john_houghton

<p>ACR is the Adobe Camera RAW plugin. Your CS3 came with the then current version of ACR, but you should download the last update of ACR for CS3 from the Adobe web site. No registration is required to do this AFAIK. You can display details of the installed ACR in CS3 by Help->About Plug-In->Camera Raw (at least you can in CS4). If you download the latest DNG converter, it should convert your images to the DNG format, which can be opened by all the earlier versions of CS that have been superseded. (The CS3 version of ACR will not be updated to support the newer cameras directly).</p>

<p>Adey wrote<em>: Strangley, it's slightly cheaper to have the disks shipped in the UK, at 186.82GBP (280USD).</em><br>

Actually, there's a shipping charge, bringing the total to £192.83.</p>

 

<p>Try <a href="http://www.thelightsright.com/TLRProUSMPanel">http://www.thelightsright.com/TLRProUSMPanel</a> (for CS4 only).</p>

<p>For making spherical 360x180 panoramas of domestic interiors, it's best to use a good quality fisheye lens. This minimizes the number of shots needed and leads to shorter shooting and processing times. Many stitchers cannot handle fisheye lenses (like Panorama Studio and Photoshop's Photomerge). The most popular stitchers are those based on Panorama Tools - e.g. PTGui and Hugin. Also Autopano Pro. These will also stitch landscape panoramas taken with conventional lenses and so are more versatile. You will find examples of spherical and cylindrical panoramas made with PTGui on my site at:<br>

<a href="http://www.johnhpanos.com/">http://www.johnhpanos.com/</a></p>

<p> </p>

<p>Daniel, You've only calibrated half of your system. The printer should be calibrated too.</p>

<p>If you lose the panorama image, check that the lens fov has not been optimized to some tiny value. Also set the panorama projection to equirectangular and fov 360x180 so that the entire spherical stitching surface is visible. However, in this case you have set the fov in rectilinear projection to impossibly high values i.e. 179x179. The image will be so tiny as to be invisible. Use the Fit button, or set the sliders to more realistic smaller values.</p>

<p>This Canon document may be of some use: <a href="http://www.photokaechler.com/files/Canon_Profile_Guide.pdf">http://www.photokaechler.com/files/Canon_Profile_Guide.pdf</a></p>

 

<p>You could use a free service such as:<br>

<a href="http://www.sendspace.com/">http://www.sendspace.com/</a><br>

<a href="http://sharesend.com/">http://sharesend.com/</a><br>

<a href="http://www.filedropper.com/">http://www.filedropper.com/</a></p>

 

<p>The HSL/Grayscale tab was introduced in ACR V4.0.</p>

 

<p>The HSL/Grayscale tab was new in ACR V4.0.</p>

<p>The HSL/Grayscale tab was new in ACR V4.0.</p>

<p>You should go ahead with the version you have downloaded. It will take some time to get to grips with the program, and you can use that until such time as someone compiles a Windows version from the latest sources. It's not going to make any difference which you use in your initial exploration of the product.</p>

<p>Lyson's PrintGuard works well. As well as protecting the ink coating, it virtually eliminates the bronzing I get on semigloss with the Epson 2100/2200.</p>

<p>In sufficiently bright conditions, you can shoot the nadir handheld, otherwise you can shift the tripod sideways and tilt it over as described here: <a href="http://www.rosaurophotography.com/html/technical6.html">http://www.rosaurophotography.com/html/technical6.html</a><br>

PTGui and PTAssembler can both adjust the perspective of the nadir shot to take account of the changed viewpoint so that it can be stitched in directly along with all the other images. This works well for flat floors only. With Hugin, the nadir will usually need to be merged in using Photoshop. The zenith is at pitch=+90 as you guessed.</p>

 

<p>Ben, Tripod legs ought not to be a problem. Take a nadir shot with the tripod out of the way and patch that into the stitched equirectangular image. (See tutorials at <a href="http://wiki.panotools.org/Tutorials">http://wiki.panotools.org/Tutorials</a> ). The exif data is irrelevant. The optimizer will work out what the lens hfov is. You can put an estimated value in initially. Try 110 (it depends on your sensor size). You should be able to get the average cp distance down to <1 and the maximum down to <2, but make sure you have a good spread of control points - not all clustered in the middle of the overlaps. The panohead needs to be set up accurately, though. See <a href="http://www.johnhpanos.com/epcalib.htm">http://www.johnhpanos.com/epcalib.htm</a> .</p>

<p>You might try doing a small test print every 2-3 days to exercise the nozzles. Regular use does seem to help avoid nozzle clogs. I find that my 2100 cartidges benefit from a good shake too when it it's been left idle for too long - it helps to dislodge any bubbles that may have formed.</p>

<p>So when the problem has been cleared, how long typically is the interval before you use the printer again and discover the lines have reappeared?</p>

<p>The raw plugin in Elements does not have all the features of the one in CS4. The DSLR will come with a raw converter anyway, so it is quite possible to manage with just PS 7 initially. I would far rather use PS 7 than Elements.</p>

<p>If Elements is not installed when you install CS3, you will probably be asked to load the qualifying product in a CD/DVD drive or enter a license key. Generally, the different versions of Adobe producs coexist in their own individual folders and can be uninstalled independently. Once CS3 is installed, PSE can be removed if you wish or left on or upgraded.</p>

<p>The full list of features at <a href="http://www.ptgui.com/features.html">http://www.ptgui.com/features.html</a> shows the differences between the two versions of PTGui. I think the Pro version is worth the extra cost but really it depends on what use you are going to make of it. You can download both versions and try them for yourself.</p>

<p>If you use a spherical panorama stitcher - such as PTGui, Autopano Pro, or Microsoft ICE - it is NOT necessary to keep the camera level as is so often asserted. A straight and level horizon with vertical verticals can easily be obtained with the camera tilted up or down by any angle. For partial panoramas (<360 degrees) I almost never keep the camera level, as that would position the horizon in the dead centre of the frame, which is seldom the ideal position. Often, you want to assign more space to sky if there are interesting clouds, or less if it is boring blue. To get a level horizon, see <a href="http://www.johnhpanos.com/levtut.htm">http://www.johnhpanos.com/levtut.htm</a> .</p>

<p>You don't say what software you have at your disposal for stitching and postprocessing the images. If you can output a layered PSD file from the stitcher, you can either use the auto-blend feature in CS3/CS4 to perform the blending, or you can adjust the images and blend by feathering the layer masks at the overlapping edges (use the gradient tool on the mask edges). Or you can try PTGui Pro for stitching, which does very good blending. Another alternative is the free Microsoft ICE stitcher, which can also do good blending.</p>

Photomerge will give you a layered result automatically. Display the Layers palette (from the Window menu). You will see 3 layers, each with a black & white layer mask. The layer mask determines how much of the image in the layer is visible. Where the mask is black, the image is transparent. Where the mask is white, the image is visible. You can paint on the mask with a black or white paintbrush to make parts of the image appear or disappear - the image itself is never altered.

 

To edit a layer mask, click on the mask thumbnail in the layers palette and then paint in the image with a white or black brush to reveal or hide parts of the layer. Click on the image thumbnail to revert to normal image editing mode. The eyes in the Layers palette can clicked to toggle the layers on/off so you can see the whole of each layer on it's own if necessary.

 

Use Layer->Flatten when you are done to consolidate the layers into a single image layer.

<p>The images stitch very well in PTGui, though the setup of the panohead could be better: there is very clear parallax visible on the chair in the foreground, as revealed in this crop from a psd layered stitch:<br>

http://www.johnhpanos.com/pano-px.gif<br>

This is the stitch at 2000x1106:<br>

http://www.johnhpanos.com/pano-px.jpg<br>

I also levelled the panorama to get the verticals accurately vertical. 25-30% image overlap should be ample to give a good stitch.</p>

<p>I cleaned my LS-30 (on a Win XP PC) using this guide to the similar LS-2000:<br>

<a href="http://www.vad1.com/photo/dirty-scanner/ls2000-cleaning/">http://www.vad1.com/photo/dirty-scanner/ls2000-cleaning/</a><br>

The Lens Clean fluid from <a href="http://www.visibledust.com">http://www.visibledust.com</a> worked well, as it doesn't leave any residue.</p>