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Panoramas Part 2

Lesson 13 from: Adobe Photoshop 101

Ben Willmore

Panoramas Part 2

Lesson 13 from: Adobe Photoshop 101

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

13. Panoramas Part 2

Next Lesson: Intro to Photoshop

Lessons

Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Adobe Bridge Basics

27:08
2

Sorting Images in Adobe Bridge

29:24
3

Processing Images in Adobe Camera Raw Part 1

29:42
4

Processing Images in Adobe Camera Raw Part 2

34:57
5

Image Processing Q&A

08:13
6

Contrast and Color

18:15
7

Adjustment Brush and Auto Mask

16:19

Lesson Info

Panoramas Part 2

Now do you remember when I told it to scale them down? It asked me a location and I told it to use my desk top well, if I look at my desktop by looking in the upper left of bridge here's his desktop inside desktop you'll see there's a folder called clutter that's where I put all my really stuff whenever I teach a class just throw it all in there so whatever is on my desktop I actually look like a clean person it's all in there but then below that is a fuller called j peg that's the folder that the image processor created it will be named with whatever file format you told it to save it so if you told it to save both j pegs and tiffs you're going with two folders one called j peg one cold tiff so if I click on that I'll see what's in there here they are and let's stitch him let's see how fast it goes because we have small images so I'm gonna take command a for select all tools photo shop photo merge of course it's busy? Yes, it gives me that long list just click okay? And because it's n...

ot working with the high resolution full size images it shouldn't take that long now it's still a lot of images so it's not like it's going to be instantaneous but it will be workable and then I could decide if I was using the best merging settings, and I might also do this if I was just going to stitch this and put it on the internet, you know, that kind of thing, but you see that the distortion is in there the way it's curved might not mean the best thing that I want eso at this point, I might come in here and say, well, I don't know if that's the best settings to use, I can visualize cropping that a little bit, and I could just go right back to bridge go right back to the exact same choice we used a moment ago. And then, of course, it's busy uh, I can force it to use one of the other settings, and over time you sometimes will get more used to watch one to use like you'll look at this and you'll notice that it's bending and you notice it was bending inward kind of fashion, and you'll see that in here, there's one right here where it seems to bend inward fashion. That means auto probably chose that choice when it did the stitching, and so you might decide that instead you're going to force it into something different like perspective click okay, and now it's just going to do it again, and we can compare the two pack you can try all of them if you want if it's really important panorama it's rare for me to try a mall but on occasion I get a troublesome panorama where I might need to but it's really nice to be able to do it with lower resolution version first to figure out what setting is best before I commit to doing it where I might have to wait for forty minutes for to finish actually this looks about the same which means it was most likely the method that the auto choice chose to use but I could do it again she's another setting and when you're done each one of them you can come over here with the crop tool and his crop it in and say, well, can I get away with that? I don't want to cut off the top of the space needle there I didn't mean to do that policy I'm out there and you can zoom up on this there's ah zoom tool on the left side of my screen that toolbox where there are some keyboard shortcuts for it but I might come in here get it relatively close the space needle but about there is his closest I'd want to get it and what you're going to find is when you stitch this sometimes you're going to find where it looks like there's a lot of artifacts and your image ignore the checkerboard that's here for now and instead, look at these little things that look like little seems in it, those aaron actually in your picture, it has to do with photo shop trying to display your image quickly it's a massively big picture and it's scaling it down to fit your screen and it's just doing it to quickly that that is where the edge of the pictures are, but if I were to actually combine these layers together by choosing merge visible, those lines would go away. My child, she's undo meaning when you're done. If you see any of those worm like lines in your image, there are on ly there because it's trying to very quickly scale down your picture to show it, and if you were to zoom upto one hundred percent view where you can see all the details, you wouldn't see them or if you combine the layers together, you also won't see them, so don't freak out about those then what we're going to talk about. Actually, tomorrow is hotter, do retouching and we do retouching will be able to do things like fill in the part of the sky that's missing, I'll just do it so you can see what the end result looks like I'll merge these layers together, but I'm not going to describe what I'm doing right now. And after a few seconds here do you see how it's filled in it's not absolutely perfect in this case I can see part of the sky right here that looks little dark but it didn't take long for me to get that filled in and I could just touch up the a couple of little spots that didn't quite look right in the end result can get it to look right very quickly uh so in this case let's see how large this particular version of our panorama is? Remember? This is a scaled down version would go all the way to the end here but considering that it's scaled down in here I can actually get a full screen oh it's a pretty long big panorama in the real version I can see the people up in there and there will be a few issues I think down here in the water you might see an abrupt change in one of the the, uh what you call it the wakes yeah like here there's a slight kink but if we were to stitch the full size version of that and then zoom up on it I'll show you the amount of detail we would be able to see because I'll just look at the one raw file if it's going to render here there you go that's how much detail you'd be able to see if you stitch the final one and then you can print the thing massive because it's that's a lot of detail if you think about how big that, uh, portion would be in the overall picture, once we stitch it together, then we can save it out, you can save it in, you know, assortment of file formats you can't save, it is raw, though you can't save things is raw because raw means rod dated that came from your camera, and this is not raj dated that came from your camera. Having said that in photo shop, if I go up until it, I want to save something by choosing save or save as there is a choice in here that's called, uh least there you used to be, I think it's still there photoshopped raw, just so you know, that has absolutely nothing to do with camera or the raw files that come from your camera that's an old feature in there where if you wanted to send an image to some scientific instrument or something and it needed to be in just raw format meaning it's just numbers sitting in there where it describes there's this much read this much green in this much blue in each little square across your image that would do it for you, and I have yet to meet anybody who uses that, but it's confuses people because they see the word broad, and they're thinking I'm just going to save it right back into a raw file. Yeah, that's the file format you never use. If you're working a scientific laboratory with some weird stuff, you might find a use for it, but I've yet to run into somebody that uses it all right. So panorama as we got the idea of general stitching, we got the idea that we can scale things down and test things who want teo, and we got the idea we need to merge the layers when we're done crop and save it out when it comes to tomorrow. Uh, and the next day, mainly the third day is when we're going to learn about retouching and that's when we'll be able to get much better at coming in there and getting rid of those empty areas looked like a checkerboard because sometimes cropping them out makes it so you crop out too much of the image, like we would have cropped off the top of the space needle in seattle. Part of that, though, could be avoided by whenever you shoot a panorama is zoom out the little of bit on your camera. So you have a little bit of extra space because it is going to be bending your picture a bit to get them all to fit together and so if we have a little bit of extra in there just a little then we have a little bit more flexibility when it comes to the cropping. All right, so any questions before we do have a few questions about panoramas loved to hit these first well ron star and one other person can you stitch multiple rows of images? Yes, you can stitch multiple rows so if you wantto shoot a grid you know like for images wide and then move down form or hoof down form or to cover a wide area yes, you could do that in fact I create ridiculous things called panel lodges which is a panorama made out of a collage of photos that are shot at random angles meaning I could come in and shoot this room by taking my camera and going click rotating this way moving over click rotate this way move over click and just shoot all sorts of random shots like that I could even zoom my lens slightly and as long as the overlap by in that case probably about fifty percent because they're so rotated I can even shoot some upside down all that kind of stuff it's going to be able to rotate them all, put them all together and create a big uh, image out of it, I've done that many times. Great. Uh, yeah question here. Grab the group to do that, though, do you have to have because these were stitched together horizontally. But if you have the four across the four bottom, is there a special feature button you push to tell that tells it to do that? No, there's not. It just figures it out because it's not just generically going in taking one image in assuming the next images to the right of it in assuming the next dimensions, the right it's actually comparing the contents of those pictures, then it's trying to figure out how would they bet fit together? And if it needs to rotate one by thirty degrees and leave the other one straight, it could do that easily. And there, in fact, some settings when your emerging your panorama that if you're looking for a particular style, you can force it into it. I don't know that I have the proper image is here to do it, but I'll just show you where the options are if I go in here to photo merge, one of the choices here is called collage in what collage does is it khun on ly scale? In rotate your pictures, it cannot distort them can't bend them and therefore it's going to look more like really photographs that you have set on the table, you know how you could take a bunch of photos and tape up to your fridge and make your own panorama out of scotch tape and things it's more like doing that, and that will rotate in scale, and I might turn off the check box at the bottom that's called blend images together, which means don't make it seamless, make it more like it's on my fridge, where you'd see where one image ends and the next begins, and then I click okay, and it will only scale and rotate the images to get them to line up in this particular case about charl dramatic would be excited, planted ahead of time, but I can see where the edge of this photo is. Can you see it at the bottom straight line coming straight up? And you can even add things like drop shadows, so it separates better? It feels like the one is almost floating above the other. If you did that with a bunch of photos, it khun b a really interesting look where it looks literally like photos on a table that you've manually lined up so there's a whole bunch of things you could do there, but you could do vertical seeking new horizontal, or you do a grid or even random angles his long as there's enough overlap the time it's going to have a problem is when there's not very much uh what's the word distinctive detail if it's just blue sky and you're doing weird angles or doing a grid sometimes it will mess up and put one image somewhere where it shouldn't be because it's exactly the same as another part of the sky it's that you need some distinct dese detail in each frame if at all possible. So if you have a panorama has got a blue sky if when I shoot the sky it could include a little bit of the landscape so it has some reference that's got a unique shape tow line up with something else. Otherwise you will occasionally find it doing odd things if he have too many squares of just straight blue sky because they could go anywhere you know, uh, that kind of thing great. Got a question from, uh, serious and one of the person wants to know how many images approximately can you fit into a panoramic shoot our there? Is there some kind of limit to that? I have no idea if there's a limit all I can tell you is I've done it with over one hundred fifty images and if you need to go above that and you run into a limit, you I'll give you a prize beer something because tang you know but I have not hit a practical limit yet other than the amount of memory in my machine what I've had to do on occasion is ditch panoramas and sections where I'm going to grab these forty images emerge them together and then do merge visible to get him as a single layer then I'm going to do the next section of the panorama the next forty pictures merged those together merge the layers and then do the next and then take those three resulting files in stitch those because my computer simply didn't have enough memory capacity and process or speed to deal with it but it didn't mean photoshopped couldn't deal with it question in the collage that you mentioned in the where you do a number of different views of the same yes overlook the euskal ash teo merge them or these photo I can use that I use photo emerged to do it is just a matter of the choice that I used there sometimes I'll see if I can find one quick but um it's just a matter of that what I want the end results look like do I want the photos to look distorted whereby they will look bent here I'll have an example in just a moment here or do I want them to look more traditional where they're not bent and so here are a few examples on dh okay sorry top of my head here and see how fast I could react so here it is a panel lage here's me shooting it click click, click see different angles click, click click click just trying to get to overlap enough but I'm really changing my angles and there's the end result this is if I used the setting called collage the one that could onley scale in rotate and when I was done, I added drop shadow in white borders to them, which we can learn how to do later on when we talk about layers tomorrow but notice that none of the pictures looked distorted they look like pictures you have on the table and that's because I use the setting called collage these though notice how they're bent no, because I didn't use the setting called collage I either had it set to auto or I chose one of the ones that purposely bends the photos yeah, but I added a drop shadow between them so he can get the separation there's another one that is using the bending kind um there's one that one is also using a bending because I can see that some of these are are at an angle and so on so you get the idea that that you can do that and I've done this many pictures high rez that's how many pictures I don't know but that's probably sixty pictures or something like that? I lived in this house right here at one point in my life. That's awesome! All right, maybe one or two more here really quick with got showed griffis when creating a panorama can you align the layers yourself after looking at the merge? Like if it's not merged it exactly the way you would want it, can you move? Move it yourself? The problem is it didn't just merge it. It also matched the brightness. And so what you could do is have it re emerging, but turn that check box that was called blend images together off. So what you're saying then is on ly do the alignment step? Don't do the additional step that makes it a seamless panorama where the brightness perfectly matches the color purpose be matches and you can't see the edges. If you did that just by turning off the check box that was at the bottom of the photo merge dialog box, then you could manually move around as much as you want afterwards. And if you decided at some point, you then wanted it to be seamless where it matched the colors there's, a special command under the edit menu called auto blend player, and that would make it seamless. So I know that sound a little weird, but what it is is all it is is do photo merch with blend images it uh together turned off it was the check box at the bottom of the photo merged I'll rearrange the images however you want and if you finally wanted to be seamless, go to the edit menu and photo shop and choose auto blend images and it would do the last step all that check box at the bottom of photo merge does is run a feature called auto blend layers so it's you're just doing it after you rearrange some things so I don't have that answered it for them or not, but perfect one more and this may be something that you're looking to cover later cayenne and two others were wondering can you do if you could address banding in panorama is when they're still together how to prevent and how to fix when it happens sure banding and that's usually going to see in the skies where you're supposed to have a smooth blue sky and instead you see banding which is also known a stair stepping or the official name is poster ization all it means is where something should be smooth instead you see distinct changes in brightness instead of a smooth gradation between them yes to prevent that you want to change a setting that's actually in camera show it to you got to go back to my uh piles alright in camera at the bottom of camera raw there is a line of text that's in blue you see it down here get that out of the way on there a second ago do you see this text down here? The bottom on my screen that's the settings that's going to be used when you open your picture in photo shop that's also the settings that will be used when you stitch the panorama through photo shop and there's one part of that sighting right here this is a bit what that means is give me the amount of information that a j peg file would give and eight bit is usually fine for panoramas but if you get banning in your skies you need that number to be higher. So if you notice benny in your skies click on this line of text at the bottom of came a wrong this will open and in here there's just one setting you need to change and that is right here it says depth it really means bit depth not that you know what that means but you know technical term it just means how many brightness levels can camera delivered a photo shop and if you change it to sixteen bit it's now instead of giving photo shop about two hundred fifty brightness levels between black and white it's giving it as many as it had in the original file brightness level wise and it could make it so your skies where you get banning will be smoother, and so that is one thing that'll fix it. This is also what's going to fix it if you ever get the banding let's say you still got the banning and you try to fix the banding using something called the healing brush. The healing brush will look terrible when you try to fix a lot of skies uh, and it's also because of this setting, if this is at sixteen bit healing brush will work fine and create smooth skies. If this is that eight bit, it'll usually work, but on occasion you run into issues where you need to bump it up. Now the problem with changing that you might think let's, change it for every image it doubles. The file size doubles the file style, and so if you used it for everything when you get to panorama is twice as big a files isn't always worth it. So I only change it to sixteen bit when I noticed the issue because not every image would have it if you notice banning in your panoramas, which over sixteen bit re stitch and then the next time you open a raw file, set it back over to eight so your files aren't overly big

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a Creativelive Student
 

Ben, thanks again for this course. I have taken and purchased quite a few of your courses to date. I keep thinking I will only watch to make sure I am on the right track and you always bring more to the table than the last course. Your teaching methods are the best, sorry to all the other instructors from Creative Live, but you are very easy to understand and you speak in layman's terms so we all can understand. I am following your instructions and working along with your files and it is the best! It is hard to keep up with you even when I watch you on one computer and work with the same files on another computer, to do what you are doing...impossible but I gain so much by trying. You provide so much info on each topic, it is amazing. Thanks to Karen for the PDFs, she does a fantastic job and also, for her templates/layout documents. Thanks again and to anyone who thinks this is too much money for all the videos, the exercise files and the instruction PDF, I am sorry to say but you are mistaken.

John Taylor
 

Like all of the Creative Live courses, excellent training. Ben does a great job of explaining the entry part of Photoshop. A lot of things cleared up in my head and i like his easy pace into this complex program. Thanks Ben.

Cecily
 

I had several "lightbulb" moments with this class, after many years of photography and when you think you know it all, you don't :) Ben Willmore is an excellent tutor, with his many years of experience teaching PS, he obviously knows the types of things a lot of us struggle to understand. I learnt a lot about Bridge, and have since implemented these things into my everyday workflow, so much easier to sort out what I want to keep etc.. Thanks so much Ben and Creative Live. Thanks also to Ben's wife for her amazing work creating the Guide etc. Even though being in Australia, I pay more for the courses (the conversion rate, the aussie dollar is low at the moment) it's very worth it to me. I have paid more for courses here, and learnt next to nothing. Thanks again.

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