to get a more uniform color and brightness. Anyway, could make it better with more time, but here's the idea.

**jpg**

**psd**(1.7 megs)



[This message has been edited by sharma (edited 10-10-2002).]

Thanks Sharma, I'm not that good with photoshop yet, still learning. How did you keep it all so level and still match up? Thanks

--no information provided--

Why not make another pic of the entire wall and crop as needed?

I cant get far enough back for the entire wall, there's a fence from another business right behind me where I was standing to begin with.

So that's a no go =[


--no information provided--

Could you possible get OVER the fence, or ask the buisness if you could MOMENTARILY (sp?) go onto their property to take a couple of pictures of the wall?

Nice job sharma!

I'm gonna have to give this one a try myself!

The fence is about 8 feet tall with a building about 3 feet behind it. So there is no way I can get back to fit the entire wall into one shot, or no way that I can think of.

I'll stop by the wall after work today and see if I can get a better shot though. Thanks

--no information provided--

For those struggling with the initial links:

PSD file with layers (12 mb)

Full size .jpg (419 kb)

Smaller .jpg (60kb)



[This message has been edited by Dufty (edited 10-10-2002).]

not to plug a good book but the WOW book tells you exactly how to do it... plus its a great book on learning photoshop
www.peachpit.com/wow


by the way... this is my 500th post!!!

Hey - that was fun.
Here's my go at it.

The Wow book does have a nice discussion about blending images, but this one had some very tough perspective things going on that the Wow example did not. If I rememebr it right, the Wow example was a landscape sort of thing, beach with clouds and a few people, right? The nature of this building image is very unforgiving - edges have to match, textures have to blend.... Free transform was all I could come up with. Command/control drag the handles to distort it. Forutnately you gave plenty of overlap to blend hte seams.

[This message has been edited by Steve (edited 10-10-2002).]

Real nice, Steve. Funnily enough, it looks like a 5-point perspective image.

Nice job Steve, this is proving to be harder than I had imagined. I thought I would just be able to line up the top of the 3 images and make it work. I looked around on that WOW site but didn't see the article on merging images. Oh well, back to see if I can do anything better on this. I highly doubt it though.

Thanks again everyone.

--no information provided--

A couple of pointers.

I had each of the three sections on layers of course, but I placed the middle section below the right and left. You'll see why in a moment.

Starting with the left third, I set the layer transparency to 50% so I could position it more easily. There are plenty of reference points, and, as I mentioned, plenty of overlap - that was a real good move when you shot the sequence.

Keep the layer at 50%. Command/Control + t brings up the transform controls. Command/control/drag the handles. That lets you distort rather than resize. Also note that the center reference point can be moved. If you want to "pin" a part of the image that is just right, drag the center point there and all transformations will be based around that. Very helpful.

This technique of panning the camera gives what a very wide, almost fish eye lens would, with the resulting curvature of horizontal lines. After a bunch of screwing around, it matched sort of fairly well.

Set the left layer back to 100%, add a layer mask and drag a narrow, horizontal, black-to-white gradient the width of the overlap; this will blend the transition seam, allowing the left side to blend gradually with the middle.

Some stuff didn't look great with the blend - the door on the left, the windw on the right. In that case I painted on the layer mask to allow only the top or only the bottom layer to show - no blend in those areas. Since they had hard edges this worked fine. The softer painting areas seemed to accept the blend transition better than the hard-edged architectural elements.

Now you do the same with the right.

The only real trouble spot was the shadow of the street light post in the foreground. That really showed the fish eye curvature. I avoided the issue by cloning it out!

Heh.

Of course now the boundaries are all messed up, so a serious crop is needed. Fortunately there was plenty of sky and foreground to permit this. There was a small amount of color correcting too - the right third seemed greener than the middle. Digital cameras often add some automatic color balancing when they capture an image, based on the content of the image. This is supposed to be a "help", but it makes projects like this even tougher.

Ideally I would have put some blue in the sky on the right side, but all in all it worked pretty well. You made it possible by providing a generous amount of overlap. This would have been *much* harder had it not been for that.

This is an excellent project for skill building with free transform and blending. Good luck - let us see what you come up with.

[This message has been edited by Steve (edited 10-11-2002).]

yup... eh... steve is smart.

                                     

I had a go with this one ,too.

Whaddya think ?

Very nice Bob, and thanks for the tips Steve, I will update you guys when I get another one done.



--no information provided--

Just throwing mine into the fracas...
http://krets.net/misc/spraywallkrets.jpg

that's a serious obsession problem you have there, matt.

WS you're becoming quite the phenomenon. Ever see the touristguy site? Funny stuff. What's interesting is that the images are getting better and better. You are responsible for people improving there skills. Thanks for being the subject



[This message has been edited by Jeni (edited 10-11-2002).]

WS you're becoming quite the phenomenon. Ever see the touristguy site when it was up? Funny stuff. What's interesting is that the images are getting better and better. You are responsible for people improving there skills. Thanks for being the subject

WS: I agree with Jeni - you are pushing people to new heights of technical excellence - I'm not sure this is much compensation but.......

Steve: #cough# PS quick tip #cough#

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Emps: I'd consider that, sure.

j00 h03: would you mind "donating" your source images to the cause of higher learning?

=D

The images are free for the taking. Thanks for all your help guys.

--no information provided--