To andyohare: stitching software

[mcclurec]

This was all done by hand, so to speak (PS7). The shooting was by hand as well.

The lines are there to help distinguish the fact that all the images are separate. Because of the lack of distance to the subject, distortion was inevitable. Rather than detract from the architecture, I wanted to use small white border to give the viewer a break from trying to figure out what would have been curved lines if I had used the normal technique I use with panoramas. That is also why I left the crooked frames and the fact that not all match up exactly.

As for “stitching software”, I have used many. But just like with auto exposure on the camera, I feel that they very limited uses even in the best of circumstances. A program can only guess what needs to be done and will try to mask its shortcomings. The user still has to help with the decision making and then you end up having to compensate for things the program is doing as well. I feel that I can work quicker and more accurately by doing the work myself. Taking into account the lenses, medium, subject, composition ect, I fell that I can create a much more complete image. Wth more complicated images (my San Diego Christmas is three matching panoramics into one final image- something like 40 layers) “stitching software” cant even begin to cope. As a result, I try to avoid the term stitching all together. I would rather call it the “blending” of images. To me if feels appropriate and accurate.

Ill get off my soap box now (I taught for four years) and love the discussion. Thanks for the chance……

[andyohare]

Well, I stand corrected! After looking at your other photos I can see you specialise in panoramas. On the other hand, I've seen some impressive results. I agree that you can't expect automatic tools to do everything for you. Long before I had a PC I tried to do this in the darkroom, tilting the enlarger to distort the image and trying to match the prints, with varying degrees of success. I'm thankful we now have the tools to give us a chance to produce images like yours.

[mcclurec]

EXCELLENT LINK! Thanks. I haven’t gone looking for a while. His work is much more technically driven than mine but most of what I do is similar to his description. I still like doing it manually though. All of the decisions made at each step contribute a lot to the final product in my opinion. His process still requires a lot of hands on decisions and seems to actually take longer ( I get a bit impatient at times, I want to see the image!). I can see an advantage to his program with a project like his main image (freeway overpass).