This tip is for a bit advanced users as it is not really associated with only the camera, but certain knowledge on Photoshop is also required. I've used Photoshop CS2 to create this image.
This is a
7MP photo created with my
2MP S88, [glow=red,2,300]without losing any details[/glow] of the photo. The example image given below has been saved with 50% JPG compression for the sake of browsing, that's why the image quality appears not so good, but if you do it yourself, you'll get great results, trust me!
In your image viewer if you set zoom to 100% or Fit Height then scroll thru the picture side-wise then you'll see a 3D impression.
Now, here's how to do it:
1. Take the first photo, it should be the right most or left most part of the region you wish to photograph. In this tutorial let's assume the photo is taken from the left most region.
2. While taking the snap, try to keep the horizon as level as possible, otherwise you'll have to later rotate it in Photoshop. It always better to get it correct in the first place.
3. Remember the bottom-right portion of the image in the viewfinder, you might consider turning off the OSD of the viewfinder (for S88 press
*) for better viewing.
4. Keeping the camera at the exactly (or as exactly you can) same position rotate the camera (DONT MOVE ONLY ROTATE) towards the right such that the portion that was at the bottom-right portion in the previous snap is now at the bottom-left portion, keeping the horizon level take the snap.
5. Repeat steps 4 & 5 until you come to the finish line, to take a 360° photo you can stop at where you started.
6. Get the photos into your PC.
7. In Photoshop open a new document with dimensions:
Height: Vertical resolution of your camera.
Width: Horizontal resolution of your camera
times number of
snaps you've taken.
8. Create layers for each of the photos you've taken, don't use the background layer, leave it as it is.
9. Paste each of the images in each of the layers.
10. Goto
View Menu and
uncheck Snap.
11. Drag the left most image to the left most part of the canvas.
12. Drag the 2nd image overlapping the 1st image such that both the image appear continuous. To assist this you might fiddle with the opacity of the layer with the 2nd image so you can see thru it the 1st image. After you are done positioning the 2nd image put the opacity back to 100%.
13. Goto
Edit > Fade Exposure and fiddle with the exposure to match the exposure of the 2nd image with the 1st one.
14. Choose
Eraser tool and set its
size to around 50 to 100 and
hardness to 0.
Opacity should be 100% and
flow around 7%.
15. Now erase the left edge of the 2nd image in such a way that it merges with the 1st image nicely.
16. Repeat steps 12 to 15 with each of the rest images. Remember, when you are done with one layer (image) don't edit any portion of it, if you change any previous image it will only make your life hell.
17. Sometimes two adjacent images will not exactly overlap, in such case you must use the
Warp function from
Edit > Transform.
18. After you are done, zoom out to see the entire canvas. Then select
Crop tool to crop the image.
19. Save it as JPG. Needless to mention that you should also save a PSD format for future reference.
20.
Smile!In a few days I'll come up with a similar but more amazing trick!If you find this trick easy, you'll love that one; otherwise that will seem harder as that's gonna be a bit more advanced.