Need Photoshop help

[InCreator]

I spent last weekend on trying out my new tripod and shooting some panorama photos.

This is how it turned out..
www.increator.pri.ee/pano/
(enable Javascript to view 360-degree photos)

Problem is, they all vary too much, thus resulting a crappy panorama. Now, I don't have an eye of photographer yet nor good skills at photoshop...

Is there a way to easily make sets of photos (8-10) match in terms of tone, contrast and brightness? Some macro or something? I tried to do this by eye, but even if I get first few about similar, first and last vary like day and night... Three PS auto-adjusters don't work neither... I want to adjust ALL photos to same properties. Or some other program to do this? Plugin?

Or some tips to photograph better maybe?

Ah, and I have PS CS4.

[Haddas]

cut the three images together into one single images BEFORE using autoadjust and see if that makes a difference.

[InCreator]

Well, not really. Mixing non-similar images into one panorama makes any balancing it absolutely impossible instead. Auto Color, Contrast etc works on whole image, not portions of it, I think. If it fixes one portion, other one which was right becomes wrong, etc.

Em, just a thought but wouldn't this all work better if I convert them all to grayscale, make grayscale images match in terms of contrast/brightness, and then somehow apply this to RGB also? How to do such thing? Maybe shoot RAW images?

I imagine I need something like this:
I define sky on initial picture and somehow tell Photoshop to adjust all blues on other pictures so their sky would be same color. Then grass, and adjust greens, etc.
Would it work and make everything else right too? How to do it?

[Buckethead]

maybe this program will work for you:

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

[Wreck]

Have you tried the inbuilt photomerge option in photoshop?

I'm only on CS3, but I assume its the same on CS4.

Go to File -> Automate -> Photomerge.

For details on what it does I guess check the help documentation, it's pretty straightforward.

I haven't played with the function really so I don't know how good the results are, but it's worth a shot.

Hope this helps you anyway.

[Khris]

I use AutoPano Pro, it's the best for me so far, and I've tried a few.

I'm not really sure how your pics would end up looking so differently from each other though. It shouldn't take longer than a few minutes tops to shoot all the pics for one panorama, and the lighting conditions usually don't change within a time frame that small (I'm usually more worried about moving clouds or cars).

The RAW images should have the same white balance and thus the blue of the sky should be the same in all pics.
Make sure the camera's white balance setting isn't set to some auto option.

And of course, any adjustments are made after the panorama is stitched together, as has been pointed out already.

The only thing you can do to make two pictures more similar is to play around with the white balance setting i.e. using the grey color picker in the levels window. Alternatively, you can shift the pic's hue or use the color replacer. But especially the last two methods are bound to screw things up more than they help, and shouldn't be necessary anyway.

[Trent R]

I'd also add Levels to Khris's list of tools. It's pretty easy to use, so don't even bother with Auto-Level.


~Trent

[InCreator]

Make sure the camera's white balance setting isn't set to some auto option.

Oh.
There's the devil.
If camera was aimed at house or trees, thus having more of darker area in view, camera probably automatically adjusted WB. I used full auto so I wouldn't worry about focus and blur.
That's how things got messy, I think. It's apparent from both panoramas too...

Smarter next time!

[Trent R]

I think the two panoramic pics you have linked in the OP look very nice. So far I've only found one mistake (on the blue car).


~Trent