Easiest way to combine sequenced images of a dive

[loonsailor]

I just got back from a few days in the mountains.  I got some shots of people jumping off high cliffs into an alpine lake.  For each jump, I captured about 5-7 shots with continuous exposures on my d300.  I'd like to combine each sequence into one shot, with the multiple images of the person moving down the rock face.  I guess I could do it in PS, making a bunch of masks and combining them as layers, but I was wondering if there's a more clever way to do it.

I have LR (my most-used tool), PS-CS5, photomatix, and a few odds and ends.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

just and idea. If you were shooting from a tripod it may be possible to subtract two images from each other, that would essentially render give you the falling people, may be usable as a decent mask.

Best regards
Erik

I just got back from a few days in the mountains.  I got some shots of people jumping off high cliffs into an alpine lake.  For each jump, I captured about 5-7 shots with continuous exposures on my d300.  I'd like to combine each sequence into one shot, with the multiple images of the person moving down the rock face.  I guess I could do it in PS, making a bunch of masks and combining them as layers, but I was wondering if there's a more clever way to do it.

I have LR (my most-used tool), PS-CS5, photomatix, and a few odds and ends.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[loonsailor]

Hi,

just and idea. If you were shooting from a tripod it may be possible to subtract two images from each other, that would essentially render give you the falling people, may be usable as a decent mask.

Best regards
Erik

Unfortunately, I was shooting hand-held, from a drifting canoe.  They definitely aren't in register.

[BobFisher]

Not being in register makes it more difficult.  

You could stack them as layers then manually mask the people diving into the Background layer.

You could try loading the images into a Stack then using (I think) the Median Stack mode.  Go to File>Scripts>Load Files Into Stack.  Choose your files, check Create Smart Object (try with Align both checked and unchecked if you want), click OK.  Once the stack is created go to Layer>Smart Objects>Stack Mode>Median.  You'll likely then have to manually clean up the misaligned parts.

You could also try Uwe Steinmueller's layer opacity blending script.  Go to his website, scroll to the bottom of the page and download the DOP_LayerStackOpacityBlending script.  It will automate the blending of layers which may give you a good start, from which you can then do the manual cleanup of the misaligned parts.

I think, since the shots aren't in register, you're going to have to do some manual cleanup no matter what blending method you choose.

[wolfnowl]

You could try a panorama program like Autopano Pro, PTGui or even CS5 and see if it eliminates the ghosting.  Might give you a starting point.

Mike.

From the 'Clouds' thread, this was a series of handheld images of a twotter passing overhead, combined in Autopano Pro.  It lined up the clouds from the images, removed the overlaps of the planes and left three 'distinct' aircraft (only one plane was passing at the time).

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....st&id=23108

Mike.

[EduPerez]

While I have not tried to do this myself, I would first align the images using a panorama stitcher (Hugin is my favorite) into a layered file, and then manually mask the jumper on each layer; just my two cents.

[loonsailor]

Thanks for the help, everyone.  I figured out a good way to do this.  Here's what I did, for anybody else who's interested in something similar.

• From Lightroom, I selected the photos to be combined.  Then I dropped them into photoshop CS5 by photo->edit in->Merge to Panorama in Photoshop.  Of course, if you're not using LR you can simply open the raw images directly in PS.
• In PS, I could see they had been combined, with each photo being a layer, and all the layers nicely aligned, and each with a mask.  But most of the falling bodies were not visible, because the masks were wrong.  So, I edited the layer masks as follows, to make them all visible.
• I made one layer at a time visible.
• On the visible layer, I disabled the layer mask, so I could see the masked body.  I selected the falling body (mostly using quick select).  The selection could be very rough, since the layers were aligned anyway and the background rock wasn't moving!
• I saved the selection, just for the heck of it.  Then I selected the mask channel (in the channel tab) and filled the selection with white.
• Now I could re-enable the layer mask and, voila, the body was visible.
• After doing this for each layer (each with a body), some bodies still were not visible when I made them all visible.  This is because, in a very few cases, something on a higher layer blocked the body.  In every case I could fix this simply by changing the order of the layers.
• Then, I saved, and finished editing in LR, simply because I'm more comfortable there.

Sounds a bit complicated, but once I figured it out, each image only took about 10-15 minutes.  I had tried this first with PTGui, which aligned things very nicely, but I couldn't figure out how to make all the bodies visible.  I'm definitely not a PS expert, so there is probably an easier way to have done the mask editing than messing with the channels that I just don't know.  But, the results are really nice, especially considering that the photos were taken hand-held from a drifting and bobbing canoe.  The raw images are far from being aligned!

Here's an example of the results.

[BernardLanguillier]

I had tried this first with PTGui, which aligned things very nicely, but I couldn't figure out how to make all the bodies visible. 

You would have had to export the PTgui result as a layered PS file until 8.3.10.

Since 9.0 beta2 you are able to specify in each image of the pano the areas that you want PTgui to keep after stitching/layering. This would probably make it the fastest approach. Should be doable in 5 min max end to end.

Regards,
Bernard