Photomatix Alignment Info

[Trevor Harris]

Hey all,

Sometimes when I don't have my tripod handy or the opportunity presents a small window, I would take a bracket set of exposures hand held. The alignment process of photomatix works fairly well, but I was wondering if there is a way to output the rotation and translation of each photo it processes.

When I bring the tonemapped image into photoshop for more processing I will sometimes have one of the photos from the bracketed set on a lower layer and mask out the tonemapped image to bring back blown out sections, etc... So obviously they need to be aligned. Currently I'm setting the top layer opacity to 20% or so and then rotating and translating in an iterative process. This is time consuming SO, as previously stated, it would be great to have the rotation and translation information in photomatix outputted. Is there a way to do this? What to most people do in this situation?

Trevor

 

[Provo]

Hey all,

Sometimes when I don't have my tripod handy or the opportunity presents a small window, I would take a bracket set of exposures hand held. The alignment process of photomatix works fairly well, but I was wondering if there is a way to output the rotation and translation of each photo it processes.

When I bring the tonemapped image into photoshop for more processing I will sometimes have one of the photos from the bracketed set on a lower layer and mask out the tonemapped image to bring back blown out sections, etc... So obviously they need to be aligned. Currently I'm setting the top layer opacity to 20% or so and then rotating and translating in an iterative process. This is time consuming SO, as previously stated, it would be great to have the rotation and translation information in photomatix outputted. Is there a way to do this? What to most people do in this situation?

Trevor

Trevor,

What I do for things like this is not check align images by source and cropping for this very reason if you have this feature on it will align the images based on features but it will also crop the image where if you needed to merge it with the originals for masking everything is off center for the most part.

So these are my settings every-time I also use semi manual for alignment because I can get better image alignment this way you have to learn how to use the semi align feature but it works wonders. And as you mentioned I also bring it at times into Photoshop and mask layers with the originals to correct blown outs etc.. if needed.

 

[mistermonday]

Hey all,

Sometimes when I don't have my tripod handy or the opportunity presents a small window, I would take a bracket set of exposures hand held. The alignment process of photomatix works fairly well, but I was wondering if there is a way to output the rotation and translation of each photo it processes.

When I bring the tonemapped image into photoshop for more processing I will sometimes have one of the photos from the bracketed set on a lower layer and mask out the tonemapped image to bring back blown out sections, etc... So obviously they need to be aligned. Currently I'm setting the top layer opacity to 20% or so and then rotating and translating in an iterative process. This is time consuming SO, as previously stated, it would be great to have the rotation and translation information in photomatix outputted. Is there a way to do this? What to most people do in this situation?

Trevor

Trevor, once you have the tonemapped image and one or more of your source images stacked as layers in PS, Shift click to select all the ones you want to align and then go Edit>Auto Align Layers. You will be presented with a dialog box offering you a number of alignment options.
Another option you have would be to use Photoshops File>Script to Load-Stack-Align layers and then use the 2nd script to export all the layers as tiff files. Then use the tiff files as your source files.
Regards, Murray