Macro Stitching a Moth - Final Result

This panorama of Oleander Hawk-moth is by using 5 macro photos. In this tutorial I will use Adobe Photoshop CS4 which has greatly improved panorama tools, to produce this macro panorama. This version makes stitching odd photos so much easier than any other program I know of. If you notice these photos are not sequential like the normal pano shots we take. I took this way just to check the capability of Adobe Photoshop CS4 in identifying various segments. You will notice first two shots are of right and left wing, then three shots are of the body from top to bottom. This sort of mixed arrangement stumped most stitching applications out there.

My earlier favorite was PTGUI. When I tried it with these photos it failed miserably to recognize control points. The resulting panorama was a horrible mess. Adobe Photoshop CS4 excels in the aspect of recognition of various segments in the photos.

I was trying to photograph without tripod that day. My Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro was not able to get the full moth at 1:1 magnification. I used 20mm Kenko extension tube along with 100 mm and photographed the moth in 5 pieces with the intention of stitching together later.

I had to make sure that background was as clutter less as possible. This was easy as it was quite dark outside and I was using my Canon MT-24EX macro twin light flash so that background would be dark.

Next thing I wanted to make sure that there will be at least 20% overlap of parts in each photo, otherwise Photoshop will find it difficult to stitch them together.

Macro Stiching a Moth - Select Files

Once I imported the photos to Adobe Lightroom I selected these 5 shots and chose Edit in Photoshop as panorama.

Macro Stitching a Moth - Send to Photoshop

After churning out a bit, Photoshop CS4 produced this beautiful image of the Oleander moth all stitched together.

Macro Stitching a Moth - Panorama on Photoshop

I flattened all the layers and filled the transparent area with black around the moth. I also cropped and rotated to get this final result in Photoshop. So what we have at the end is around 100 mega pixel image of moth which is perfectly stitched and exposure blended. You can see this image at the beginning of this post.

If only I had tripod handy that day, I would have used macro focusing rail and could have taken several shots using canon MP-E 65mm 1x-5x macro and produced 1000 mega pixel monster photo ha ha, I was just joking

Anyway it was fun to try this panorama like stitching using macro that too with shots which were hand held. Photoshop CS4 has really improved its method of Photomerge and produces seamless stitching with excellent results. I hope this small tutorial helps many macro shooters out there who find their subject too big to fit in one frame

The other day, I found a Long horned beetle clinging to the siding of my house. I grabbed my trusty Canon 5D Mark II and a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens and my Feisol tripod. As I could not get all the parts of this beetle in focus I remembered the auto-align and auto-blend trick I had seen in the new Adobe Photoshop CS4. Previously I had tried focus stacking using freeware combinez5 which produced fantastic results. On the web I could get quite a few video tutorials like this and this, explaining their technique but there was dearth of written tutorials with pictures. Probably it is easier nowadays to create a video tutorial and post. So here is my humble effort to show you how I did this. I recommend that you download the latest update of Adobe Photoshop CS4 11.0.1 which updates and improves the quality of the results of Auto-Blend Layers.

I shot this beetle which was sitting on a white dining mat. As the depth field at 1:1 macro setting was too shallow. I took 10 sequential shots maintaining same exposure settings on a tripod but just altering the point of focus little by little. I usually start from the nearest point which I try to be in sharp focus then try little further until I reach the last shot which has the farthest point in focus. Best method to do this is fix the focus on the lens and move the camera little by little forward and keep taking pictures of different focus points. This avoids the geometric distortion all together. Make sure while doing so you make sure that the exposure, speed as well as focus all are locked. This needs a real steady hand or a focusing rail connected to the tripod head.

If you don’t have them then you can try getting the shots by fixing the camera on the tripod and altering focus of the lens by adjusting manual focus ring. Auto focus is a big NO for this technique. Now with Adobe Photoshop CS4 you can easily correct the geometric distortion introduced by adjusting manual focus.

Export from Lightroom to Layers in Photoshop

My work flow involves Adobe Lightroom 2.3 which manages all my files on my hard disk. Once you import the files from your card, select all the files which need to be blended and choose the option of edit in > Open as Layers in Photoshop. The step is same if you are using Bridge instead of Lightroom. Now Lightroom exports all the files to Photoshop into a single Photoshop document with multiple layers. Each layer consists of a single image. Here I have 10 images of this beetle consisting of various areas of  sharp focus resulting in 10 layers in the Photoshop document.

Select All Layers in Photoshop

In Photoshop choose Select > All Layers.

Choose Auto-Align Layers

Then choose Edit > Auto-Align Layers. The Auto-Align Layers dialog box opens.

Auto-Align Layer Dialog Box

Note: The Auto-Align Layers dialog box has a default Lens Correction setting of Geometric Distortion. This setting gives you the option of compensating for geometric distortion. In addition, the default Projection setting is Auto. When Auto is selected, Photoshop finds and compensates for certain kinds of lenses based on meta data information.

After Auto-Aligning Layers

Now click OK to view the Auto-Aligned composition. Now all the images are perfectly aligned. You might notice the edges of the picture seems warped this is because Adobe Photoshop has now corrected the geometric distortion.

Auto-Blend Layers

With all Layers still selected choose Edit > Auto-Blend Layers.

Auto-Blend Layers Dialog Box

Select Stack Images from the Auto-Blend dialog box. Leave Seamless Tones And Colors selected.
Click OK.

If we had not done auto-align before doing the auto-blend then the geometric distortion would be there in these images. And that gives a strange halo effect near the edge of the beetle. So it is always advisable to run auto-align before auto-blend.

Auto-Blend Layers Progress

When you turn on the layers, you can see that the images now contain deep focus with all the points in focus.

Cropping in Photoshop

Now its time to crop the edge so that main image looks clean. It also gets rid of the warped edges. Now its time to save the image and get back to Adobe Lightroom to further process if necessary. I found many a times the resulting image needs some exposure correction which can be easily done in Adobe Lightroom. Now here is the final image as exported from Adobe Lightroom.

Hope this tutorial was helpful, please ask me any steps if you have found difficult to follow. Please enter your valuable comments so that I can improve on my tutorial.

We all supposed to shoot in RAW to get best result, or at least that is what is taught by all except guys like Ken Rockwell. RAW is the digital Negative, and JPEG is frowned upon as a inferior product as far as the purity of Information captured during Photography. But most of my friends don’t listen to my preaching that Raw is great. They shoot either with JPEG only or if I am around RAW + JPEG.

Let us see why JPEG is so favored. The file size is small, the generation of JPEG is fast, It does not need Post processing. It faithfully brings out the settings you dialed under saturation, contrast, color etc in the camera menu. You can fill lot of JPEGs per GB of card. So what is wrong with JPEG.

RAW on the other hand is huge and cumbersome. Needs post processing. It fills up your card fast. needs to be de-noised, sharpened and white balance corrected. So why shoot in RAW?

You will realize the potential of RAW once you shot using RAW. The information which is captured during shooting remains intact in Raw. Raw file is either 12 bit or 14 bit. So it will have more color information than JPEG which is 8it. Compression of JPEG is lossy, so if you start post processing JPEG file you will realize that resulting picture will be far inferior to that from a Raw. So if you want to post process shoot in Raw.

Most of my friends shoot both in RAW + JPEG. The reason they give is that that way they can give the JPEGs without post processing and when the need arises to do the post processing they have the RAW. What they don’t realize that this strategy is waste of space. Remember that there is an embedded JPEG within each raw file.

The ability to browse through raw files “instantly” in applications including BreezeBrowser, Irfanview, GarphicConverter, Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom and scores of others, is still based, either fully or in part, on the ability to extract the embedded JPEG within each raw file. When we view the raw file in one of these applications, one of 2 things happens. Either we are in fact viewing the embedded JPEG based on the camera settings, or we briefly see the embedded JPEG, until the raw conversion software is able to create a new preview file based on the default (or adjusted) settings from within the specific raw application.

Instant JPEG From RAW Free Utility

IJFR - Running on a RAW file

OK. So I am here to tell you about a free utility that extracts this mighty embedded JPEG file from a RAW file. But how is that going to help you in your 2009workflow ? Well maybe it will and maybe it won’t, but I am hoping that for at least some of you, it will make your day (and that is a tough thing to do on the day after Photoshop CS4 was announced)!

Let’s take this typical fictitious example. I am doing a  shoot for a client. I have to make great pictures, under great pressure, but have to deliver a flash drive with large JPEG proofs immediately after the shoot, as well as email small JPEGs to a web gallery. Time is of the essence. Of course I shoot in raw format as I always do. Although I know that JPEG proofs will be required immediately after the shoot, I do not shoot in RAW+JPEG because it is much too slow and cumbersome and fills my card fast.

The shoot is done, the files are uploaded to my old laptop, and the client is extremely pleased but is impatiently waiting to leave with the proofs. There are many ways that the JPEGs could be created, but why create the JPEGs, when they already exist with the raw files? Here comes our The Instant JPEG from Raw workflow utility. It churns out all the JPEG needed from the whole bunch of Raw file in a very short time. So you have saved space on the Card plus have theJPEGs too. I creat2 2 sets of JPEGs one for the client and other smaller one for my web gallery. Whole creation takes less than a minute on my rickety laptop. Clint is happy so is the viewers of my web gallery.

IJFR - Running on a Folder of Raw files

I believe that IJFR is the fastest and easiest way to go from raw files to high quality proof files, especially on low powered machines and without involving running an application. What is great is that you can get JPEGs in various sizes too thus eliminating the resize work afterwords, so now you can have a JPEG with full 10-12 Mega pixel and one for the web at 800×600 pixel dimension.

The IJFR utility is available for Win or Mac OS, and is fast, simple, has a tiny footprint (uses very little disk space or RAM) and is free, and easy to have on all of your desktop and laptop machines, no matter how slow, or resource challenged. Download for free (but you need to sign in to get download link) from RawWorkflow.com.

I have been dormant from blogging for a long time. Last one year has been quite a refreshing one. Photography has become a major part in my life. It was all because of the purchase of the DSLR camera Canon EOS 40D. I was happy shooting from bridge camera till then but it never used to give me the satisfaction that a SLR could give. So camera ended as just a point and shoot stuff till last year. With purchase of 40D in January all this changed. I could get results out of the camera as I wanted.

Last 8 months were used to master both the camera as well as post processing techniques using Photoshop CS3 & Lightroom.

Now it is exciting to hear that new camera from Canon is on the horizon Canon EOS 5D mark II. Also out is the new version of Photoshop called Adobe photoshop CS4. All these have technology so interesting that they are going to revolutionize the way we percive photography.

I plan to restart my blog which will now focus on these topics. So until next time see yaa