Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook

6.4. Stage 4

6.4.1. Retouching

Before proceeding further, I thought it might be useful to take a quick initial peek at the montage. In the Stitching Window, the program displays the assembly projected on the inside of a sphere. If the montage is wider than 120°—as was the case here—you can't get a complete planar view in the window.

This first look revealed two problems. First, the traffic light was both red and green, because it changed between two of the stitched photos, so I used the Stencil tool to eliminate the green light. Second, there was a lot of color variation in the sky; to smooth this out, I raised the equalization coefficient to the maximum (Preferences→Render→Equalization→1). To apply it, I selected Render→Equalize All Images.

6.4.2. The Stencil tool

Stitcher's new Stencil tool acts on the layer masks of two overlapping images to eliminate elements that may have moved between the shots. You can also use it to erase "ghosts" when an assembly isn't perfectly aligned. Simply choose an image fromthe toolbar or the Stitching Window, select Tools→Stencil, and a dialog box appears.

Before rendering the assembly, it's essential

to generate a quick first draft.

Draw a bounding box around the area you want to eliminate or retain, as the case may be.

Stitcher can output the render in Photoshop's PSD format with layers, so you can use Photoshop to fine tune your creation, working directly on the layer masks that Stitcher creates.