Ok guys boring Saturday so I was fooling around with my camera. I have a simple point and click (S3IS) so there isn't much I can do. There are no takers for my fully functional kidneys (slightly used) so I have to do without a DSLR. Most of you guys have killer box configurations (well atleast in your signatures 
) and really huge ass screens. Wouldn't it be nifty if you could have a wallpaper that is personalized, tweaked and sized to fit your monitors?
Items Required:
One camera (I have a Canon S3IS, but any other point and click will do too)
One cheap tripod (Optional if you have really steady hands )
One copy of Adobe Photoshop CS2 (Compulsory, CS3 should work too but no exp with it)
A little patience
Process:
Actually the process is quite easy and doesn't require much work. Find a nice place to shoot from. Preferably an open field, mountain-top or the roof of your house (the last one might get you into trouble if you have pretty neighbours). Position your camera in such a way that it has maximum coverage of the scene in front of you (i.e. you can see the entire panoramic view by turning the camera at 45 degree angles around a vertical axis).
Now start from one end of the view and take a picture. Rotate a little (not more than 45 degrees) and take another. Take as many pictures as you like within say a field of view of 110 degrees (Have a look at the figure which shows how images should overlap). The idea is take a picture, locate some easily identifiable edge on the right hand side of the image and then turn the camera a little to the right. Repeat so as to capture the entire scene. Ensure that the scene doesn't go beyond 90 degrees on either side, as you will get a royally skewed finish.
An alternative method is to take a picture and move the tripod along a straight line to your right and then take the next one.
Once you are done, copy the images to your PC and fire up photoshop.
In photoshop go to FIle -> Automate -> Photmerge. Ensure that the checkbox at the bottom (Attempt to Automatically arrange Source Images) is checked.
Select all the photos you just took and let Photoshop do the hard work. A preview window should appear that might look a little weird. You should now be at the preview screen. If you followed the method where you rotated the camera ( as opposed to shifting it along a straight line), change the Settings radio box to Perspective. Also set it to Cylindrical Mapping. The image should look panoramic but with twisted edges. We'll fix that next.
Once you're satisfied with the results Hit Ok to get back to your photoshop session. Now select the Crop Tool and drag around the image to exclude all the edges. Try and cut a rectangle such that only the distorted parts of the images are excluded.
That's about it. After this you could use other tools like Levels, Curves and Hue/Saturation to further fine tune your panorama. Fool around a bit until you get a pretty picture that you could use as a wallpaper or generally show off.
Here is what mine looks like (yes the view from my terrace is awful
). This is only a preview. The original file is 18MB.
Have fun!
) and really huge ass screens. Wouldn't it be nifty if you could have a wallpaper that is personalized, tweaked and sized to fit your monitors?Items Required:
One camera (I have a Canon S3IS, but any other point and click will do too)
One cheap tripod (Optional if you have really steady hands
)One copy of Adobe Photoshop CS2 (Compulsory, CS3 should work too but no exp with it)
A little patience
Process:
Actually the process is quite easy and doesn't require much work. Find a nice place to shoot from. Preferably an open field, mountain-top or the roof of your house (the last one might get you into trouble if you have pretty neighbours). Position your camera in such a way that it has maximum coverage of the scene in front of you (i.e. you can see the entire panoramic view by turning the camera at 45 degree angles around a vertical axis).
Now start from one end of the view and take a picture. Rotate a little (not more than 45 degrees) and take another. Take as many pictures as you like within say a field of view of 110 degrees (Have a look at the figure which shows how images should overlap). The idea is take a picture, locate some easily identifiable edge on the right hand side of the image and then turn the camera a little to the right. Repeat so as to capture the entire scene. Ensure that the scene doesn't go beyond 90 degrees on either side, as you will get a royally skewed finish.
An alternative method is to take a picture and move the tripod along a straight line to your right and then take the next one.
Once you are done, copy the images to your PC and fire up photoshop.
In photoshop go to FIle -> Automate -> Photmerge. Ensure that the checkbox at the bottom (Attempt to Automatically arrange Source Images) is checked.
Select all the photos you just took and let Photoshop do the hard work. A preview window should appear that might look a little weird. You should now be at the preview screen. If you followed the method where you rotated the camera ( as opposed to shifting it along a straight line), change the Settings radio box to Perspective. Also set it to Cylindrical Mapping. The image should look panoramic but with twisted edges. We'll fix that next.
Once you're satisfied with the results Hit Ok to get back to your photoshop session. Now select the Crop Tool and drag around the image to exclude all the edges. Try and cut a rectangle such that only the distorted parts of the images are excluded.
That's about it. After this you could use other tools like Levels, Curves and Hue/Saturation to further fine tune your panorama. Fool around a bit until you get a pretty picture that you could use as a wallpaper or generally show off.
Here is what mine looks like (yes the view from my terrace is awful
). This is only a preview. The original file is 18MB.
Have fun!
)... or else remember end points to match with concluding shot and use Exposure Lock to prevent the exposure to vary in different shots due to different lighting... and off-course manually stitching/composition of final shot in Photoshop. So far I've got pretty good job done in photoshop!!