Twitter
RSS
Sponsored by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Learn More
An Application That Has Me In Stitches
I first saw Realviz’ Stitcher (3.0 for the Mac) demonstrated at New York’s Mac World Expo. Ken Eyring, Realviz senior technical sales person, did a great job of putting this amazing application through its paces.
After watching Ken’s demos for nearly an hour, I returned to Florida feeling confident I could master Stitcher when my review copy arrived. Confidence overestimated.
Stitcher is an $495 stand-alone application that can create panoramic images up to 360×360 degrees in cylindrical, spherical, cubic, planar and VRML formats.
After tangling with the utterly complex Panorama Tools, the application used by Ken Lyons (see column at http://www.planetphotoshop.com/tutorials/jim19.html), I expected Stitcher to be a walk in the park. And with the basic tutorial, it sort of was: a nice Romanesque temple with lots of straight lines and hard textures.
Stitcher uses drag & drop to place elements from the Image Strip into the Stitching Window. I mastered the rotate, roll, zoom and stitch commands pretty easily. Then I came to a “cannot stitch image. Adjust manually.” I might still be adjusting manually if I had not given up and started over.
Oddly enough, my problem image stitched just fine when I started with it as a base image.
Understanding various formats and the focal length and other menu controls is vital to using Stitcher in a masterful fashion. One two-image pano saved as an extremely wide space of black with the tiny image in its center.
A multi-image construction of my studio shot from a stationary tripod and using precise angles and rotations turned out to be a virtual reality strip that inexplicably cropped tightly when saved.
Stitcher is a fabulous program which takes more than a few days of study and practice to attain proficiency. In the coming weeks, I hope to create something that equals the work of Ken Lyons on his worst day.
No Comments
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Photoshop Tutorials
Hollywood Touch-Ups
See how you can add some subtle touches to give that green screen studio shot the Hollywood treatment.
3D Christmas Ornaments
Corey shows how to create reflective holiday ornaments using 3D in Photoshop.
Styles & Text
This week Corey has a tutorial using layer styles and text shapes to create energetic effects.
3D Light Beams
This effect was discovered by a 'happy accident' and uses the 3D features inside of Photoshop CS4 Extended.
-
Flare Effects
Corey has a cool trick for creating a flare brush and see how one effect can lead to another.
-
Hollywood Touch-Ups
See how you can add some subtle touches to give that green screen studio shot the Hollywood treatment.
-
3D Christmas Ornaments
Corey shows how to create reflective holiday ornaments using 3D in Photoshop.
-
3D Distortions
This week Corey has a cool new trick for using 3D reflections in a rather creative way!
Premium Video Tutorials From NAPP
Photo Retouch
Scott Kelby shows you how to take an overexposed photo into a great photo using Photoshop. Want Great Photoshop & Photography Skills?
Extended Definition Processing
Scott Kelby shares a technique he's been working on, which gives your final image an HDR look using just one photo.
Join NAPP & Get a Free DVD.
Smart Object Masking Trick
Dave Cross shares a trick he discovered that will help you remove white from around your subject when using smart objects.
Want More?
Light Painting
Dave Cross takes a popular trend - light painting - and shows you how you can paint text recreating this cool trend.
You Don't Need to be a Pro to Join NAPP.
Create A Composite Layer
If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.
Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith
