Stiching Photos

[D-50]

If I stitch 10 photos together taken with a 6 megapixel camera will the resulting picture effectively be a 60 megapixel picture? Will I be able to enlarge the stitched photo to a bigger size without loosing resolution than I could if it was a single shot?

 

[Arch]

Basically the answer is no...and no. Your picture, stitched or not still has 6million pixels to make up its resolution. Your D50 shots can be enlarged anyway .....( you didnt mention how big?)...having more pictures tho won't increase the resolution either. That said, if your pictures were going on a side of a bus or summin then more pictures would mean less enlarging which would mean better rez.

 

[Mack]

could you stitch up and down to make it better?

 

[D-50]

Lets say for the sake of argument I want to make a 4'x6' print I know this is huge but its for the sake of discussion. If I took a picture of a coke can in one frame I could nver blow it up this big without loosing a lot of resolution. I dont understand why taking 20 small picturs of different parts of the can and then stitching them together to make one image of the whole can would not increase the amount of pixels in the resulting image. If each image has 6 million pixels and there are twenty of them combined doesn't the resulting image have more or less 120 million pixels? If this is not the case why is it not? Consequently if the resulting image has 120million pixels why could I not blow it up to a larger size than I could a regular 6 megapixel shot without loosing resolution?

 

[Digital Matt]

It will most defintely increase the resolution. You are inceasing the number of pixels in the image. I have a panoramic shot of 4 photos stitched. The native resolution, that is, without enlarging it, is 4x the normal width (which is 3504 pixels) minus a few pixels on each side for overlap, and 2336 pixels high, for a total of something like 13000x 2336. If you took one wide angle shot of the scene and cropped it to a panoramic, you'd have a document that is 3504 pixels wide by probably 636 px high. You can see there is a huge resolution jump in the stitched shot.

 

[D-50]

Thanks Matt, Thats what I was thinking. I am looking to get a solid shot of Fruitlands in MA (its a place where me and my firiends would go to watch the sunset during the sumer while in HS) and blow it up pretty large. I dont want any resolution lose so I figure if I stitch multiple photos together I canget the desired result with my 6.1 mp D50. Can't wait to try it out.

 

[Digital Matt]

Good luck. Stitching is not as easy and perfect as you might think. Keep in mind the distortion you might be getting from your lens.

 

[Arch]

Oh i get what you mean now, yes multipul shots of a panaoramic compared to just one shot taken with a wide angle, would give you a better resolution thats right.

 

[D-50]

I found a program called Autostitch and it seems to work pretty well. I could not figure out how to do it in photoshop 7. Any suggestinos for other programs that would be useful. My IT guy is bringging me in a copy of some Microsoft imaging program that he says is good, maybe that can do it.

 

[Digital Matt]

I just use photoshop and do it myself. I didn't have much luck with stitching programs.

 

[Arch]

I'm not sure about other software, i use cs2. But just out of interest...how big are you thinking of going?...... what i was trying to get at with my previous statement is, if your going for A3 for example.... you may just be better off giving it some proccessing in PS and getting it printed....rather than the hastle of making sure you get correct exposures, without distortion and working out how to stitch them. A D50 can take an A3 print on without any problems.

 

[D-50]

I'm looking to get something 24"x36" maybe larger. If I can get good enough at creating seemless images through stitching and can get a stricking photo I would consider doing something along the lines of 3'x4' or even 4'X6' depending on the shot.

 

[Arch]

yes in that case you'll probably be better off stitching.......i'v heard some people on here talk of using 'Gimp' for stitching but i have no first hand knowledge of its capabilities, however could be worth a look.

 

[zedin]

A few things on stitching too that I have found. Make sure you meter each shot and then decide on the overall exposure since it cannot change or else the stitched pieces are all off. (found this out by forgeting to put camera on manual) Also make sure that you are on manual focusing so that each time you move the camera it does not refocus and screw up your overall shot. I found a good free standalone program but am not at home.. will look it up once I get there to see what it is. It is great with fixing distortions from your lens if you don't find the sweet spot with focusing rails.

 

[D-50]

I think its great that we spend our time at work on TPF. This forum gives me something to look forward to in my otherwise boring work day.
Thats good advice on not refocusing. As for exposure if I use a tripod and take all the photos with the same settings shouldn't the exposure values be congruant with each other and make the overall image look good. I need to get a site up and running to post my pictures to, I have an example of a shot I did yesterday. Its just a bridge nothing great, it was more to test out Autostich, it also only incluuded 6 pictures but I would love some feedback on it.
I read a website about a stitching program that this photographer used to create 20 image stitches that looked great. I know this is vague but does anyone know what Im talking about. There was a real nice shot of him in the foregground with a large mountain in the background on his website, his images were a minimum of 100 megapixels. Im getting off topic though. Sorry for that.