Panoramas in CS4 turn out "striped"

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>Lately when I try to stitch panoramas they have a tendency to become "striped", i e the exposure seems to be off between the individual frames causing the edges to appear very clearly (view attached example). I use manual focus and exposure, and no polarizer.</p>

<p>I have not had this problem before, and to my knowledge I have not changed the way I shoot. Do you have any idea of what I am doing wrong?</p>

<p>Regards,</p>

<p>Ulf</p><div></div>

<p>Are you allowing enough overlap - 25% to 30%? Also, I see what appears to be vignetting in the upper right corners of each frame. That could be caused by a wide angle lens used with a large aperture. Are you rotating the camera around the nodal point of the lens? That is, using a tripod with a panorama head? I've had problems with stripes when I've shot panos hand held, as well as problems of things not lining up. All the frames in your pano seem to be properly registered, though.</p>

<p>Why not just try a different program? There are several free pano programs on the web. The one I use is Hugin which has worked fine for my all of handheld non-nodal point panos:</p>

<p> <a href="http://hugin.sourceforge.net/download/">http://hugin.sourceforge.net/download/</a></p>

<p> </p>

<p>Ulf, This doesn't look like there is any problem with the stitch, just with the blending afterwards. Have you turned on Blend Images Together in the CS4 Photomerge dialogue box? With a panorama that is already stitched, but still with each frame in its own layer, try this: select all the layers in the stitch and go to Edit>Auto Blend Layers>Panorama (and turn on Seamless Tones and Colors).</p>

<p>When Ive made a panoramic, it has always been handheld.<br>

First I chose the straightest line that I can see, shoot the first, move it no more than 50% to the side, shoot the next, etc... Ive always used a Polarizer and automatic focus, had no problems. <br>

Feel that the more you overlap the better, so sometimes use as many a 15-20 images.</p>

<p>Thanks for all your help, especially Peter; your tip reg the auto blend layers worked perfectly!</p>

<p>Ulf</p>