Digital Light & Color

I had to shoot a 'curtain call' that was wider than my camera lens so I took several shots panning across the actors.

In the past I have used Microsoft's Image Composite Editor but decided to see if I could replicate the action in PWP8.

First question. Can I work with two images that support two trees of transformations? I'll never get the tones to match properly until I see them in the aligned composite image. If I can't I think I'll stay with the Microsoft system.

Second question based on the fact that 'automatic' comes up with this mess.

Clearly I need to do some 'refining'

Should I have the alignment multi-point or do I use the two point?

I felt the best place to make the join was the pillar to the left of the lady in green. Using multi-point I put the right hand point 2 on that pillar using the overlay image which is the left hand shot. As soon as I do that I distort the image making all the actors short and fat. I then went to the input image and tried to put points 1 and 3 on the pillar but that seemed to retain the overlay image.

I am working with the smaller Overlay thumbnail as per the Help screen.

Question Three. If I get these points set correctly do I then to refine the two images with masks to hide the bits I am not using.

Sorry! I have a lot to learn and maybe I am asking the impossible!

Tony

An alternative free product : Auto Pano Giga

https://hdrmaps.com/blog/autopano-giga-is-now-free/

With a few tweaks it can be installed
https://blog.arnaudfrich.com/photo-pano ... mment-6887

Stitching panoramas is best done with specialized software. See the document https://www.dl-c.com//Documents/Image%2 ... oramas.pdf.

Thanks Pierre and Jonathan.

Wise advice as always from this forum.

T

I have had a crack with Hugin.

It needed me to mask the face of the man in pink to stop half his face coming from both images.

However I probably will go back to Microsoft Image Composite editor. Partly because it did not need that tweak but, for me, more importantly it generated some false imagery to allow me to widen what was being covered in the two shots. Look at the extra it has generated (AI rules OK!) at the bottom and the top.

If you use ICE, you can mask areas using PNG format with an Alpha layer mask.

Thanks about the ICE mask. My challenge would be adding more to the Hugin shots to widen the crop. All I have found to date is a GIMP plugin.

tonygamble wrote: ↑March 14th, 2025, 12:52 pm ... My challenge would be adding more to the Hugin shots to widen the crop. All I have found to date is a GIMP plugin.

Could you elaborate on your idea ? I do not understand what you intend to do.

Good to see Kolor AutoPano is available once again after having been discontinued. It used to be my primary software before it was abandoned in 2018.

However, when I downloaded and installed it from the link it never worked -- it just exited immediately without even displaying a window.

Pierre,

You will see there is a bit more at the bottom and top in this finished ICE version
This is what Hugin did.
This is ICE before I ask it to 'auto-fill'. Not a lot it found to add, but it gave the feet at the bottom a bit more air-room.


Worth having in my experience.