Panaroma Tutorial

Finally got my new PC with good software's, and finally came back to upload some stuff.
Here's one I was doing for my friends assignment, panaroma. So I decided to try it. Here's how I did it.

I have Photostitch from Canon, but you still can buy the software.

Run it.

Then open the images.

After you've opened it,

arrange it, i did it by switching, means 12345 becomes 54321.

54321...
Now, let's start merging some pictures. Click on start.
And Photostitch will automatically merge it for you. But... doesn't look that proportional isn't it?

Click on display seams, so you can edit the seems between pictures.

It'll show a few yellow boxes.

Click on one to go to the editing window. Shown below.

By default, Photostitch would just specify one overlapping area. What you need to do to enhance the proportion of your picture is to specify important details and let Photostitch deal with the 'lining up'.

Here's an example. I want the tower to be correctly merged with the other picture, so i select it, and drag it to the other picture.
A few more would be good. I did three times more than this example below.
As you can see, its now straightened.
Do the same for the rest of the images, you'll end up with something like this.
As you can notice here, there are some mismatched merges, keep specifying overlaying areas, and specify the important areas only.
Once you're happy with it... (for me, after 15 tries....) save it.
Open it up in Photoshop. Use your brush tool, set to soft hardness, hold alt to bring up the colour extraction tool, there are going to be a few merge lines visible, so go to the side of the line, extract the colour beside it, and cover the line. Do this repeatedly as you go along the line. so the horizontal colours are similar. Making it seemed like you erased the line.
Then to further enhance the picture, I went to curves, and adjusted it. Check youtube for tutorials on this part.
Darkened the shadows, and boosted the highlights.
Then I went to vibrance adjustment.
Bring up the vibrance, but be careful not too much, if not it'll look oversaturated and unreal.Next I went to Shadow/Highlights adjustments. This helps boost the range even more.

This is defualt.
This is my settings.

And lastly.. the all important, copyright :P mcm yes.
And here is the final thing. Super huge... my first panaroma. Try it yourself!
Pictures of this post are taken with Canon 500D with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. Images copied and edited in Picasa3.
Software used : Canon Photostitch 3.1 , Adobe Photoshop CS4, Picasa 3.