How do you choose best pano stitching option in PS5?

<p>I took the plunge and bought a pano kit, took care to dial in no-parallax points for my lens, and went out and shot a three-row pano, 14 across, total of 42 images. Pulled the NEFs into LR4, applied lens correction, then outputted the DNGs as small JPGs to play with in PS5 to determine the best stitching method.</p>

<p>Incredibly diverse results, as you can see:<br>

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1m6nbq12raa4r68/AAB0XVN7Mj40cm0Raftri2lKa?dl=0</p>

<p>I thought that shooting with the nodal slide and eliminating parallax would make stitching a cinch, but the "auto," "collage," and "reposition" settings in PS5 are all totally distorted. The "perspective" stitch option is by far the best in the center, but gets way out of whack at the edges. </p>

<p>How do you decide for each individual pano which PS5 stitching option is going to work best? Is "perspective" working best here because I'm relatively close to the subject? </p>

<p>Glad for any thoughts or advice you have to offer. My hope was that I could use the pano kit and fast tele primes (here the 85 1.8) to mimic MF DOF through Brenizer type pano technique.</p>

<p>I'm quite sure that there is a logical, reasonable answer to how to tell <em>a priori</em> which stitching option in PS5 is best.<br>

In my own case, I have found by experience that the "auto" selection works most often for me. I otherwise use trial and error and compare the results, which are certainly 'diverse', as you say.</p>

<p>I wait with bated (baited? there was once a "Diet of Worms") breath to hear a rational explanation of how to tell without experimenting.<br>

The PS5 pano options work much better than the previous versions, by the way. </p>

<p>The pano stitching function in CS5 is very poor compared to Microsoft ICE, which is much faster and a free download: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/</p>

<p>but it only works for Windows based computers.</p>

<p>As for your original question, the distortion you mention is primarily caused by the camera not being level with the horizon and the software trying to compensate (perfect parallax alignment is only important for things close up, at infinity perfection is unnecessary).</p>

<p>For my panos I use two different levels, one on the tripod and one in the camera's hot shoe. Once balanced as best as I can I then test it by swinging the camera through it's entire horizontal arc and observing the bubble level in the hot shoe. If the bubble doesn't move from its center position then the camera is accurately aligned. </p>

<p>I've used a number of stitching programs over the years, including Photoshop CC(2014). None (so far) compare to PTGui for quality of stitching and flexibility of controlling perspective and choice of output projections. It's not free, but $100 is not much to spend if panoramas are an important part of your work or hobby.</p>

<p>Panoramas should be shot with the camera in portrait orientation ( tall image).That way you have less rows of photos and less distortion.The pano head is not needed unless there are close subjects on the frame, the pano head is mainly useful because it has clicks for auto overlapping that makes life very easy.i agree with the above comments that professional dedicated software works much better than PS,I personally use Arcsoft Panorama Maker,Is very quick,needs less RAM than most other software and it stitches cylindrical,mosaic and normal.And it does all that on auto,you click on the first photo (RAW or JPEG) and lines up the rest automatically.</p>

<p>There are a few factual errors. While you don't need a pano head, or even a tripod, you get the best results if you use a properly leveled and normalized head on a tripod. Unless the camera is held straight, the borders of the pano are ragged, and you lose a lot of picture area through cropping. You don't need clicks, nor are they useful except for one focal length. I overlap each frame about 25% by eyeball, using grid lines or focusing marks in the viewfinder.</p>

<p>Nearby objects require the use of a nodal slide to keep them from doubling or ghosting due to an apparent shift against the background. It's only practical to use a nodal slide on a tripod.</p>

<p>Distortion has nothing to do with the orientation of the camera, just the type of projection you choose*, and vertical convergence if the camera is tilted up or down. The software should smoothly stitch one frame to the next without introducing angles in horizontal lines. Panning with the camera in the vertical orientation takes more frames for the given width, but gives you 50% more resolution in the vertical dimension.</p>

<p>* A typical choice is between cylindrical and rectilinear projection. In cylindrical projection, vertical lines are straight, but horizontal lines bend backwards from the center. Rectilinear projection keeps both vertical and horizontal lines straight, like a rectilinear wide angle lens. The maximum span of a rectilinear projection approaches 180 degrees asymptotically, whereas a cylindrical projection can span 360 degrees. PTGui offers spherical projection, and a variety of other projections (e.g., Mercator) which you learned about in 6th grade geography.</p>

<p>+1 for PTGui; many years of use. Win/Mac<br /> Hugin is a free alternative Win/Mac/Linux<br /> Think twice about "distortion" (ditto for "distortion" of wideangle lenses). Basically you are asking to map a sphere to a plane, so compromises are inevitable.<br /> - Rectilinear: straight lines remain straight. But objects near the edges of the field look "stretched"<br /> - Cylindrical, spherical, etc: mitigates stretching, but straight lines come out curved.</p>

<p>To answer the title of your OP: in the end, your choice. </p>

<p>I shoot most of my panos hand held and often use a super-telephoto lens, like a 500mm with an extender, maybe stitching together 8-images. When traveling without a super-telephoto, I'll shoot in the 50mm to 80mm range and overlap the panels. Shooting in portrait orientation with a wide angle lens merely moves the distortion from the edges to the top and bottom.</p>

<p>Use manual exposure to avoid different exposure in different panels.</p>

<p>Finally, for stitching, I use PS4 in the auto mode and then try another setting if I don't like the result.</p>

<p><a title="Morning Mt. Evans Panorama by David Stephens, on Flickr" href=" src="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8080/8308128243_ea6d8a4fd2_c.jpg" alt="Morning Mt. Evans Panorama" width="800" height="129" /></a></p>

<p>Panoramas of beautiful scenery is the most satisfying, but relatively easy. If you want a technical challenge, try taking panos inside buildings. Unlike the great outdoors, everything in view is man made, with straight lines or smooth curves. Distortion of some sort is unavoidable, but abrupt changes or blending problems are obvious problems which make the output unusable.</p>

<p>I have attached a photo I took in the Seoul Opera House, using three shots with a 17-35/2.8 zoom. At the time, I was using Panorama Factory, and was unable to keep the seats in a smooth curve. This uncropped rendering was done with PTGui in a Cylindrical projection (nearly 180 degrees in the view). The balconies wrap around the concert hall, which is roughly rectangular. The seats are actually straight across, but recede from the center due to inherent distortion of the projection. With Panorama Factory, I could not get rid of an angular break in the splice points. I haven't tried using PS CC.</p>

<p><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17910423-lg.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="204" /><br>

<br />This is the center shot, which is rectilinear. The sweeping curves in the panorama are seen to be relatively straight. Again, that is a natural result of cylindrical projection. The same panorama in rectilinear mode is an impossibly thin line, about 1/8th the height of the frame above. The vertical perspective is distorted because the camera is tilted upward to capture the upper balconies.<br>

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17910425-lg.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>+1 for Microsoft ICE. It often produces excellent results when even PS6 has problems.<br>

ICE will also post directly to photosynth.net, which lets you do <a href="http://photosynth.net/embed.aspx?cid=5e0fa858-15e7-45ec-abc2-e80cd46ff4ba&delayLoad=true&slideShowPlaying=false"><strong>this</strong></a> without any extra effort.</p>