10 tips for creating super synths
- Take lots of photos: Not all photos will connect well and picking the right ones is a matter of experience. To give you plenty of choice, take two to three times more photos than you think you‘ll need, up to a maximum of about 300, and experiment until you find the right combination.
- Have lots of overlap: You should try for at least 50 per cent overlap on average between photos. This overlap makes the 3D construction possible.
- Panorama first, then move around: Start by taking a panorama of your scene, then move around and take more photos from different angles and positions.
- Remember the “rule of three”: Each part of the scene you‘re shooting should appear in three separate photos, taken from different locations.
- Limit the angles between photos: Try to get one photo every 25 degrees or so. That will make the synth work better. Extreme angle differences on a subject won‘t match up.
- Shoot scenes with lots of detail and texture: The features in the photos are what tie them together. A blank wall won‘t synth, but one with lots of art or posters will work well.
- Don’t crop images: Cropping eliminates important information that Photosynth needs, or makes the focal length inaccurate.
- Shoot wide shots: Wide-angle shots reconstruct more reliably than closer shots. It‘s good to have close-ups, too, but you‘ll want to have good coverage of your subject with lots of nice overlapping wide shots.
- Limit post processing: You can adjust anything that won‘t drastically alter the photos (brightness, contrast, red-eye and so on). Other than that, leave it alone.
- Orientation: Make sure your photos are all the right way up before you start synthing.
