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GUIDE - PROCESSING

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Can Software Stitch My Images For Me?

Thank god, yes. I mean you can try to stitch all these images manually if you have an abundance of time on your hands and a masochistic tendency, but surely you have better things to do? The two pieces of software that I’ve used so far are also free ones. These are: Autostitch and Microsoft ICE. I find the former gives better results, but the latter has a much better workflow. I wish I could combine the best of both, but this is probably where the paid ones come in…

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I do pay for Photoshop (PS) CC, albeit a bit reluctantly. So technically I could use their ‘merge to panorama’ functionality in Adobe Camera RAW (ACR), but I don’t and here’s why: It tends to be too slow, sometimes unbelievably so*. It often fails to stitch images with a lot of blur, which will be common with Bokeh Panoramas. It can also fail if you’re trying to stitch ‘too many’ images. This can be a really low amount for bokeh panoramas too. For all of these reasons and more I would not advise the use of PS CC for stitching multiple images. The same is true for focus stacking, but that’s a rant for another time…

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Do I need To Process My Images Before I Stitch Them?

Yes, this is actually quite important. Although Most stitching software will do a great job at eliminating things like vignetting and colour casts it won’t be perfect and so you can help them out a great deal by doing some simple steps first.

Since I shoot RAW I have to process my images before I stitch them. I use Photoshop’s ACR for this and use it for the following tweaks:

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  • Vignette removal (usually manual on the Canon FD lenses)

  • Lateral Chromatic Aberration removal (this one is always manual)

  • White Balance changes

  • Curves Adjustment

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Do I Need To Do More Processing?

At this stage you’re at a similar point to where an image would come out of a camera. What I mean here is that it will be a little unrefined. Most likely your composition will be out of whack, so a crop will be needed. You might want to fine tune the white balance and colours now that you can see the whole image and there will be no vignetting. Some people might like the lack of dark corners, but almost never do.

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So, after a crop I tend to take the image back in to Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) for more processing. Your image is no longer a RAW, so it won’t open here by default. If you’re using Photoshop CC this can be done by pressing ‘Ctrl+Shift+A’ when the image is open.I then usually apply the following changes

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  • White Balance (fine tune)

  • Curves (fine tune)

  • Split Tone Colours

  • Exposure Gradient

  • Post crop vignetting

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Do I Need A Good PC To Process A Panorama?

Generally the answer is no, you don’t really need anything specific. It more depends on how long you’re prepared to wait. I’m not aware of any software that does this on a mobile device yet with any degree of control, so a proper PC (that’s Windows or Mac btw) is unfortunately the minimum requirement.

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How Can I reduce Processing Time?

Most PC programs are good at reducing the processing time by changing a few simple settings. Autostitch (for example) allows you to choose the percentage size of your end result (50, 25, 15 or whatever you like). This massively improves your processing time and you don’t even have to down-sample the resolution of the source images either.

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You could throw a lot of cutting edge modern computer tech at processing bokeh panos, but I’m not sure I would advise it. I’ve pretty much done this, so perhaps I can help tell you what to avoid wasting your money on.

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  • SSD? – The fastest PCI-E drives don’t seem to make a difference here, so I would advise sticking to standard SATA SSDs (for less money, or more storage).

  • RAM? – I’ve seen Autostitch use up to about 20GB of RAM for a stitch, but it does OK with a lot less. Photoshop is a RAM whore however, so check as much at that as you like.

  • CPU? – This is the most important aspect that will affect performance here, but I’m not sure that many of these programs are well set up for muti-threading. I will do some tests here and report back soon

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My Panorama Won’t Stitch, What Can I do?

This happens some times and there may be nothing you can do. It could be caused by a lack of overlap, a large amount of blank area in several photos (like over-exposed sky), motion blur, excessive camera movement (not pivoting around the lenses entrance pupil), a failure to lock settings (perhaps your WB or focus shifted). It could be any or many things.

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If you’re convinced that there is no reason it’s not working there may still be hope. Of course you could stitch the images manually, but that’s just silly… right? Other options are:

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  • Use different stitching software (if it’s Photoshop, definitely try that)

  • Take out some of the images that could be problematic from the stitch and try again

  • Try stitching even smaller parts of the image, like each horizontal strip (then restitching those or going the manual route from there).

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