CS2 Photomerge help

My wife got a sequence shot of our son landing his first Mexiroll. It was taken with a Canon Rebel XT. I opened the photos in CS2 and attempted to photomerge them, but only the first shot and the rope on the 2nd and 3rd shot show up but he doesn't. I have tried several times. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

send me the photos and i'll see what i can do. i'm bored at work most of the time anyways.

Nate-O, thanks dude, coming your way to the email address in your profile.

Photomerge won't work for a action sequence. You have to do it in layers.

Thanks Walt, Nate-O hooked me up. I think that's exactly what he used. I should know more, but it's just one of the 5 billion applications I have to support at the hospital.

If you ever need a step by step brake down let me know.

Walt,
I'm trying to stitch together a plane taking off. I've layered all the pics together but I can't figure out how to get them all together. When I use the erase brush, it works while I'm holding down the mouse but once I release the mouse, the erase marks disappear.
I'll take a step by step break down if you don't mind.

Ronia

I usually work from the middle out. Open your middle photo.

Open the next photo in the sequence.

Go over to layers and open the second photo in layers.

Reduce opacity to 50%

Click on move tool

drag layer over to the first photo and line up.

You might need to rotate a little one way or the other

reset opacity back to 100%

select erase brush

erase part of the layer that overlaps

Flatten image when done and repeat the process.

Thanks, Walt. May hit you up sometime. I borrowed a pretty sweet CS2 book from our department photog, just haven't had a lot of time to dig into it yet other than reading about the Photomerge.

when i select the erase brush, I hold down the mouse to erase but then once I let the mouse go, the erased part comes back.

I've never seen that happen Ronia.

You are right Walt, I was using the wrong tool. Now that I've erased what I don't need, how do I make the background blend a little better (you can see where all the pics line up). After that, I need to crop it as I'm working with a huge "canvas".
Thanks for the help. Your step by step is helping more than a tutorial.

Ronia...did you set the camera to manual when you took the sequence? In other words, are the exposure values the same for each shot? If they are different, you have a harder time making them blend

No the camera was on automatic so it probably won't look perfect but anything to kind of blend it together. Thinking the "rubber stamp" ???

post a pic of and let's see what you are getting. It will be a little easier making recs

For some reason since I switched to mac, I can't post pics here. Sent you and Walt an email of the final project. Not too bad for my first time imo....

oops, no email for Walt. Hey Bakes, can you post for me? Thanks.

Here it is




Here is my constructive criticism

Having it on manual exposure would have ensured a more uniform sky exposure. That being said, you can adjust the brightness of the skies to match in lightroom or CS3. I would also only include every other shot as it gets a little busy. Finally, I would have taken it with a vertical orientation to get a little more of the foreground into it. If there happened to be a city skyline or something off to the right a bit that would have been nice to include as well.

Anyways, keep shooting and posting

Later

Bakes

Thanks Bakes. I actually didn't shoot the sequence with intentions of stitching together. Just shot it to shoot it then the stitching was an after thought. I like the idea of only including every other shot. Never thought of that. Thanks. Will keep that in mind in the future.

There was nothing but a 100ft drop off a mountain at the end. That was the whole idea of shooting it and A vertical shot probably would have captured that better.

Now that I know I can stitch, I will try and shoot better.

Thanks for all the tips and for posting.