MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Hi all, I've been having a go at taking multiple pictures down the scope moving across the 'scopes FOV
then down, then across etc to cover the whole eyepiece view of the scope with a series of camera images.
Then I put the series of images into PSE9 to stitch them all together to get a complete image covering the
whole FOV as seen down the 'scope.... All pretty routine you may think - but,
I shot a total of 18 images to cover the whole FOV with about 20% overlaps between images (gives stitching
software a better chance of succeeding). Here's a montage to show the 18 component images I was going to use... Now all I did was open all 18 of these images (each one from an 18mp Canon camera) into PSE9's editor....
Then I went to FILE-NEW-PHOTOMERGE PANORAMA, included all 18 images, set to the REPOSITION method
and set it off running - expecting all manner of problems ranging from a simple 'can't do it' message to a full-blown
computer-lockup. Bearing in mind I was asked for and gave no indication whatsoever of how the pictures
fitted together - they were taken across, down, across etc..

Unbelievably, about 3 minutes later PSE9 presented me with the complete picture below... Now that's amazed me for one! PSE9 is incredible!

Yes, PS is very good at creating panoramas.
18 images, that's a lot and good final image.

That's pretty incredible. Very nice end result.
CE

Bonjour
Très beau résultat car la photo est superbe.
Cordialement seb

Great! I need to try this out myself!

Stitching mega photos for free.
You really should try the new Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE).
It does a much better job than Photoshop. It handles more photos, they do not have to be in any sequence and the new content aware fill is fantastic.
Microsoft ICE download.

The QCC wrote:Stitching mega photos for free.
You really should try the new Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE).
It does a much better job than Photoshop. It handles more photos, they do not have to be in any sequence and the new content aware fill is fantastic.
Microsoft ICE download.

Hi, I've spent 1/2hr trying to get ICE to do what PSE9 did and this is the best I could get it to produce.... Where am I going wrong? PSE9 just did it right first time. The ICE software is very fast & slick and I'm sure I'm doing something horribly wrong to produce the above horror!

I do not know what you did wrong, but ICE is almost fully automatic.
I did this quick experiment.
I took 23 photos of Diorite. I started at the top, went down to the bottom. Moved to left and went back up to the top.
ICE stitched the photos perfectly.
I then took two photos and rotated them 90° and ICE once again made a perfect image.
These photos show what I did trying to mess up ICE.
The original images with two rotated. What ICE saw. Stitched and ready to crop. The stitched image with rotated source images. The stitched image from the original scans. No rotated images.

I'm getting something wrong - please tell me again what order you took the photo's in.... Did you do the L->R down, L->R etc or the L-R down, R-L down, L-R etc? It looks like a very good program - it's very fast too. I'll get the hang of it - maybe I'll take a fresh series and have another go!
Many thanks.

The previous test the stage movement was rather linear. Down, accross 1, up.
This test I randomly took photos around approximately the same area.
This test is of 11 Canon RAW files.
The 11 images in ICE Loaded and ready to stitch.
Look at your sample in ICE and see what transformation it is applying Before Auto complete. I do not necessarily recommend auto complete, but it is there if needed. The final image.

The QCC wrote:The previous test the stage movement was rather linear. Down, accross 1, up.
This test I randomly took photos around approximately the same area.

Aha - I've been over-complicating things (as usual!)... Following your advice I simply put the images into ICE, selected the 'simple panorama' and has a peek at the proposed stitch - all was good!
To recap, here's my first sloppy attempt to use ICE: Following some good advice I managed to get this from ICE very easily.. Many thanks for your help - ICE is now by far my No:1 option for stitching (amazingly simple & fast).