Archive for the ‘Bridge’ Category

Hints for Better Panoramic Images

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

Great panoramic images don’t require a twenty thousand dollar camera and a team of experts. You can stitch together any series of images from any camera (even your phone!) with some planning. And Photoshop. And preferably a tripod.

Here’s a step-by-step outline of my process for creating high resolution panoramics.

Step 1 – Find a great scene. This pano consists of 10 shots taken in Arches National Park in Utah.

Landscape photo in Arches National Park

Step 2 – Set your camera to manual exposure and manual focus. You don’t want the meter of your camera changing exposure on you as you take your shots. You also don’t want to risk autofocus changing focus on you.

Step 3 – Use a tripod if at all possible. You will get an extra level of quality if you can stabilize your camera for all of your exposures.

Step 4 – Try to overlap your shots by about 20 to 30 percent. Again, easier if you use a tripod. In the sample shot below the darker block in the middle is the overlap (maybe a bit too much overlap in this case but better too much overlap than not enough).

Step 5 – In order to best utilize all the pixels offered by my Canon 5D Mark III, I shot verticals. I could have shot fewer frames in landscape but I’m looking for maximum quality here. I shot 10 frames total in this series. (See screenshot in step 7.)

 

Step 6 – I don’t make it to Utah every day so I shot several series just in case. Unfortunately that means more images to store, process and sort. I suggest you shoot in a pattern (I always shoot left to right) and you mark a new series by holding your hand in front of the camera and grabbing a shot as a separator.

Step 7 – Once downloaded to your computer it’s time to find the hero shots. In Adobe Bridge I find the start of a series, then, using the first file’s name, I add the word “stitch” to the entire series. In the screenshot below the first shot in the series is named “conway-20121029-0240,” so I select it and the additional 9 images and add a keyword “stitch-20121029-0240″ to all of them. This is going to make it much easier to find the files that belong together at a later date.

 

 

Step 8 – I make a test pano from a series of small images first to make sure I like the series. In Adobe Bridge I select a series of images and use “Export to Hard Drive” to quickly sample down the series to 1000 pixels on the long edge. Large enough that I can judge quality but small enough that I have a sample pano in just a couple minutes. I also settle on modes and settings while working with the smaller images (see dialog box in screenshot below). If I like the sample, I select the full size original images in Adobe Bridge, go to Tools > Photoshop > Photomerge, enter whatever settings worked well for my sample, and I let my laptop chug away for 15 to 20 minutes. I always try auto first and I’m usually happy with it about 95 percent of the time – Photoshop has really good judgement.

Helpful Reminders about Adobe Photoshop CS4

Monday, June 29th, 2009

As people are (finally) upgrading to Creative Suite 4, I thought it prudent to recap some of the more important tips.

1. DO NOT do an upgrade install. This will cause you a lot of headaches (been there). Use the Uninstall/Reinstall option – it will give you a complete cleanout and fresh install, thereby removing old elements that the upgrade can leave behind.

2. Seems obvious, but run ALL updates after you install. CS4 has been out for 10 months, and during this time Adobe has sent out a lot of updates and bug fixes. Be sure to run your Windows/Apple updaters as well.

3. In PS CS4, you may notice that the Extract and Interactive Layout Photomerge are missing. This was a conscious effort to move people to other options in the program. If you want to bring these back use these links:

Extract: Mac Windows

Photomerge Interactive Layout: Mac Windows

4. Use Bridge to create your Web Photo Gallery, not the “lovely” Web Gallery in Photoshop. This new version, found under the “output” view in Bridge is much more savvy and is Flash Enabled. Very cool and professional, plus you preview in a browser from Bridge and can output it directly to ftp.

5. Contact us with your questions. We get them all the time and have probably heard it all. You’d be surprised at the number of people who panic and restart, reinstall, erase, wipe hard drives, etc. before they ask someone for help. Many times, not all, problems are an easy fix.

You can always start with resetting preferences (hold opt/alt+ctrl+shift during app startup).

C2 Supports Students and Faculty

Monday, June 8th, 2009

Historically, entering the creative industry in Wisconsin as a recent grad has always been pretty competitive.  The state boasts over 40 state and private colleges and universities offering programs in mass communications, design, advertising, marketing, visual communication, web design/development, digital technologies, 3d, animation, gaming…the list goes on.  The current economic challenges have tightened the market further, making it more difficult for recent grads to procure internships, much less full-time employment.

C2 recognizes that graduating students need to be able to compete.  We have a solid understanding of  industry expectations, because we serve Wisconsin’s smartest creatives through our Adobe training centers and our creative talent placement services.

We also understand that keeping up with the rapid changes in the technical tools used to deliver design, advertising, marketing, etc., can be a full-time pursuit…our instructors live it every day!

Let C2 help YOU help your students. Contact C2 to secure class speakers to chat about industry/job expectations or to assist with portfolio/resume review.  If your curriculum includes software instruction for your students, C2 would love to help you keep up-to-date with the latest shortcuts, industry-standard workflow and versions of the software tools professionals need to get ahead.

C2 currently offers upgrade classes for college and university faculty at significant discounts. Choose from customized upgrade classes to discounted seats in our current class offerings.

We genuinely care about the quality of creative professionals working in our region. We support a great number of  creative professional associations, meet-up and user groups via membership, sponsorship and meeting hosting. C2 already boasts strong supportive relationships with faculty from several colleges, universities and technical schools in the region… how can we help YOU help your students?

Are you an Adobe Bridge user? Has the “Place” command slipped by you?

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

You probably already know that when you find the file you are interested in, in Adobe Bridge, you can double click on that file and it opens in the program that made it. And that’s great. But what if you want to place a PSD file into InDesign or Flash (or After Effects or Illustrator)? The fast, convenient way is to do the following: select the item or items you want to place into another Adobe program, go to the File menu, go Down to “Place” and choose the program you want the files to goto. Voila!

Assign multiple keywords with one click in Adobe Bridge CS3

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

You have always been able to add keywords to images in Adobe Bridge but new in CS3 is the ability to apply sub-keywords and their parents in one simple click, assuming you have made a series of keywords that are related. I created an “animal” keyword that applies to all animals, a “dog” sub-keyword for dogs and a “Labrador Retriever” sub-keyword for just that breed of dog. If I click on just “Labrador Retriever” I apply only the keyword “Labrador Retriever”

But why wouldn’t I want to apply the parent keywords of “animal” and “dog” to this image also? I can do so with 1 click, not 3. If I shift-click on “Labrador Retriever” it adds that keyword and all its parents which is very frequently what I want

 

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