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Olivier Detry
New member
Username: Kitarolivier
Post Number: 16
Registered: 4-2007
| | Posted on Monday, July 02, 2007 - 6:01 am: |   |
Maybe I should read more carefully the manual, but I made a few searchs and didn't find how to :
My final panorama is nice, but what I see the font in the back. I mean I started shooting the pictures with the front door. When stiching, the front door is visible on first & last picture, and when assembled, the door is splitted on the left & right side of the pano. How can I crop the resulting image so I can re-center the center of the panorama to this door, keeping it as a 360° panorama ?
Is it possible to make it in PF ? |
Frank Grages
New member
Username: Frank_grages
Post Number: 3
Registered: 7-2007
| | Posted on Monday, July 02, 2007 - 2:18 pm: | |
Olivier:
I know what you mean. Viewed in a panoramic viewer, itīs not important where the image starts and ends. It will automatically fit seamless.
But for printing purposes, you often prefer a different "cut" of the picture. Iīm finetuning the stitched panoramas in photoshop anyway, and thatīs where Iīm doing this kind of refinement. Just a simple use of copy & paste ;)
Iīm not sure if you can do the same using only PanoramaFactory, but you could use the crop-function. Letīs say youīve extended the image to a total angle of 380 degrees, you can set the field of view to 200 degrees to the left and 160 degrees to the right. Maybe thatīs enough to move the "seam" of the picture to a better looking position when using it for printing purposes.
best regards
-Frank
(Message edited by frank_grages on July 02, 2007) |
David Richardson
New member
Username: Customdavid
Post Number: 15
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Monday, July 02, 2007 - 7:05 pm: | |
Olivier -
I have this problem all the time. Basically I take my first shot to make sure that my light readings are right in what I consider to be the most critical part of the image. My tripod setup then takes a series of twelve images to produce the 360 image.
On my website I posted an example several months ago to show the problem: http://www.panoramashots.com/panoramashots/USA/CA/Sacramento/Capitol/thumb_compare.htm . You will see that I was attempting to get an image with the state capitol in the center and without rotating it, ended up with a small tour bus!
I agree with Frank that it does not matter when using a panoramic viewer, however, my thumbnails are not what I would like. Through practice I found that if I count the number of images and then shift them by 1/2 the total I get what I want.
For example, on my setup I use 12 images. In step one (1/9 on the wizard), I move the right six images all the way to the left. This means that my "key" shot is now the seventh image. When looking at a thumbnail or printed image it will always come out in the center. Perfect. I have tried this with things up to 18-20 images and use the divide in 1/2 rule, works great.
If you are using the batch file version of the program, http://www.panoramashots.com/wizard/ I have created a free utility to help with the stitching. One of the features that I added to version 2.0 was the ability to rotate the images a certain number to correct for this problem. I have it set to 6 on mine and it works every time.
Hope this helps,
David
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Olivier Detry
New member
Username: Kitarolivier
Post Number: 17
Registered: 4-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 03, 2007 - 4:12 am: | |
Thank you both for your answer.
Frank : It is true that it does not matter in a panoramic viewer, but when the viewer starts, it shows what you want to show without specifying a default angle.
David : I didn't purchase the batcher 
and I'm not sure it could work with multirow 360x180 panoramas.
John, if you are looking this thread, what about a new image menu 'center panorama', and when clicking on a panorama, the clicked position becomes the horizontal center od the panorama.
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David Richardson
New member
Username: Customdavid
Post Number: 16
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 03, 2007 - 10:55 am: | |
Olivier -
I have not tried multi row stitching, so I just went and reviewed the directions. Since the first step is to stitch each row independently, I don't see why using this technique on each row, rotating them the same amount would not work. After that the regular steps for multi stitching would apply.
Might be worth a test run. |
Olivier Detry
New member
Username: Kitarolivier
Post Number: 18
Registered: 4-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 03, 2007 - 11:38 am: | |
David, you are right : I can stich individual rows, rotate them, and the stich them together.
But then, after rotating the rows, I have to start a new project. If you've read the multirow tutorial, you've seen that when keeping in 1 project, you can change settings or re-stitch a row (color/brightness adjustments i.e.), it will regenerate all images depending on the row (rotation 90° clockwise, assembling rows, rotating 90° counter-clockwize, resize, crop, etc...) till the final picture -thanks PF.
And I won't be able to test your method, as I do not own the batcher .
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David Richardson
New member
Username: Customdavid
Post Number: 17
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 03, 2007 - 11:48 am: | |
Your right you would have to start a new project. I still think this would work, I do not have any multi row images to try this with, but don't see why it would be any different as long as the starting points for each row are all the same.
BTW, you do not have to have the batch version to do this. I did it manually for a long time. Since I run often 400-500 individual images a day when I am shooting I wanted a faster way to handle this. I wrote the batch wizard to speed up the process and added the rotation feature so I was not having to go back and do this manually. |
John Strait
Moderator
Username: Jstrait
Post Number: 310
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 03, 2007 - 2:37 pm: | |
Lots of ideas in this thread! I'll try to respond to them in reverse order.
- The batch processor won't work for multi-row panoramas. It only does fully-automatic stitching, but the upper and lower rows require placing stitch points (usually in semi-automatic stitching). So these rows cannot be done by the batch processor. Sorry.
- Olivier--I didn't understand why you need to start a new project. But maybe we don't need to go down that thread.
- It's easy to set the default view in a panorama viewer from The Panorama Factory by drawing a hotspot and selecting the "This is the default view" checkbox.
- I agree that it would be nice to have a command that lets you choose the center point of the panorama to be different from the one determined by the order and number of photos. I have wanted it myself from time to time. I have learned to start shooting my pictures by facing directly away from what should be centered. Then everything comes out right automatically.
- But that doesn't always work if you're not thinking ahead or if you change your mind later about the image composition. I'll think about putting a "recenter" command in a future release. But read the next two items for how to do it yourself.
- To recenter an already stitched image in PF, follow these steps:
- This works only for images that have been stitched and cropped to exactly 360 degree (the default for full circle panoramas).
- Select the 360-degree cropped thumbnail.
- Write down the width and height of the image in pixels (shown above the thumbnail).
- Choose the Array command (New image menu).
- Select Horizontal, set Spacing to 0 and enter 2 for the Repeat count.
- Click OK.
- Now you have an image that has two copies of the panorama making a 720 degree image.
- Apply the Crop command (New image menu).
- Enter the width and height of the 360-degree cropped image that you wrote down in step 3.
- Select the Fixed width checkbox.
- Use the mouse to drag the crop box left/right until you get the composition you want.
- Click Approve.
- Or, if you don't mind restitching, just change the order of the thumbnails before stitching so that the center of the panorama is in the middle of the list of thumbnails. You can make small composition changes by right-clicking the "Cropped" thumbnail and choosing the Show source command. You can drag the cropping rectangle left/right about 1/2 the width of the original images. Click Approve to recrop with the new image composition.
Hope this helps! |
Olivier Detry
New member
Username: Kitarolivier
Post Number: 19
Registered: 4-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 03, 2007 - 3:40 pm: | |
Thank you John, I tried and it worked fine.
Do you have an autmatic text generator to write so long posts  ?
One more suggestion to your *long*long*long*long* to-do list : a few more helpers in the cropping to help centering (i.e. middle horz. mark, vert. marks for the 2/3 & 1/3 positions, etc..).
I believe one day this program will do everything -including coffee : there is an USB device that ... no I was kidding  -
PF is already wonderful, and I guess you will make it even more complete.
Thank you John ! |
David Richardson
New member
Username: Customdavid
Post Number: 18
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 03, 2007 - 9:31 pm: | |
 Sorry about the confusion about the batch processor. I realize that it does not work with multi rows, I only mentioned it in my first message because it was unclear on Olivier's original post that this was a multi row image.
On a personal note though, I have run into problems when I have tried to start my shoot 180 degrees off my primary image. When lighting shows a lot of light and shadow I have ended up with my "key" image either too dark or too light.
To avoid this sometimes I take it from both directions, just to make sure that I get the right light. I have the camera lock down the exposure to ensure that I do not get other problems with lighting.
As far as Olivier's comment on having PF do everything, I agree! I would like it to drive over pick the shot, process it and upload it to my site. |
Olivier Detry
New member
Username: Kitarolivier
Post Number: 21
Registered: 4-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, July 04, 2007 - 3:01 am: | |
Yeah ! And it could be able to rotate the camera on the panoramic head and take the shots automatically  |
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