Help matching colors in a pano picture

**wanghoeby** · 10-05-2007, 08:35 PM

Okay, so it should be ovious what I am trying to do with the picture. Get rid of the color difference in the sky.

Thing is, the origonal is like 26000 by 5000 so using the air brush just isn't working. It's too touchy and color differences still show.

Thanks

**Fuzz** · 10-05-2007, 08:51 PM

I always use AutoStitch to do panos -- creates pretty seamless panos. If you want to do it manually, have you tried using the Healing Brush in PS? The clouds and ground will still be pretty hard to match manually I think.

**wanghoeby** · 10-05-2007, 09:14 PM

Right, that's where the problem evolved. Autostitch. The thing was being completely bitter about putting this one together. I had to manually put two of them together and even then I had to make some extra adjustments to make it finally piece together. Just trying to find a way to do it without going back and adjusting the individual pictures and starting all over.

Do you use "Gain compensation" at all. If so at what values? I tried it once and the entire picture came out white, after taking at least 4-5 times longer than usual.

Is there some way to apply a darkening or lightening effect as a gradient across the entire picture? I.E. 100% on the left side and slowly decreasing to 0% on the right.

**MeatPuppet** · 10-05-2007, 10:46 PM

I'm not familiar with Autostitch, so no help there.

As far as the picture itself...It looks like your exposure changed from shoot to shoot. When you shot panos you have to shot everything in manual, including white balance. Otherwise you get the problem you are experiencing. If you shoot everything in RAW you can go back and convert all of them with the same settings(i.e. wb set to xxxx for all of them, exposure set to +/-.x for all of them, etc.). If you are able to convert all the pics with the same settings the software will have an easier time aligning everything.

If you shot jpeg than this is beyond my meager PS skills.

**Doc Green** · 10-07-2007, 11:58 PM

...Maybe try using the magic wand tool. It may select sky based on the diffrences in exposures.

**hemas** · 10-08-2007, 01:17 AM

While Autostich is a great program to make panos, it lacks all the fine stuff (but hey, it's stupidly easy to use and free).

Your best bet is to shoot the frames at the same exposure in the future. For this pano, you better open all the pics (before making 'em a pano) in PS or similar and then gently mess around with curves and shite... until all the pics have about the same sky (you can keep the next pic open next to the one you're editing so you can more easily spot when it "matches").

**wanghoeby** · 10-08-2007, 06:18 AM

Yeah, this is an older pic from the beginning of the summer. It only took a few of these to make me learn and switch to manual mode. Just trying to get a few of these put together.

I'll try the wand tonight and if that fails, I think I'll have to start from scratch and change the originals.

**hemas** · 10-08-2007, 06:23 AM

Originally Posted by wanghoeby

I'll try the wand tonight and if that fails, I think I'll have to start from scratch and change the originals.

Well, it seems that only 3 of the pics are have a darker sky.

**SIIHP** · 10-08-2007, 07:28 PM

dodge tool, heal brush, and a bit of time will do the trick.

**BigKuba** · 10-09-2007, 10:56 PM

The panorama program I use, PT Assembler, has an add-on called Enblend that has done a pretty good job for me.

wanghoeby -- you can apply a color correction as a gradient by using a Curves adjustment layer in PS, and then painting a gradient on the mask. Where the layer mask is white, you'll see the full effect of the lightening/darkening/color tweak, and where it's black, it will have no effect.