Web Events: Creating Panoramas

Simple event process: overview, load files on pc, photo gallery, announce
Special event process: overview, load files on pc, trip web, itineraries, intro pics, panoramas, photo galleries, backdrops, videos
Optional extras: people photo galleries
Time Required: ~1 hour per file + ~1 hour to create web areas

Creating good looking panorama files can be a long and tedious process, however the best looking panoramas are inspiring to behold and well worth the time. The trick is to focus most of your time on the best panoramas so it's not wasted. We recommend the following process:

Intro Files: Create your intro files first, as you may use photos meant for panoramas that will be grouped and hidden later.
Create Rough Panoramas: Create all panorama files using the adobe auto creation tools, and do not spend any time making them look good.
Import and Tag: Import the panorama files into Photoshop elements; tag them with your event, location, and people tags; and tag them with a special panorama tag so you can find them later.
Optimize: Select the most promising panoramas and edit each one so they flow together well (rotate and resize each part) and so the colors match (curve layers, masks, and custom mask blends)
Create Panorama photo gallery
Upload to the web site

The create, import, and tag steps can take 2-3 nights. The optimize step can take 10 minutes to an hour per panorama. For a long vacation with 20-30 panoramas, this can take most evenings and some weekends over the period of a month. You can cut this time down by only fixing the best ones, though you have to create the rough ones first to get a good idea of how it will turn out.

The trick is to set aside some time, and stop when your time is up. I used to get frustrated that it took so long, and ended up pushing myself every night to try and finish faster. This resulted in being tired and frustrated all the time. Pacing is everything.

Create rough panoramas

Run Photoshop elements.
Stitch: Look for files that need to be stitched together to make a larger photo. Select them in Photoshop elements, then select file->new->photomerge. It will bring up the files in the Photoshop elements simple editor. Place together by hand if needed, then make sure "save as layers" is checked and perspective is not checked. Select ok to combine the photos.
Ignore Problems: The results almost always needs to be fixed. Wait until later, so you can fix only the most promising panoramas.
Save: Save the file back into the same directory as the source files, and save as a Photoshop .psd file. Use the same prefix as the earliest photo in the panorama to make sure they stay together. (For example, if the earliest file in your panorama is called 12.20a. Hill.jpg, name the panorama file 12.20a. Panoroma of Hill and Waterfall (3 pic).psd. ) If possible, make sure "Include in Organizer" is selected when you save the file.

Import and Tag

Bugs: Some versions of Photoshop elements are buggy and do not let you automatically include the file in the organizer. If this occurs, you'll need to import all the panorama files. I typically try to create a rough panorama and import them one directory at a time to make it easier to pick up later.
Import: Select File->Get Photos->From Files and Folders. (or use the import photo icon at the top). Navigate to the directory where you just saved your new rough panoramas. Change the view to details, and sort by filetype. Select all photoshop files, and press the get photos button. Photoshop will now import them into a new windows. Old photos that were already imported will be ignored.
Tag: Select all files (control-A or use the edit pulldown menu), then look in your tag window. Find your event tag, right click on it, and select the "Attach xxx tag to xxx selected item(s)". Do the same with a location tag, then add people tags for anyone in the photo. Now attach the panorama tag to all the photos so we can find them all later.
Update dates and times: Make sure all new panoramas are selected, then double click the time on one of them. Specify set new date and time. Set the date to the picture capture date for all photos in that directory, and set time to unknown. Select ok to update all the files. If you only have 2-3 files to fix, then please fix the date and time separately for each. I use unknown for a large group because this operation takes a long time.
Update captions and filenames:
Save Copies: Some of your new panoramas may show up with an hourglass icon instead of a thumbnail in the Organizer. This happens when the file size is too big. Adobe Elements 3.0 doesn't let you change this maximum size, so you'll need to create your own. Select all hourglass (large) files, right click, and select "Edit with Standard Editor". Inside the standard editor, for each file, select save as, then select jpeg and quality 5 and save it to the same directory. It will add the word "copy" to the end of each filename. Now run the import process and select all these "copy" files. It will tell you they have existing tags and ask if you want to import them. Yes! This saves us some work. Select "Select all" to select all tags, and press ok. Update the dates and times for these copies.
Return to your trip photos: When you are done, use the back button on your mouse to return to your selection of all photos for your trip. If you did a copy import as well, you may need to back out a second time. If this returns to all photos, then select your trip tag to focus on your trip photos.
Stack Photos: Panoramas are created from a lot of little photos, which usually don't look that good on their own. We'll use the stack function to reduce clutter in the photo organizer, and hid the source photos behind each panorama. For each panorama you created, select the panorama and all source files that went into it. If one of the source files is really nice, you may want to leave it out. If you had to create a "copy" file because the panorama was too big, leave the copy out of the stack. Now right click on a photo and select Stack->Stack selected photos. This will group them all together and only show one photo. If this top photo is not your panorama, right click on it, and select Stack->Reveal. This will show you all photos in the stack. Find your panorama, right click on it, and select Stack->Set as top photo. Press the back button on your mouse to return, and repeat for the other panoramas.

Create panoramas

Run Photoshop elements.
Stitch: Look for files that need to be stitched together to make a larger photo. Select them in Photoshop elements, then select file->new->photomerge. It will bring up the files in the Photoshop elements simple editor. Place together by hand if needed, then make sure "save as layers" is checked. Select ok to combine the photos. Now look at the photos and select each part and use the cursor keys to move around if needed and the resize keys at the top to change each sub-photos size. Now select file->save and change to the correct directory where the files came from. The last saved directory is often incorrect. Name the file like the earliest sub-file and give it a caption such as "12.43a. Panorama of Grand Canyon.psd". You must save it as a psd or Photoshop file at this step. Make sure "include in organizer" is selected. Now it will show up in Photoshop elements.
Tag and Time: Left click on the new file icon's date and tell it the date and time of the first file in your sequence. Now tag the file with the trip, location, people, and star tags.
Edit to Perfection: Most panoramas look a bit off. Select it in Photoshop elements, right click, and select "edit with Photoshop". Inside Photoshop, assign a layer mask for each layer, and blend the masks around objects (trees, rocks, hills, people) so it looks better. The gradient and selection box tools work great for blending each sky section. Now use "layer->add adjustment layer->curves" and "group with previous layer" to add a curves layer for each layer with colors that need to be fixed. After this is done and the colors look good, add a curves layer as the new top layer, do not group it, and adjust the brightness and color for the whole picture. Save the file and exit. Photoshop elements may ask if you want to keep a new special file as a separate file. Select no, and your picture icon will update in Photoshop elements for the newly edited file. The neat thing is that this edit process created a new file "... -edited-1" or "-edited-2" so the old file still exists, but the Photoshop browser only shows the latest one.

Upload

First make sure your event has it's own web site. If not, create a simple one by copying from another event.
Upload all backdrops for this event's backdrops directory.
Update the large index page to point to each backdrop, create thumbnails, and rate the picture.
Use your web browser, go to the event site, make sure the panorama listing looks ok. Try a couple to make sure.
Update the top level panoramas page and add links to your events and a copy of your panorama table.
In FrontPage:
- Start Microsoft FrontPage.
- Select File->Open Site. Enter the web site, such as laddish.org or hikepics.laddish.net. For username and password, ask Rob or see the help on that web site.
- Open a windows explorer window, navigate to the web collections folder for your trip.
- Left click/drag the panoramas folder into the web site.
- TODO: add text on updating large file.
- TODO: add text on updating site-wide backdrops file.

Future Ideas, TODO's

QuickTime VR: Try to create QuickTime VR images for our 360 panoramas.