Photomerge in photoshop what am I doing wrong???

[Martina]

I've been playing around with photomerge in photoshop tonight and I'm really swimming in the deep end, the example I show is number 5 of tonights attempts and it's obvious something is wrong with the seam accross the pic. other pictures I've attemted have been divided in 1/4's
I'm sure I've used photomerge in the past without this problem

This example is only 3 exposures, others I've tried have been 3-5 with similiar results.

so what is going on am I having a blond moment?

[DAdeGroot]

Which version of Photoshop, 'cause I've found CS3's photomerge to be fairly ordinary to bad, but CS4's is quite good.

Were your exposures somewhat different in brightness ?

[Burning Image]

look like the work of cs2.
the merging function of cs2 is a little bit buggy.
it doesn't seem notice the exposure needed blending for some reason
the alignment seem ok though

[ricktas]

Yeah, agree with the above. Photomerge was improved greatly when CS3 was released, prior to that it was a bit dubious.

Another thing to consider, were all shots for the merge taken with the camera on full manual mode and no settings change at all between shots? It is imperative that you take shots for a merge on exactly the same camera settings, to ensure a nice even blend. Variances in exposure can play havoc with a photomerge.

[Martina]

Thanks Guys,
yep it was CS2, have noticed a few problems with it lately. If I can find my disc i'm thinking of uninstalling then reinstall as I'm sure it was working fine in the past. Do you think that might help or am I wasting my time?

[ricktas]

It may help Marty. But the photomerge in cs2 wasn't all that well programmed. Adobe did a LOT of work on it after CS2 and from CS3 it has really been a much better tool. So, it could very well be that no matter what you do, some merges are going to come out odd looking, using CS2.