wwp@yahoogroups.com:
Re: Submission candidate posted for critique ... comments please
Victor 2005-Jun-30 19:44:00
Erik,
Thank you very much. High praise from you as I have admired your
panos and benefited from you knowledge (and your various
tutorials/actions) posted here, on the ptools list and on your site.
> It is brilliant! Unbelievable you stitched it from 40 images. I
> searched for all kinds of color mismatches or stitching errors - I
> found none... ... well, one: The footprints of the woman walking
> towards the man with the video camera are missing in a small part ;-)
Believe it ... I've got a sore wrist from working in Photoshop to
prove it. ;-) As to errors, mismatches, etc., I guess all that work
was effective and worth it. I shot nearly 100 images overall, making
several laps around the circle for the main (middle) view ... (camera
pitched slightly up and down for each) in order to be reasonably sure
of getting complete people and their reflections.
I had to LOL! at your hunt for items and coming up with only the
footprints. Of course, I know where all the skeletons are buried, but
it is a testament to my thinking that I could get away with one VERY
BIG fudge and it looks like I was right.
Look at the woman walking away from me with the colorful bag (visible
on the opening viewpoint). Her reflection is mostly a photoshop cut,
paste & tweak job. The original set of stitched images was missing
the bottom half of her reflection ... it just wasn't part of the
captured images. I could've substituted an image that was cleaner,
but the only "good" complete images didn't have any people at all and
I REALLY liked the splash of color her bag provided. However, the
bizarre reflections was a gross error and attracted the eye in a big
way. So what to do? Lots of PS work! The bottom of her reflection
is largely a cut and paste from some other person in the stitched
shot, mirrored and shifted, plus some out and out faking to create
missing portions out of whole cloth.
Here are snippets of the original and the final version.
http://www.zaveduk.com/wwp/reflections.htm
Once you know to look, it's obvious that the reflection is wrong. The
color is backwards (light dress, dark top), etc.. It's amazing how
easily the eye (and mind) is fooled. :-)
I won't reveal the other major cut and pastes (there are two other
sizeable instances, that's the only hint I'll give!) ... it's always
important to maintain some sense of mystery. ;-)
I'll take your advice on the quality param in panocube plus to improve
the look during movement. Hopefully, most machines will be able to
handle it reasonably well. It definitely reduces that annoying moire.
Victor