Photomerge Dialog to Editing Screen

[richlars]

Greetings! I am an admitted newby and use PSE in a unique way. I am using it to merge images of genealogical documents scanned from microfilm. The scanner has limitations that do not allow it to scan an entire page, so I scan it in sections and have had great success with PSE 1 (which surprisingly works without a hitch in Vista) in merging the images together. I decide to try PSE 6 and was very impressed that it automatically merges many of the images perfectly. But there were some that I needed to use the Photomerge Dialog Box on. Again I was very pleasantly surprised at the improvements. My problem came when I hit the OK button to return to the editing screen. Only half of the merged image appears and the other side is the checkerboard background. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for any help, Rich

[ATR]

Rich

Are you using the Interactive Layout option in Photomerge Panorama? And, you drag the images down from the bin and position (merge) them manually? Then you click OK, are back in Editor, and see only one image on the Monitor?

If you started with two images that you merged manually in the dialog, you should have two layers in the Layers Palette. Do you and did you check the visibility icon of each of these layers to make sure that they both were on?

ATR

[richlars]

Thank you ATR! Yes, just as you described but I did notice something new. The one layer appears just as it should, the other I just noticed in the Layers palette as just the checkered background. But as I toggled the visibility Icon I noticed in the editor that there was a slice of the image to the far right of the working area that was turning on and off. I might just play with that portion of the two I am trying to merge. There is a large portion to the right side that was off of the page and just dark that may be messing things up. Anything you can think of would be greatly appreciated.

Rich

[TonyW]

When you use Photomerge with PSE6 it does create two (or more if you merge more than two images) layers and each layer has a layer mask. Every once in a while if it has trouble merging the images it can create some odd looking layer masks which maybe what you are seeing (especially if have been using PSE1 and aren't familiar with layer masks). Here's a screen shot of what the layers should look like - turning off the top layer eyeball would show only part of the bottom image with the rest checkerboard transparent as in the second screen shot because the layer mask is masking the rest of it.

2165

2166

Tony

[richlars]

Thanks Tony! I played around a bit with other a few other images last night and I think what is giving me trouble is that I didn't allow for enough overlap when I did my original scans. Those that had more overlap seemed to work fine. The others worked well enough in the Photomerge box, but did not go well into the edit screen.
Thanks again for your help,
Rich

[ljameso1]

Rich, If you do a lot of this, you might want to upgrade. The newer versions(6) contain a vastly improved photomerge. I was able to use it to stitch a 17 image pano the was handheld standing on snowshoes!

[richlars]

Thanks Linda, but it is version 6 that I am using on a trial basis and having trouble with. So far it seems that if it can do the merging automatically it does super. If it throws me over to the Photomerge Dialog Box, it looks great there and everything snaps into place, but when I hit the OK button, the right side always disappears or is just a sliver of an image in the editing screen.
I agree that it seems to be much better and I especially like the way you can zoom in much tighter to manually line things up. It is vastly improved in that respect, I just can't get to the next step.

Thanks again for your ideas,

Rich

[ljameso1]

I see. You're probably right about it being the overlap. I always do a 50% overlap and have never been rejected by auto.