Morphing
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Software related, but not programming, so I didn't find another place to ask: Time lapse photos have been fashion among photo nerds for some time - usually using a camera monted in the same position for hours, days or months. Results may be fascinating, or boring, but they are usually OK from a technical point of view. Then you have those who take a self portrait, or a photo of their kids, every day or week, and put together as a movie, which usually doesn't look like a time lapse at all - just a spastically flickering kaleidoscope of messy setups. I really would like to make decent time lapse portraits! So I am considering two measures to improve the quality: First, I need a camera that can be hooked up to a PC as a "viewfinder". In principle, any USB webcam satisifies, but I would prefer the quality of a decent DSLR. The viewfinder image would not be displayed directly, but XORed with the previous photo in the series. If the person is unchanged from the previous photo, and sits in exactly the same position, the screen would be pitch black. There will always be some differences - you would see some outline of the face, but the subject may be instructed how to move the head to make the image as black (i.e. as close to the previous one) as possible, before clicking the release button. I guess I would be able to program this myself. Second... This alone would give me a lot better time lapse series that what we frequently see e.g. on YouTube. But I would like to improve it even further: Rather than displaying the original photos, I would like to use intermediate ones: Merging photos n and n+1 into an n+0.5. I would like to be flexible so that I could merge n-1, n, n+1 and n+2 into n+0.5 as well (with less weight on the more "remote" inputs than on the closer ones). I've seen lots of talking about morphing photographs this way, but not many products. The products I have found have been far from freeware, mostly complex professional packages at several hundred USD or more. I may have overlooked some obvious cheap or free alternative :-). What would you use to merge two+ almost-indentical photos into one that picks up elements from all the input sources?
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Software related, but not programming, so I didn't find another place to ask: Time lapse photos have been fashion among photo nerds for some time - usually using a camera monted in the same position for hours, days or months. Results may be fascinating, or boring, but they are usually OK from a technical point of view. Then you have those who take a self portrait, or a photo of their kids, every day or week, and put together as a movie, which usually doesn't look like a time lapse at all - just a spastically flickering kaleidoscope of messy setups. I really would like to make decent time lapse portraits! So I am considering two measures to improve the quality: First, I need a camera that can be hooked up to a PC as a "viewfinder". In principle, any USB webcam satisifies, but I would prefer the quality of a decent DSLR. The viewfinder image would not be displayed directly, but XORed with the previous photo in the series. If the person is unchanged from the previous photo, and sits in exactly the same position, the screen would be pitch black. There will always be some differences - you would see some outline of the face, but the subject may be instructed how to move the head to make the image as black (i.e. as close to the previous one) as possible, before clicking the release button. I guess I would be able to program this myself. Second... This alone would give me a lot better time lapse series that what we frequently see e.g. on YouTube. But I would like to improve it even further: Rather than displaying the original photos, I would like to use intermediate ones: Merging photos n and n+1 into an n+0.5. I would like to be flexible so that I could merge n-1, n, n+1 and n+2 into n+0.5 as well (with less weight on the more "remote" inputs than on the closer ones). I've seen lots of talking about morphing photographs this way, but not many products. The products I have found have been far from freeware, mostly complex professional packages at several hundred USD or more. I may have overlooked some obvious cheap or free alternative :-). What would you use to merge two+ almost-indentical photos into one that picks up elements from all the input sources?
Member 7989122 wrote:
Software related, but not programming, so I didn't find another place to ask:
[Photography Stack Exchange](https://photo.stackexchange.com/) [Photography](http://www.reddit.com/r/photography) And maybe some other Photoshop discussion boards here and there :-\
I'd rather be phishing!
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Software related, but not programming, so I didn't find another place to ask: Time lapse photos have been fashion among photo nerds for some time - usually using a camera monted in the same position for hours, days or months. Results may be fascinating, or boring, but they are usually OK from a technical point of view. Then you have those who take a self portrait, or a photo of their kids, every day or week, and put together as a movie, which usually doesn't look like a time lapse at all - just a spastically flickering kaleidoscope of messy setups. I really would like to make decent time lapse portraits! So I am considering two measures to improve the quality: First, I need a camera that can be hooked up to a PC as a "viewfinder". In principle, any USB webcam satisifies, but I would prefer the quality of a decent DSLR. The viewfinder image would not be displayed directly, but XORed with the previous photo in the series. If the person is unchanged from the previous photo, and sits in exactly the same position, the screen would be pitch black. There will always be some differences - you would see some outline of the face, but the subject may be instructed how to move the head to make the image as black (i.e. as close to the previous one) as possible, before clicking the release button. I guess I would be able to program this myself. Second... This alone would give me a lot better time lapse series that what we frequently see e.g. on YouTube. But I would like to improve it even further: Rather than displaying the original photos, I would like to use intermediate ones: Merging photos n and n+1 into an n+0.5. I would like to be flexible so that I could merge n-1, n, n+1 and n+2 into n+0.5 as well (with less weight on the more "remote" inputs than on the closer ones). I've seen lots of talking about morphing photographs this way, but not many products. The products I have found have been far from freeware, mostly complex professional packages at several hundred USD or more. I may have overlooked some obvious cheap or free alternative :-). What would you use to merge two+ almost-indentical photos into one that picks up elements from all the input sources?
sounds like a niche market/demand kind of thing. I would recommend looking at Photoshop, etc. but if you want to keep this on the cheap and you can't find anything on this site or others, than I would recommend rolling your own software for this. Combine images with Auto-Blend Layers in Adobe Photoshop[^] Combine images |[^] FYI - I have an Adobe monthly subscription and it is fairly cheap if you just want Photoshop.