Thanks! Light room can send them to photoshop directly in raw and stitch them together rather easily. You just need to blend and match the pictures a little.
I just redid the picture using CS6 and it worked out much better. The stiches were seemless and didn't need masking or shading.
Dave don't know what you used for an exposure mode but it should be done totally in manual exposure. cS6 will match it near perfectly with no additional woklrk. I have 3x10 foot panos hanging and didn't do anything to them to merge them.
I used aperture priority mode and setup the F stop usually around F8-F10. I normally get exposures around 1/500 to 1/800. My exposures usually vary based on cloud cover. In the picture above there is a lot of difference in cloud coverage which changes the exposure a bit in a 360 situation spread out over 12 exposures. If you are in manual mode, the camera can't use any changes to compensate the exposure correct? How do you get consistent exposures in manual mode?
They are all the same. Remember that the light is even over the area you are shooting even in a 360. Shadows should be shadows, not adjusts to a normal gray scale otherwise it isn't accurate. Think of standing in a field at sunrise. To the west things are lit up, to the east they are in shadow. If you have the camera make adjustments it isn't accurate and is specifically a problem with the sky. That's why your stitch took so much work. Give it a try.
Do remember not to use a polarizing filter! Sky light is polarized different depending on which direction you look with respect to the sun, so you end up with very different sky color. Andy.
Here's how the picture looks in CS6 after I normalized it a little better. I didn't have to do any work on the picture in CS6, it was CS5 that I had to do the blending with masks. Gary you normally shoot pictures in manual mode? I always shoot video in manual mode but I was always lead to believe that shooting in AP is better for stills.
Panos 100% manual. Video nearly all 100% manual! again don't want to see exposure changing if you pan. Landscapes nearly 100% manual. Strobe or casual stuff usually aperture priority. Also I am old school and use a light meter for exposure setting. Sekonic L758DR spot and incident.
Gotcha, thanks. Can I get your honest opinion on the picture I just posted this morning? How do you think it looks?
I'll check it when I get back hom on Sunday. On my iPad I looks fine. What is the height and width? Generally if you are going to do a print you want something about a 1:4 or 1:5 ratio.