Yes, I wish Panoweaver had SmartBlend or EnBlend. But for me, it makes no difference. I've been working in Photoshop for over 14 years and I have found exporting my image as a Photoshop file and manually blending the layers to give me the best results. I have complete and total control when I take the image over to Photoshop.

Of course this means more time working on each pano, but I price accordingly. My clients already know me for my skills in Photoshop and they are used to the pricetag. I suppose if I went after the low-end real estate market, I'd get a oneshot lens. But that's not where I want to be. I'd much rather spend all day making one tour than making 20 tours ten minutes each.

I'm still learning though and I'm quite proud of where I am so far. Eventually I'll be able to call myself a professional photographer.

Quote: Originally posted by emarts on October-18-2006

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Yes, I wish Panoweaver had SmartBlend or EnBlend. But for me, it makes no difference. I've been working in Photoshop for over 14 years and I have found exporting my image as a Photoshop file and manually blending the layers to give me the best results. I have complete and total control when I take the image over to Photoshop.

Of course this means more time working on each pano, but I price accordingly. My clients already know me for my skills in Photoshop and they are used to the pricetag. I suppose if I went after the low-end real estate market, I'd get a oneshot lens. But that's not where I want to be. I'd much rather spend all day making one tour than making 20 tours ten minutes each.

I'm still learning though and I'm quite proud of where I am so far. Eventually I'll be able to call myself a professional photographer.

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Quote: Originally posted by emarts on October-18-2006

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I have found exporting my image as a Photoshop file and manually blending the layers to give me the best results. I have complete and total control when I take the image over to Photoshop.

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Page four of this thread and the original question may have just been answered.

Emarts, could you give some detail on your PS file......do you open all 4 or 6 images (depending on lens) in PS and convert to .psd?  .......Is the image you are referring to already stitched and converted to .psd file.......Are you blending with layer mask?........

These are just a few questions that if answered with some detail may clear up the misunderstandings of this thread.  If you prefer not to share your work flow, I will continue my search on how the image(s) were corrected.

Thanks a bunch
Pixel

I agree with you guys on the blending issue. If we had "blending" options as mentioned I think overcoming "minor" exposure problems would make life easier. However, most exposure problems seem to be drastic. It happens to me sometimes. Mixed lighting is usually the culprit. But now that I think about it perhaps major expousure issues could be atleast toned down with a blending tool.

I must admit it would be nice to have a little more flexability in shooting like knowing that even if you get it wrong or you know its going to be a problem that you can fix it later with a blending tool. The more flexability we have in post production means the more flexability we have in shooting to begin with.

I have never used enblend. Can we take the PS file output from Panoweaver and manually blend it with enblend? This may help out on scenes that have major problems. This question should probably be on its own thread. I'll post a seperate topic.

Thanks for the Star award Smooth.....

General Lee

Pixelator, I may not be the best example to follow as I am by far not an expert with Panos just yet. But what I do is stitch in Panoweaver and save the file as a layered PSD file. Then I bring it into Photoshop and take the last two (bottom) layers -- which represent the sky and the ground, and move them to the top two layers. Then I take a very large brush an soften the hard-edged mask that Panoweaver makes on each layer until the whole image emerges as a blended scene. Some layers will be lighter or darker than others and depending on how bad it is, I will usually use curves to adjust them. Sometimes dodge/burn, sometimes (rarely) clone.

Here's a low res PSD file for you to examine:

www.beckgrouponline.com/vanderplaat/parlor_2.psd

Quote: Originally posted by emarts on October-19-2006

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Pixelator, I may not be the best example to follow as I am by far not an expert with Panos just yet.

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Emarts, no need to be an expert just to provide an answer.  I will say however that your website and pano's look to be done on an expert level.  That said I had a pano similiar to TCarr with exposure problems.  I have this morning been working with it and soon realized that I save the stitched image as a .psd.  Brightness/Contrast, Shadows/Highlights, etc. can be corrected. 

I did load your example and notice that you have 6 layers where mine has only 4.  I am assuming that this is where I did not do nadir and zenith shots.  Or have you created two new layers? 

With much research here and else where there is a lot of talk about converting to cubic for touch ups.  I converted the .psd pano to .psd cube.  I am able to get the nadir and zenith moved to the top two layer levels that way but can not reopen in PW4 as a .psd to convert back to pano.

I also would like to ask about  the lock icon on the layers palette. Can the correct adjustments be made or should these layers be duplicated?

Sorry for the long drawn out questions and again thank you for your reply.  I feel that your answer on this topic of how to correctly use photoshop layers and mask will clear up a lot of issues for a lot of people. 

The following link may help as well, although I have a bit more reading to do on the subject.  Tidying Up The Out Put Image

Once these original questions have been answered; PW4 used with a little PS should do a fine enough job with out having to go make yet another purchase of PTGui and enblend (although enblend is availabel for free).

Pixel

Yes, mine has 6 layers; one for each shot, including zenith and nadir.

Panoweaver saves the PSD file in partially locked layers. For some weird reason, I am not able to unlock them. I'll have to investigate as I never noticed this before. Perhaps this is an abberration with just this file. I'll have to dig up the project and check it again.

I'll letcha know.

Again, if Enblend or Smartblend can be used instead, that might make it easier.

smooth,

how u can a export the pano to flash ?

how???

vvilanova,

you can use pano2qtvr to produce flash pano.

r,
pixel