A very handy feature with digital cameras is doing panoramic scenes. But how should you take the pictures of what you want included? It's easier than you think.
In using normal 35mm cameras for making panoramas, you get the best results by using a 50mm lens, or setting your zoom to 50mm. At this setting, it very closely matches what they human eye sees, in terms of depth of field and angle of view. With many digital cameras that have a zoom, there's no setting on the zoom to tell you when you are at 50mm, or at least the camera's equivalent of 50mm. Many owner's manuals now are comparing a digital's zoom range to the equivalent in 35mm photography lenses. One way to get close to the 50mm setting, is either to use your 35mm camera, with the lens set at 50mm focal length, and simply zoom in or out on your digital camera until the view matches (it doesn't have to be perfectly exact) the 35mm camera view. If you don't have a 50mm lens, then keep both eyes open, while the left eye is looking at the scene, the right eye is looking through the digital camera viewfinder. Zoom in or out, until the right eye sees what the left eye does. You'll be close, but not exact, but close enough to get a very acceptable panorama.
So, how do you get this:
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How much of the scene do I photograph? Your first image will be a whole picture, while your second, third, etc. will slightly overlap the preceding image. You will pan your camera from left to right, or right to left, whichever is more comfortable. The following is explained from a left to right pan point of view.
Here's how it works: If you don't have a tripod, stand in one spot, and spin. OK, but you'll have to line up your camera on something horizontal. If you do have a tripod, simply rotate it so many degrees after every picture. You can mark on your tripod head with a marker how far to turn when you get set up. Gauge this by how much of the image will need to be overlapped (explained below.) This will vary a bit from camera to camera, as the field of view will vary with each lens type. Keeping nearly the same exposure on each image is a bit tricky, but if you have the same, or a similar color or object running through most of your scene, get your exposure from that commonality, as it will give you a closer exposure and less to adjust using your image editor. Some cameras have a focus-and-hold point in the shutter button, which would be a good way to keep the exposure nearly the same.
Keep the viewfinder lined up with something that goes all the way through your scene horizontally, such as the horizon. Keep that imaginary line in the same plane in your viewfinder when you move from shot to shot. When you take your first image, make a mental note of where your view ends on the right side of the viewfinder. Then, twist at the hips (or carefully move your feet so you don't get too far out of panoramic alignment) and line up your next shot, while slightly overlapping (about 10% or less of your image in your viewfinder) the left side of the new shot with the old right side of the previous shot, such as the same single tree. It doesn't have to be an exact overlap, just enough so you can stitch up the images later without any gaps. Don't overlap too much, or else you'll waste film or memory, and the perspective slightly alters when too much overlapping occurs. It is better to have nearly separate images when you stitch, with only a slight overlapping needed of each image. Continue until you get as much as you want, going 360 degrees if need be. I know there are other tutorials that say to overlap each image as much as 50% or more. What they are trying to achieve is a smaller parallax error, that there are no areas of the scene left out, and it 'seems' like the thing to do. I have tried the 50% or better overlapping technique, and I have found it really eats up film or memory, you have many more images to edit in your image editor, you have more seams to hide if you are doing this by hand, and the eye, if all goes well, cannot tell the difference between images with 50% overlapping vs. 10% overlapping. Try it both ways, and go with whatever is more comfortable with you.
When you're finished, you'll need an image editor, or a panoramic stitcher to assemble your finished scene. Depending on the complexity of your subject (lots of trees and clouds vs. an open grassy field and cloudless sky) one or the other may work better. Many of the stitchers are automatic, but they can be fooled as to which two points are in common with adjacent images. They will allow you to pick your own matching points (match THIS area on the left image with the SAME area in the right image), but sometimes when they blend the images into each other, it still doesn't look right, so you may end up using your image editor, too.
To assemble your images, in Photoshop, I open each of my images at the same time, and look at the image properties of the first one by going Image>Image Size, to see how wide it is. I work in pixel dimensions, so I multiply the pixel width by the number of images I need to stitch. I then go Image>Canvas size, and I enter that number in the width field. I then click on the left most middle box in the small 9-box array, then choose OK. This will expand the canvas to the right. My background is set to white, also. I then select each separate image in turn, in the order I took them in, and drag and drop each one into the first one's canvas. This will create a new layer for each image inserted. Depending on how large your images are, this may require a lot of memory and swap file space, so if it works better to open each one at a time, work that way. You'll know when Photoshop slows to a crawl if you've pushed your computer to the limit. When you've placed all your images onto the same canvas, you're ready to line them up and do some stitching.
If you're using an image editor, it is best to use one that has layers, such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. That way, you can place each image on its own layer, lining them up from left to right (or right to left, if you're so inclined) and do your touch up there. You will no doubt need to adjust the images so they match one another for brightness, contrast and color as close as you can. No, sorry to say, using filters and plugins won't really work too well here, you'll have to do this by hand. You'll get better results. Digital filters tend to lean towards an ideal image of color, brightness and contrast, and sometimes, they can make a bad guess. As you pan, the light essentially will be coming from different directions, relative to your subject and the direction you're facing.
The first step is to look at all the images, and choose one that has the most pleasing exposure and color, and adjust the rest to match it as closely as possible. Because of the way light interacts with our surroundings, you'll rarely get an exact match when you adjust, but you will be able to come very close as you gain more experience. Photoshop, for example, can adjust each layer independent from the rest. If your image editor doesn't have this capability, you'll need to open each image separately and adjust each one that way, combining them later. If this is the case, then a panorama stitcher may be the easiest to use when assembling your final scene.
There can be many different styles and procedures for adjusting each image to match the next. I will show you the way I do this, which for my needs and for these particular types of images, gives me consistent results. As with any of my tips, they certainly can be altered or changed to suit your style or needs. I highly encourage experimentation of anything that is adjustable, it is one of the best ways to learn and to see just what your image editor is capable of. Remember, always work on a copy of your original in case you mess up, that way you can always start over at the beginning. I always recommend that less adjustment is usually better in the long run, and tends to look better and more natural, than overdoing it.
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Bring up the Levels Palette by going Image>Adjust>Levels |
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Move your adjustment arrows thusly: To make black blacker, move the far left solid black triangle inwards. To make whites whiter, move the far right triangle inwards. To brighten the midtones, move the gray triangle to the left, to darken them move to the right. If you want something to be exactly black, use the Black eye dropper tool and click on a pixel in that area, the same goes for white by using the White eye dropper tool. |
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Afterwards, you may find your image's colors need to have a little punch added or taken away. Go Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation to bring up the dialog box shown. You can adjust all RGB (red, green, blue) colors at once, or individually. Play a lot with this control to see how powerful it is. Hue will change the color, Saturation makes it a thin or rich looking color, and Lightness adjusts the luminance, or how much light is perceived to reflect off the color. |
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Finally, go Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask to bring out some detail in your image. The Amount and Radius simply control how much and how far away from two dissimilar edges in your image the filter will change. What this filter does is to look at the contrast difference between two adjacent pixels, and assigns a value that Threshold will use. You adjust Threshold to affect only pixels with a high amount of contrast difference, or low, and anything above that threshold the filter works on. This can be done either a layer at a time, or after you've combined all the images into one. I recommend applying the Unsharp Mask when you've combined them all, and are completely done with image editing. See my tutorial on Using the Unsharp Mask. |
The more you do this, the better you'll get.
Once the look of the images is adjusted, you're ready to line them up in your image editor. Hopefully, your image editor has a setting to control the amount of transparency for each layer, which will make this easier. What you want to do is line up the second image with the first, but picking something in the vertical middle on the right side of the first image, while choosing the same thing on the left side of the next image. This is where overlapping your initial photos will come in handy. Using the tree as an example, you'd just line it up in the second image, with itself pictured in the first. By adjusting your transparency level, you'll be able to 'see-through' the second image and place it exactly on the first in the right spot. Remember to pick something along the vertical center of your images, because you'll have a better chance of getting them to line up much more closely. If you choose a point high or low in the image, a property called Parallax Error comes into play, and what may be in alignment at the bottom, is way out of alignment at the top, much more so if you had instead used something in the vertical center to align on. In Photoshop when using the Move tool, you can also use your Up/Down Left/Right arrows to move a pixel at a time for finer adjustments.
The next step is to get rid of the vertical border edge showing on each image at the point they overlap at. The easiest way, using Photoshop, is to use the Clone tool, and simply 'paint' the edge into oblivion, using the surrounding pixels to blend the edges. If your image editor does not have something similar to a Clone Tool, then you'll need to find another way. Sometimes, having an edge showing won't detract from the panorama, but it will make it look better if you can eliminate it.
Finally, crop and save your image. I can say that each one of your images that make up the panorama will be a little higher or lower than the adjacent image. This is perfectly normal, since when panning your camera you'll have a tendency to move slightly. I suggest saving it with a different filename, thereby preserving your original set of images you've lined up. You may want to go back and do some fine tuning when you get better at this.
Alternately, there are panorama stitchers available. I use one from Picture Works, called Spin Panorama, which can save in BMP, JPG and MOV file formats. the MOV is a QuickTime format, and will actually allow you to pan the image in a window. These will allow you to quickly stitch the images, while at the same time blending the edges. Here, the smaller the overlap, the better the blending is. You should still adjust color, brightness and contrast in each image first, as it will be next to impossible to do after you've stitched them.
Panorama Creation Software
PanoWarp -
A freeware stand alone app for stitching images - very powerful. Be sure
to follow what you need to download to make it work.
Picture
Works - Spin Panorama
EnRoute
Imaging - PowerStitch, QuickStitch, QuickStitch 360
LivePicture
- PhotoVista
Panorama
Tools, Helmut Dersch's free panorama authoring plugins for Photoshop
ULead -
Cool 360
Corel
Photo-Paint
IBM
Hot Media - a very nice set of tools from Big Blue