panorama help

[Angela]

Hi guys, I have three photos that I want to merge into a panorama photo, but the colour and exposure are slightly different in them. Does anyone know how I can do this? I have tried using PSE's photomerge tool with advanced blending, and it lines them up terrific, but I still have the problem of the different exposures. I hope that this makes sense, I'm hopeless at explaining things :rolleyes:.
Also, can somebody tell me how to take the shots so the exposure is the same. I'm (still!!) using a film rebel, and have it set on aperture priority. I think I need to do something with the metering, but have absolutely no idea! Would it be better to set it in full manual mode? Any suggestions would be a great help.

[Emma]

no help on camera settings other than going full manual to make sure nothing is changing between shots. Dunno much about metering or using cards, etc

For fixing the exposure on teh current ones, use Levels command if it's just brightness/contrast differences, or Hue/Saturation or Channel Mixer for color differences.

For details on using these tools, just let us know. Play around with them and ask some more questions.
You should probably open all 3 and adjust color before stitching them since you won't have separate layers after stitching, it's easier to adust when they're still "alone" but side by side for comparisons

[Angela]

Thanks Emma for your suggestions I tried them, but still could not get the colours to match up exactly, so I decided to desaturate it. Here is my result. Still not very happy, but practice makes perfect :p .

http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=16296

[Emma]

Hi, great job! I bet you're learning a lot.
Do you have results with it still in color? What tools did you use to do it?
Also, the b&w version needs the photo on the left to have Levels adjustment to lighten it to match.
If you email me the photos I can take a stab at it and see what I come up with, then give you some specific advice.

[Angela]

Hi Emma, thanks for your offer to help. Sorry I don't have the results in colour, they looked terrible so I didn't bother to save. Somehow my skyline is different in all the photos too, so there is a bit of fiddling around with that. I'll email the photos to you so you can have a look, but don't stress if there is too much work to do with them. I'll just have to con the family into going on another holiday so I can take some more :D .
Oh, how do I send an attachment to you? I clicked the link to send an email, and it didn't show anything about attachments.

[Karen]

Angela I didn't bother to comment before as Emma had already given you good advice, but when you mentioned about the horizon being a bit off I have to ask if you were using a tripod, for panoramas you really need to use a tripod so everything is kept in line and you should also overlap your images so they are easier to line up.
As far as exposure goes you would need to take a meter reading and then set it by using the manual setting :)
Hope this helps for your next try :)l

[Angela]

Hi Karen, I did use a tripod and I should have said that the "sky" was different in the shots. I think that it might of had something to do with the exposure, because in one shot the sky seemed very blue with clouds and then in the next the sky just seemed white. Thanks for you feedback.

[Karen]

Hi Karen, I did use a tripod and I should have said that the "sky" was different in the shots. I think that it might of had something to do with the exposure, because in one shot the sky seemed very blue with clouds and then in the next the sky just seemed white. Thanks for you feedback.

Yep thats an exposure problem, you need to take a reading from an average part of the scene then set it on your camera and use it for all of the shots.
If you sky was different this means one part of it was brighter/darker than the others and you would need to use over/under exposure to correct it, the easiest thing to do would be to bracket your shots :)

[Emma]

Hi, I was reading up on the Photomerge option in PSE3 to do the best merge I could, and it seems to have some great compensations for exposure differences, as well as some tips for taking the photos to get the best match. Are you using v2 or 3?

[Angela]

Hi, I was reading up on the Photomerge option in PSE3 to do the best merge I could, and it seems to have some great compensations for exposure differences, as well as some tips for taking the photos to get the best match. Are you using v2 or 3?
I'm using version 2. I only got it a few months before 3 came out (isn't it always like that!?!), would love to upgrade but am still hoping to get PS CS (and a new camera, and a new harddrive, a laptop...... the list continues...) ;)