Phoshop Elements- Photomerge not working

I'll just copy/paste this from the Adobe forums, since I posted this there as well:

I already own Lightroom 3, but decided to try PSE (10) since we are getting no love when it comes to better cloning tools (brushes etc). I also remembered that it was possible to do panoramic merging in PSE, and that would be another huge reason to spend the extra hundred bucks, but... after having tried the trial for just a short while, I'm finding PSE to be horribly disappointing! Cloning is ok-ish, but not having a lasso tool (unless I can't find it?) is lame. This isn't about cloning though.. .so on to the issue. Photomerging. It simply, doesn't work.

I've exported 6 jpgs (full size) to my HD from Lightroom. They're basic photos of a street corner and building (rather liked the building) and the angles aren't anything out of the ordinary. I open up PSE, go to File>new>photomerge and select auto. Then.... nothing. It just hangs. It goes from looking like it might do something to a spinning beach ball. I eventually have to force quit. When I restart, it opens with the last image of the batch.

I'm running Lion on a 3 1/2 year old MacBook Pro, Core 2 Duo with 4 gigs of RAM. I've run PS 5 on this machine before and have done photomerging with zero problems, so can not understand why PSE would not work? Though it was with Snow Leopard, so maybe that's the issue? Does anybody have a clue?

Doug

No clue . . . But glad to see your feedback on PSE 10. I've been tempted to upgrade from PSE 8 but haven't pulled the trigger.

Sorry I can't be any help on your issue; I'm still a rank beginner with PSE. I've done one HDR and a lot of general clean up with the clone and healing brushes.

I've got Elements 10, Doug, I'll have a play with it tomorrow evening and see if mine behaves itself and report back.

Thanks Chuck. I've got an update and have made some observations since the last time I used PSE.

First, I should correct myself and say that there are lasso tools. But what I meant to say is that there is no content-aware fill for said lasso's. That's a big omisison in my opinion.

On to stitching. I remember using CS 5 to stitch photos in the past, with no issues and so I decided to find ones that have worked in the past, and see if they'd work with PSE. Turns out that they worked flawlessly. I even resized the photos to 2144x1424 (half) and decreased the jpg quality to 91 (in Lightroom) before exporting to the HD. These files btw, are in landscape orientation.

The photos that won't stitch, are in portrait orientation. I also resized them to 1424x2144 and decreased the jpg quality. The orientation is the only difference I can note. And for some reason, they won't merge. Hmmph.

Doug

Doug b said:

The photos that won't stitch, are in portrait orientation. I also resized them to 1424x2144 and decreased the jpg quality. The orientation is the only difference I can note. And for some reason, they won't merge. Hmmph.

Doug

Click to expand...

Interesting. I was going to suggest that you resize them in case it was taxing your memory with 6 huge images but that obviously wasn't the issue.

If you don't mind, show us your results when you get it figured out.

It's definitely not a memory issue, that's for sure. I just tested a 32 image stitch, all in portrait orientation. The only thing different that I can note, is that neither this series or the last series that worked, was touched up first in Lightroom. Well, one other thing was different... with the series that wouldn't work, there was a person in 4 out of 6 frames. In those 4, the person's position was pretty much consistent, so... Not sure if that had anything to do with it.

Here's a 32 image stitch. It has got some horrible distortion because I never bothered to use lens correction, and I used auto stitch rather than a perhaps better option available in PSE. But this simply showed me that technically, nothing is wrong with PSE. It has got to be due to something in those particular files.



Interestingly enough, the two out of the 6 files, that don't have the person it it, do stitch together. So I think that's got to be it?

Doug

That would be my guess! Especially if the person has moved laterally in any significant way. In that case, I would think that the program would be "confused" trying to place him/her in relation to everything else.

FritzDaCat said:

That would be my guess! Especially if the person has moved laterally in any significant way. In that case, I would think that the program would be "confused" trying to place him/her in relation to everything else.

Click to expand...

Well, if I had a content aware lasso tool in PSE to get the person out of there, I could test that theory out! I was trying to avoid installing CS5 on Lion this time around... Gah. But yeah, I'm leaning towards that being the issue. Thanks dude!

Doug