PTGui won't stitch my 3 image MW pano

[Michael]

Hi,

I'm trying to stich 3 images that are part of the Milky Way arch (the final pano will be like 7 images but I thought I'd start small....), but it sort of stitches 1 image with about a 1/5 of the image next to it and in a warped way that cuts parts of the image off.

The 3 images overlap by about 50% and I've added 15 control points to each and every time I click on another star it finds it in the image next to it.  I've run the optimizer and it says 'good'.

I'm only using the trial version, but I've heard such good things I thought I'd test it out to see if I want to buy it.   

I should note that I've already tried stitching the 3 images using photomerge in Photoshop and it worked well stitching all the images together.  It did, however, leave some slightly darker patches where joins are and although it did a good job, overall I think it can be done better (I've certainly seen smoother stitches), which is why I'm testing out PTGui.

If anyone knows what I might've done wrong or what I can try I'd be most grateful!

Thank you,

Michael  

[John Houghton]

Michael, It's not clear exactly what is happening.  Your mention of part of the image being cut off suggests that maybe you haven't tried expanding the view in the Panorama Editor window by adjusting the two sliders on the left and bottom edges.  You might try changing the projection to "Spherical 360x180" from the Projection menu on the Panorama Editor window.  That will show you the entire spherical stitching area upon which PTGui does all of its stitching.  The whole of your current panorama will be somewhere in that view.  Without details of the camera and lens being used, it's not possible to say much more.  If you care to make the 3 images available for download (use the free wetransfer.com service or Dropbox or similar file sharing facility), then that would help a lot.

John

[Michael]

Hi John, 

Yes, you were right, I resized the image in the Panorama Editor window and managed to view the rest of the image. 

I dragged the bottom of the image (link below) up to straighten it a bit, but couldn't get rid of the black area at the bottom though, is there a way to do that in PTGUI?

https://we.tl/t-JULHPdMCCD

Also, does it add sharpening somewhere in the process, it looks sharper than the Photoshop stitch, but perhaps it's just brought out the points of light (stars) better?

Thanks for your help, appreciate it!

Michael

[John Houghton]

Michael,  To get perspectives correct, you should drag the image such that the horizon is straight and lies along the centre line of the Panorama editor window.  Note that you can rotate the image by dragging with the right mouse button held down.  Any parts of the scene not captured in the images will be black.

Interpolators are used when remapping the image to the currently selected projection.  The interpolators do vary in the degree of sharpening performed, so you are welcome to try the optional ones available on the Create Panorama tab.

John

[Michael]

Great, thanks a lot for the help/explanation.

Michael