| Sign in: |
| Members log in here with your user name and password to access the your admin page and other special features. |
|
|
|
|
|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
How can I auto-align non-tripod time-lapse images?
Lyle Aspinall, Photographer
 |
Calgary | AB | Canada | Posted: 10:55 PM on 11.14.10 |
->> For the past several months, whenever I've had some free time while on shift, I've shot photos of my city's skyline from five fixed locations, to document the growth of a certain skyscraper. The intent is to stack the result into time-lapse videos.
Since the photos were all hand-held (what was I gonna do, leave a tripod in a public park for more than a year?), I need to align the shots for clean time-lapse clips. Thanks to careful note-keeping, the images in each series are all at the same focal length and composed roughly the same way.
I'm aware of PhotoShop's auto-align function for layers (http://tinyurl.com/2wh9pj5), and I've discovered that it works great for this project, but it chews up major memory and takes a LONG time.
I'm wondering if anyone knows of another option that is easier on memory. A search of the internet didn't help much. Maybe you folks can help. |
|
Jack Howard, Photographer, Photo Editor
|
Central Jersey | NJ | USA | Posted: 8:29 AM on 11.15.10 |
->> Recent versions of iMovie, Adobe Premiere, and After Effects all have some variation on "Image stabilization" that may be somewhat effective.
You don't mention focal length, but wider angles present more of a challenge for any multi-image alignment operations as slight variations in pitch roll and yaw between frames are amplified, and even if the center of the frame can be aligned to acceptable tolerances, you may have differences in object placement in the frames due to the optical physics. Photoshop's CS5 Puppet Warp can smooth this out a bit, but it takes a lot of practice, and would require touching every adjacent image pair in the series...
Or just let it ride rough as it comes after stringing the series as an image sequence, and see if it can't get viraled by Photojojo–they seem to have a skew towards the um...rustic...projects and presentations. |
|
Mark Loundy, Photo Editor
|
San Jose | CA | USA | Posted: 4:30 PM on 11.15.10 |
->> Also Final Cut Pro.
--Mark |
|
Israel Shirk, Photographer, Assistant
|
Boise | ID | US | Posted: 9:12 PM on 11.15.10 |
->> You can choose one as the "authoritative" angle, and one-by-one sync the others to it; it'll take less time and memory to compute, but you might have to figure out another way to automate going through all the images.
Using photoshop actions: Set up an action in photoshop that will open the authoritative image and match the new image to it, then save the new (aligned) image. Then run that action as a batch on all the images in whatever folder everything is in.
You might have to set the alignment step so it'll let you give input or select which points to match (I haven't used that in a few versions). |
|
Return to --> Message Board Main Index
|