Comments on: Props for Auto-Align/Blend in CS3

By: woto

woto — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 21:44:24 +0000

Did you try small text size? or low contrast text? My guess is auto align will still work if the type is small enough. If you go down to very small type (e.g. 8 pixels height) it may work fine because auto align first looks for similarities in bigger features. Very small type is not exactly user friendly but you may find a type size acceptable for your project

By: TLL@DPD

TLL@DPD — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 09:10:37 +0000

Many thanks to Jeff Chien and company for working with me on this. I’ve discovered that the auto-align and auto blend features do in fact work wonderfully – except when you introduce something like typography into an image.
What I did was use an ‘add file name’ script to place a line of text along the top of every image to be auto-aligned. This is so a client can identify which image contains areas of interest. Attempts were made using labeled, flattened tif and jpg images to no avail. When the type was removed, the images assembled just fine. So, I tried it with layered psd files, with no luck, as it seems the alignment process merges the layers or whatever.
Anyway here I sit, with the potential to automate the workflow of a highly valuable product offering, just ever so close to actually doing it and now I’m stuck.
Problem solving is in the blood of old photographers like me just like hypo (anyone here remember mixing that stuff up?), so I’m open to any suggestions. And I’ll be happy to share any solutions to my challenge…
Happy New Year!
TLL

By: TLL@DPD

TLL@DPD — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 08:30:16 +0000

Hello, the new image stacking/alignment tools in PS CS3 look like just the thing I am looking for – if I can get them to work. I assemble hi-res aerial images that have a fixed overlap of 60% in one direction. Many times I need to show how these images would look if spread out like a deck of cards, you know, overlapping with 2-Ace all in order. The old CS2 Photomerge won’t load the images in order (even with alpha #files) so the “stacking” order is wrong and I don’t want any blending at all.
With the CS3 script from John Nack loaded in CS3, the images still won’t load in order (but they align beautifully!) but sadly, I can get only three down-sampled (23MB ea) images to auto-align properly. Even using the other ‘edit, auto align’ options in various combinations, if I add any more images the whole thing goes bad with weird scaling and perspective errors. A successful end product like this could involve hundreds of images.
As a work-a-round, I attempted to save off a 3-image PSD and then include that as a 4th image in a new stack – that worked only once, after which the next 3 image composite would load as a very reduced size image.
I can try to post some of this as screen grabs if anyone is interested. I want to be successful with this and I believe that the new Photoshop is up to the task – I’m just stuck here and don’t know what to do next…
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
TLL
[Hmm, interesting; let me run this by the team and see what they say. --J.]