Stitch and align very big photograph.

oakfieldphotography.com · June 18, 2011

Hi Everyone,
I have a big two day shoot to do next weekend and i love to experiment. What i would like to do is take 7 or eight Photographs in portrait position. Stitch them together. While i have my camera on the tripod take a few photos with the camera in the normal position of cars coming towards me. Then i would like to paste the photos of the cars into the stitched portraits of the landscape. Can this be done and will the photo align? Nuts or what?
I know this is alot of work but i do like shake things up now and again.
Regards
Patrick:D

Ohiohiker · June 18, 2011

I know Hugin can do it. It is capable of stitching together shots from different angles and camera positions. Take a look at the tutorials on the Hugin Website.

I would think photo align could do it as long as you take you initial panorama and don't move your tripod for you car shots. I would shoot the pano and the other shots and play around with it or setup somewhere where you can do something similar and play around. Love to see your results though.:ivar

oakfieldphotography.com · June 18, 2011

Ohiohiker wrote: »

I know Hugin can do it. It is capable of stitching together shots from different angles and camera positions. Take a look at the tutorials on the Hugin Website.

I would think photo align could do it as long as you take you initial panorama and don't move your tripod for you car shots. I would shoot the pano and the other shots and play around with it or setup somewhere where you can do something similar and play around. Love to see your results though.:ivar

Thanks for your responce but i should have said would i be able to do this in CS5?

PS using 5Dmk2 and 50mm F1.8 as i dont have any other lens for my camera. I could use my 40D with the kit lens 18-85 kit lens but i do want to use full frame instead.

ziggy53 · June 18, 2011

If I understand you correctly you want to produce a stitched hi-resolution background and then composite the cars you shoot, in a single image capture, onto the hi-res background?

If so, yes you can do it with the PS CS5 "Extended" version. I believe it will allow you to fairly well automate the stitching process and then you can use the layering capability of Photoshop to composite the cars. To have it look authentic you will also have to upres the car images and very carefully use background removal techniques to extract the cars from their original backgrounds before you overlay the cars onto their new backgrounds.

If the light changes dramatically between the different captures you will have new problems to face.

Altogether it would make a nice exercise, but I doubt it's anything you would want to repeat on a regular basis.

If you don't have the extended version of Photoshop then the following can work pretty well as freeware for stitching:

Hugin, Enblend and Autopano-SIFT (I think these are available for several OSs.)
Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor) (Modern Windows versions.)

oakfieldphotography.com · June 18, 2011

ziggy53 wrote: »

If I understand you correctly you want to produce a stitched hi-resolution background and then composite the cars you shoot, in a single image capture, onto the hi-res background?

If so, yes you can do it with the PS CS5 "Extended" version. I believe it will allow you to fairly well automate the stitching process and then you can use the layering capability of Photoshop to composite the cars. To have it look authentic you will also have to upres the car images and very carefully use background removal techniques to extract the cars from their original backgrounds before you overlay the cars onto their new backgrounds.

If the light changes dramatically between the different captures you will have new problems to face.

Altogether it would make a nice exercise, but I doubt it's anything you would want to repeat on a regular basis.

If you don't have the extended version of Photoshop then the following can work pretty well as freeware for stitching:

Hugin, Enblend and Autopano-SIFT (I think these are available for several OSs.)
Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor) (Modern Windows versions.)

Hi Ziggy53. Thanks for your help but here is the twist. Will cs5 allow me to insert the whole picture of the car and its background into the stitched photographs providing i stay within its parameters? I will not change any setting on my camera aswell.:D

Regards
Patrick

ziggy53 · June 18, 2011

I should add that if you wish to include image elements close to the camera you will probably need some way of rotating the camera/lens around the lens's "entrance pupil", commonly (even by me) mistakenly called the "nodal point". Rotating around this point prevents parallax error which can prevent accurate stitching of the separate images.

ziggy53 · June 18, 2011

oakfieldphotography.com wrote: »

Hi Ziggy53. Thanks for your help but here is the twist. Will cs5 allow me to insert the whole picture of the car and its background into the stitched photographs providing i stay within its parameters? I will not change any setting on my camera aswell.:D

Regards
Patrick

If you mean that the scene with the car will fit within the stitched scene, yes, you can align the car scene on top of the stitched scene, providing that there was not too much lens distortion corrected in the stitching process. Otherwise, you would have to also correct the individual car images for distortion before the overlay looks correct.

oakfieldphotography.com · June 18, 2011

I never took that into consideration. Moving the camera on its axis would create a problem but if i was able to align the photograph close to the stitched area using opasity as my guide that i want the car in and just brush in the car, would this work. i know i will have to resize the photo of the car first to suit its location to the road position.

Regards
Patrick:D

oakfieldphotography.com · June 18, 2011

oakfieldphotography.com wrote: »

I never took that into consideration. Moving the camera on its axis would create a problem but if i was able to align the photograph close to the stitched area using opasity as my guide that i want the car in and just brush in the car, would this work. i know i will have to resize the photo of the car first to suit its location to the road position.

Regards
Patrick:D

Ignore this you have answered my question. There is a god. Thanks Ziggy53 you are #1

oakfieldphotography.com · June 18, 2011

Before i leave you Ziggy53 there is one last question to solve. Is it advised to do a lens correction with PT lens correction software on each individual portrait shot before i stitch them together. I will be shooting with a 5D mk2 and a canon 50mm F1.8 lens. i will be shooting down the side of a lake with a mountain stretching into the distance and i think i will be using F5.6 for average focusing into the distance if that is right or not. As you can understand i could go out now and try this for myself but i have the lake the road and no vintage car. lol

Regards
Patrick:ivar

basflt · June 18, 2011

no you cannot blend the cars onto the pano , the background will mismatch
what you can do

make the pano first
cut out each car in including shadow
then copy , paste , in place ; this will make each car a layer
with erazer set set opacity to 50 or less and use it to soften the shadow and the windows glass

whats more importend IMO
dont change position of camera
light angle must be the same for all pic's , ot will not work

oakfieldphotography.com · June 18, 2011

basflt wrote: »

no you cannot blend the cars onto the pano , the background will mismatch
what you can do

make the pano first
cut out each car in including shadow
then copy , paste , in place ; this will make each car a layer
with erazer set set opacity to 50 or less and use it to soften the shadow and the windows glass

whats more importend IMO
dont change position of camera
light angle must be the same for all pic's , ot will not work

I have to move the camera because there will be too much distortion in it when it gets close to the lens. Front end stretches towards the lens.:D

ziggy53 · June 18, 2011

oakfieldphotography.com wrote: »

Before i leave you Ziggy53 there is one last question to solve. Is it advised to do a lens correction with PT lens correction software on each individual portrait shot before i stitch them together. I will be shooting with a 5D mk2 and a canon 50mm F1.8 lens. i will be shooting down the side of a lake with a mountain stretching into the distance and i think i will be using F5.6 for average focusing into the distance if that is right or not. As you can understand i could go out now and try this for myself but i have the lake the road and no vintage car. lol

Regards
Patrick:ivar

You will find this out when you process the images. I suspect that you won't have too many distortion issues using the EF 50mm, f1.8 because it is pretty well corrected for curvilinear distortion.

ziggy53 · June 18, 2011

oakfieldphotography.com wrote: »

I have to move the camera because there will be too much distortion in it when it gets close to the lens. Front end stretches towards the lens.:D

Moving the camera will change all of the scene geometry and is not recommended for a composited image process.

basflt · June 18, 2011

ziggy53 wrote: »

Moving the camera will change all of the scene geometry and is not recommended for a composited image process.

thats what i mean , i just dont know how to say

i would seperate shots of the cars
then paste them into the pano

80% sure blending wont work
[ does not mean you cant try though , may be you are lucky ]

and one more thing ;
wile working on it , save as often as you can
this stuff eats resources , and you dont want to start all over again after some hours work

oakfieldphotography.com · June 18, 2011

ziggy53 wrote: »

Moving the camera will change all of the scene geometry and is not recommended for a composited image process.

Oh Oh. I was always wary of taking photographs of these cars in portrait because at the angle they approach you all you are getting in is the front and small amount of side of the car. Well i could try it and see how it goes. Thanks again,
Pat:D

Ohiohiker · June 19, 2011

I know you want to do this in CS5 but Hugin is free and will do what you are asking very easily. You can create your original PANO and stitch the photos of the cars into the image. It will not matter if you are in the same camera orientation(portrait or landscape) as the original shots. It can align and adjust the image of the car moving on the background using control points. It is more in depth than Photoshops stitching and I use it when I have images that Photoshop has trouble stitching. Give it a look it is free!

Just my opinion.

oakfieldphotography.com · June 29, 2011

Hi all
as i promised here is the kind of shots i was talking about. Hope you like them. I put an extra Photograph of myself so ya all can see how ugly i am.lol
Regards
Patrick.

Connacht Veteran and Vintage Motor Club 27th Annual Rally Westport 24th-26th June 2011 by OakField Photography, on Flickr

1921 Overland. by OakField Photography, on Flickr

1910 Rolls Royce Ghost by OakField Photography, on Flickr

_MG_7303 by OakField Photography, on Flickr

DavidTO · June 29, 2011

They look good to me!

pathfinder · June 29, 2011

Well done!

Looks like you had fun too!

oakfieldphotography.com · June 30, 2011

I can honestly say that it was the busiest weekend i have ever spent, working on these knid of locations. I am glad you like them as i got a big kick out of it as well. I think when you are around strangers a positive attitude and a smile goes along way. I did not try to insert a photograph taken in portrait position into a landscape due to geometric distortion. I think this is the way to go forward for me and heres hoping i am making the right decision.
Regards
Patrick

Ohiohiker · June 30, 2011

Great Photos!

BTW what technique did you finally settle on?

oakfieldphotography.com · July 1, 2011

Ohiohiker wrote: »

Great Photos!

BTW what technique did you finally settle on?

I stuck to the tried and tested method. Hard to beat the road well travelled. I was hoping to travel a different road but time constraints were heaped upon me. These pictures are selling like hotcakes even to non vintage car people. I think the final size is 3 ft by 1 ft. Gotta head to the frame makers monday as this is all new to me. Other clubs are interested in my services regarding the wide landscape photographs with the old cars travelling through them.

Pat:D

divamum · July 1, 2011

Patrick, these are beautiful - I'm not surprised that people are clamouring for them!! Really nice. (Of course, a beautiful Irish landscape and some fabulous cars don't hurt either....

)

ziggy53 · July 1, 2011

Congratulations Pat.

I bet these look great printed big.

Stitch and align very big photograph.

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