PHOTOSHOP (CC) 2015 - Photomerge abyss

[alatreille]

So, I went on and did the upgrade the other day...

I wasn't really thinking, but I had about 3 or 4 sets of panoramas I needed to stitch. These had all been shot on a tech cam, so the stitching wasn't really going to be an issue, everything should have lined up.

Photoshop 2015 would hang about 15% of the way through...it's been like that since Thursday.

I updated all my graphics card drivers etc etc....nothing...

Thankfully, I worked out how to reinstall PS 2014...all is good now.

Has anyone else come up with this problem?

[Paul2660]

I have not run into the problem but I am not surprised as 2014 had a similar problem when first released.

I pulled CC 2015 quickly once I realized I had lost 2014. Holding off on 2015 for now.

Paul

[alatreille]

Yeah.  I've gone back to 2014, and all is good now.
The really weird thing was lightroom would do the panorama stitch even when photoshop wouldn't.

But I don't trust the lightroom stitch for accuracy.

[Paul2660]

Actually I have found LR stitches very well. It solved a few I had done hand held of a suspension bridge that CC 2014, Ptgui and Autopano could not get. Plus LR allows you to work on the stick as a raw file with all the local adjustments. It is a pretty nice implementation.

I would love to see Capture One get a similar tool.

Paul

[alatreille]

Yeah - it is good. 
I'm just finding it hard to trust it because I've found some pretty weird errors over the last month.
What I like about the photoshop method is you can check the stitching lines...would love to see lightroom give you a intermediate step like this.

I do love being able to then edit the raw file as a whole.

C1- yes please.

[Ann JS]

Ps CC2015 offers two different way to make Panos:

The original PhotoMerge (via File/Automate);
 and the newer ACR method which works on the RAW files and allows you to use all the editing tools after the stitching is complete.

The Ps or Bridge-hosted ACR method starts from a multiple selection of files and is similar to the version in Lr but it works much more quickly in ACR itself.

[Stefan Ohlsson]

So, I went on and did the upgrade the other day...

I wasn't really thinking, but I had about 3 or 4 sets of panoramas I needed to stitch. These had all been shot on a tech cam, so the stitching wasn't really going to be an issue, everything should have lined up.

Did you use the old Photomerge or the new panorama function in ACR? I've tried the panorama function in ACR and in Lightroom, and the quality has been good if I started out with well done shots. But it will not solve all problems. If you start out with hand held images with bad alignment the finished image can be blurry in the transition zone.

[Chris Kern]

I've tried the panorama function in ACR and in Lightroom, and the quality has been good if I started out with well done shots. But it will not solve all problems. If you start out with hand held images with bad alignment the finished image can be blurry in the transition zone.

I think the raw merge in Lightroom—I haven't tried it with ACR, but I presume it works the same—is quite remarkable.  As you say, there will be alignment problems with handheld shots such as the attached example, but I've found that to be true with Photoshop's standard photomerge function.  I shoot panos just for fun, always handheld, and don't make large prints; being able to process them without preparing all the individual frames first is a big win from my perspective (pun intended).  I presume anyone looking to produce exhibition-quality results would at least use a tripod and probably a pano head.

[Derek Kemp]

Alatreille
What graphics card are you using?
I had exactly the same issue. My fix turned out to be hardware based. The computer was a new build and I had held off buying a new graphics card. I was using the internal Intel 4600 graphics function.
Evidently not good enough.  I bought a Geforce GTX660. (I'm not into video or 3D). The fix was imediate.

However, I will mention that: I had noticed that while the Intel graphics proc. did try to do the merge, just before it hung, it was not nearly as fast as with cc2014. (the progress bar would hesitate).
I have noticed that the progress bar still isn't as fast as cc2014 but it does work. I am assuming that there must be quite a difference in the mathematical algorithms being processed in the new cc2015 version.

Hope this is of some help.
Derek.

[Paul2660]

I have a similar shot of a suspension bridge, hand held, horizontal stitched.  I did not go vertical for some reason that day. 

Nothing I had would stitch the bridge and get the wires right, CC, ptgui, autopano, etc.  I tried LR and was very surprised it got it right. 

I believe some of the advantage is that you can stitch a raw file.

Early in January, I did a 2 part horizontal stitch with my Nikon D810, and 20mm 1.8.  2 stitches.  No nodal all hand held.  Sure I know I broke all the rules.  But the light was fading fast. 

There was a line of clouds that paralleled the horizon and no matter what I did, none of the software would stitch the clouds.  They all got the horizon, but could not wrap the clouds.  This was using a LR tiff.  I went back and imported the tif files and tried to use LR for the stitch.  Same problem. 

Then I went back to the raw files, that had been worked up in LR, and exported and tried to make the stitch.  It worked perfectly.  The only issue is that all the local adjustments were dropped and the files were converted back to raw/dng with no adjustments. 

So I learned 2 things.

1.  LR and stitching raw files may get around some of problems other tools can't
2.  stitch the files first, create the dng, then work on them with local adjustments as all the previous adjustments will be stripped during the
     pano creation. Or so it seems.

Very impressive. 

Paul