Question for Bernard Languillier and other stitchers

[John Camp]

I don't stitch, but I have a question: What happens if you use stitching software in a situation where the background is very stable, but the foreground is very active -- for example, you set up the camera in a typical stitching style, then make a series of photos. But instead of a standard landscape, it's a crowd scene in the street, where you see some unmoving buildings in the background. Will the software still match the matching parts of the background (the buildings?) Or will it be lost? Will it just have the effect of edge-pasting some photos? Thanks for any help here.

JC

[elf]

I don't stitch, but I have a question: What happens if you use stitching software in a situation where the background is very stable, but the foreground is very active -- for example, you set up the camera in a typical stitching style, then make a series of photos. But instead of a standard landscape, it's a crowd scene in the street, where you see some unmoving buildings in the background. Will the software still match the matching parts of the background (the buildings?) Or will it be lost? Will it just have the effect of edge-pasting some photos? Thanks for any help here.

JC

It depends. Photoshop Extended has several merge features that can either add all of the pixels in an area or just stable pixels.  You can take the proverbial foamy waterfall shot by blending multiple sharp images, or you can create an street scene that is full of moving people and cars but only see the non-moving elements.

Other stitching software may require a lot of manual editing to do the same.

[BernardLanguillier]

I don't stitch, but I have a question: What happens if you use stitching software in a situation where the background is very stable, but the foreground is very active -- for example, you set up the camera in a typical stitching style, then make a series of photos. But instead of a standard landscape, it's a crowd scene in the street, where you see some unmoving buildings in the background. Will the software still match the matching parts of the background (the buildings?) Or will it be lost? Will it just have the effect of edge-pasting some photos? Thanks for any help here.

Most good stitching softwares do a pretty good job at deciding by themselves what needs to be in the final image and mask out the rest. It is often possible to output a layered PS file that can enbale you to manually touch up the piece.

Cheers,
Bernard

[JohnBrew]

John, there are some excellent examples of stitching with crowds on the LUF (Leica Users Forum) under the Leica X1 group in the "Panaramas" thread. Look at the ones entitled "Tuscany". I was very impressed. I'm not sure if the poster said what stitching software he was using or not.

[kencameron]

My current stitching software (PtGui) allows me to mask areas of individual images to tell it to use them or not use them in the final stitch. That way you could choose to include only the pretty people in the crowd and get rid of the others.