Question on the Auto Alignment feature in CS3 ext.

[laughingbear]

Greetings,

may be some of you can help with that little problem. I shot a 3x exposures handheld with my 7-14mm Zuiko lense. Back home I wanted to add a subtle HDR setting to the scene, but because  I did not use a tripod, Photomatix did not align the 3 pictures nicely.

So I went to photoshop.

1. opened a new document 8x12 inches

2. opened all three Tif and dragged them into the center of the document, so they appear as layers.

3. chose edit/auto align, reposition only, PS proceeded aligning based on content.

Afterwards the pictures were moced to the left upper corner, and on checking the layers, they appeard to be aligned.

4. I croped out a bit from each side to be on the safe side, and safed all 3 tif's

5. Back to photomatix, but still the picture looked the same misaligned, literally unusable.

Now, the shift is minimal really can not even see it without a close inspection of pixels. I have a steady hand and did not suffer from hangover. <grin>

My question is, how can I fix handheld misalignments of multi exposures prior to sending files to Photomatix.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have a couple of good shots, that I could not use in thsi particular workflow if there is no solution.

Thanks for reading!

Best,
Georg

[nma]

Greetings,

may be some of you can help with that little problem. I shot a 3x exposures handheld with my 7-14mm Zuiko lense. Back home I wanted to add a subtle HDR setting to the scene, but because  I did not use a tripod, Photomatix did not align the 3 pictures nicely.

So I went to photoshop.

1. opened a new document 8x12 inches

2. opened all three Tif and dragged them into the center of the document, so they appear as layers.

3. chose edit/auto align, reposition only, PS proceeded aligning based on content.

Afterwards the pictures were moced to the left upper corner, and on checking the layers, they appeard to be aligned.

4. I croped out a bit from each side to be on the safe side, and safed all 3 tif's

5. Back to photomatix, but still the picture looked the same misaligned, literally unusable.

Now, the shift is minimal really can not even see it without a close inspection of pixels. I have a steady hand and did not suffer from hangover. <grin>

My question is, how can I fix handheld misalignments of multi exposures prior to sending files to Photomatix.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have a couple of good shots, that I could not use in thsi particular workflow if there is no solution.

Thanks for reading!

Best,
Georg
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George,

I don't know how to do this. But it is an excellent question and one I would like to see answered.

I did look at your work flow. I wondered why you created a new document based on size. I would have either created a new document based on the pixel dimensions of the tifs or just copied the images into the same image as different layers.  Then after doing the align step, I would copy each aligned layer to a new file and export as tif.

I don't see how the files can be aligned in PS and not in photomatix. That can't be if your photoshop technique is correct.

[Tim Gray]

What version of Photomatix are you using?  3.x over 2.x has a significant improvement in alighment, also I find that aligning features gives a better result than the other (can't remember) option.

[laughingbear]

Hi Folks,

I got the solution concerning photoshop, courtesy of Jack Flesher from getdpi.com, who kindly pointed me into the right direction.

The principle proceedure I described is right, only I chose the wrong option in the menue of autoalign. After you opened a new document, dragged the pics to be aligned to it, and marked all picture layers, choose EDIT/AUTO ALIGNMENT and then choose AUTO instead of REPOSITION ONLY.

The advantage of Auto at the last step is it will free transform the layers to accommodate for the minor parallax and rotation errors you induced while capturing freehand.

Best,
Georg