Panel/Sequence of Shots Software for Sports Bursts

dosdan · 12-17-2012, 01:09 AM

I'm often doing bursts of sports shots with a K-5 e.g. a discus spin; a javelin throw; a long or triple jump; a swimming dive or backstroke start.

Is there any software package that assists with the process of making a combination panel incorporating say 3-10 shots. It should make it easy to:

Individually rotate images to get the same alignment, if shot handheld, or apply the same rotation to all shots, if shot from a tripod.
Use the same crop frame, assuming that the distance and FL are the same for all shots, or easy individual resizing, if they aren't.
Move the cropping frame easily around to get similar compositions in each shot in the panel.
Add labels to each frame e.g. numbers or text.
Optionally, vertical separators between each shoot in the panel, say a thin or thick vertical red line.

I can do all of this in PaintShop Pro 14 or in XnView, but they both require a lot of work to create a sequence panel and I'd like to do this more often, rather than just present each shot in the sequence individually.

Output should be a single, wide JPEG.

I can create a stepping sequence (1-99 repeated frames, per shot, at say 25 fps) in Sony Vegas Pro, in say WMV output format, but I think a static multi-shot panel is more useful.

Is any program optimised for this sort of task?

Dan.

Last edited by dosdan; 12-19-2012 at 01:19 PM.

**Miguel** · 12-17-2012, 10:37 PM

Dan, you have some nicely detailed requirements there. I think Lightroom can do just about all of these; if not, a round trip from Photoshop back to Lightroom for printing will meet your needs indeed.

> Individually rotate images to get the same alignment, if shot handheld, or apply the same rotation to all shots, if shot from a tripod

You can rotate an image in LR and then paste that degree of rotation onto other shots. You can also tweak them to coordinate a look.

> Use the same crop frame, assuming that the distance and FL are the same for all shots, or easy individual resizing, if they aren't.

Same thing, you can copy and paste a crop and aspect ratio among shots. For sports sequences I do this all the time. Very efficient.

>Move the cropping frame easily around to get similar compositions in each shot in the panel.

Sure, in LR the cropping frame is fluid as a whole, or rather the image behind the frame can be moved freely. Very intuitive.

>Add labels to each frame e.g. numbers or text.

Yep, in the Print module is an "Identity Plate" that is essentially a text box overlay with full graphics capability. I've used it for branding, but I've also used it for titles under a team photograph. It can be in front or behind the image, and scaled and opacified.

>Optionally, vertical separators between each shoot in the panel, say a thin or thick vertical red line.

This is the fun part. In LR Print you can design the print layout on any sized paper into countless frames into which a single or multiple images can drop into. Great for sequences. The frames are cells that can be laid out and have a border stroke of variable thickness or just background solid space between cells. Your page background color is determined by picking via a color wheel or gray scale gradient. Because LR is quite popular, many "user print templates" are available for downloading freely online. Scott Kelby has some very useful ones. I've created a few dozen to accommodate different aspect ratios, paper types, sizing, and printers. You can also print to jpeg with the custom caption or header and send it off to a lab.
If you haven't download a 30 day trial of LR and play around.

M

dosdan · 12-17-2012, 11:24 PM

Thanks, Miguel.

My XP machine can't run the current version of LR. But I've got the parts to a new Win 8 machine here which I hope to assemble over Christmans. I'll try LR 4 then.

I didn't like the emphasis on cataloging in LR3 and, being a Pentax user, I prefer the look from SilkyPix Developer Pro 4 over ACR for raw development, but I suppose I could use LR just for sequence work.

I hear that the NR in LR is now very good. Supposedly, so too is the improved NR in SP5.

However, I prefer 2 (Blend, Colour Propagation) of the 4 highlight recovery methods in RawTherapee 4 over SP4, but RT is slow - at least on my current machine. So I only use RT4 specifically for work with blown images. I think LR's highlight recovery is good too, but does it offer multiple ways to work with recovery like RT does?

Can't afford PhotoShop. Can LR make use of a video GPU?

I wonder if Adobe got the idea of the moving and easily resizable crop frame in LR from Aldus Pagemaker which Adobe bought. I remember that PM5, PM6 & PM6.5 had a really nice crop frame that you could easily move around over the ghosted original image to recompose.

Dan.

emalvick · 12-19-2012, 12:18 PM

Dan,

LR is still emphasizing cataloging, but nothing says you have to make full use of it. I use a different software for cataloging and tend to build small catalogs of the folder I want to work in when I want to work rather than build a catalog of all my files. Although with LR3 I did build a catalog of all my files only utilizing the folder browsing aspects to work with LR. The noise reduction is better in LR from the past, but I think that is just getting better in all the software.

LR's recovery, to me, is pretty good but not as detailed as it is in RawTherapee. RT4 is kind of secondary for me, so I'm not very comfortable with its highlight recovery and struggle with it when I can't get what I need out of LR. LR does not make use of GPU either, which can be a drawback, but not the end of the world if you are building a new machine anyway.

In light of all that, it looks like what you are trying to do is essentially the synchronization settings in LR such that you can synchronize or copy crops, rotations, corrections, etc from one image to multiple. It would seem that RT4 or SP4 could have similar features? If not, and if you find that you do want LR, you can always do your processing in software such as RT4 or SP and then do the cropping, rotation, panel in LR.

As for speed... I built a new PC a week ago, and all the software that seemed slow before is so much faster, and I attribute that mostly to CPU and an SSD for my software. RT is definitely faster. It is all relative, too. As long as you don't know better, it probably wouldn't bother you if it isn't as fast as it could be ultimately be (in reference to LR not using GPU). I really don't notice that.

dosdan · 12-19-2012, 01:12 PM

Originally posted by emalvick

In light of all that, it looks like what you are trying to do is essentially the synchronization settings in LR such that you can synchronize or copy crops, rotations, corrections, etc from one image to multiple. It would seem that RT4 or SP4 could have similar features?

SP4 has most of that too:

Ctrtl-C, Ctrl-V to copy & paste all development parameters (except cropping frame). Can paste to multiple (selected) images.
Partial paste dev params (you tick the ones to copy, including cropping frame)
Tastes (user saved dev parameters)
4 Cloakrooms (temp clipboards for dev parameters)

What SP doesn't have, but PSP does, is:

A scripting language: Python. Record and edit scripts.
PS plugin support
A perspective-correction frame (drag the handles). The GIMP has a good one too.
Local Contrast Enhancement.

PSP 14:

Weak in raw conversion
Too much "dummy" stuff: "one-touch"; "automatic".
Not all parts & tools in it are 16-bit. For example, I run a script to emulate PS SmartSharpen. As part of the process to create an edge mask to which a Gaussian blur is applied so that sharpening does not affect the edges, when it runs the Automatic Contrast Enhancement step (used to make the edges in the mask more distinct), it has to convert the image to 8-bit.
No sharpening available as an adjustment layer.

Dan

emalvick · 12-19-2012, 02:27 PM

So a lot of what you are looking for may be accomplished in the software you have but maybe with a bit more effort. LR does dummy stuff down a bit, but as opposed to a lot of dummy features the items do seem to work very nicely. For what you are looking for, which really comes down to cropping and rotation type stuff, it will do well relatively simply, but it will still be mostly manual via synchronization settings for a bunch of images or tweaking from a baseline perhaps in a series of images. I'm not sure if you were looking for something to "automatically" crop and align your images for a sequence, LR won't necessarily work. This would be more of an issue for handheld shots where you'd have to adjust the crop and rotation of each image individually where a tripod sequence wouldn't be bad since you could crop and rotate once and then use the same settings for the remaining images of the sequence.

dosdan · 12-19-2012, 03:55 PM

I'm looking for a program where you can switch between panel view and individual view, tweak in both. Copy rotation angles either globally (tripod) or individually (hand-held). Copy crop area & crop frame initial position globally (but allow tweaking of them afterwards).

It's handy to be able to apply a sharpening change profile or different manual sharpening per image in a some sequences. For example, in the high jump, I use MF and 10x LV to accurately focus a Pentax-M 50/f1.7, on a tripod, on the horizontal bar itself. (I've used AF lenses for high jump too, but they often catch on a background object, so the jumper sometimes is OOF). Although I've used f/5.6 aperture to allow some DOF, the jump take-off in front of the bar, over the bar, coming down the other side, landing, are all at sightly different focusing distances. So I also apply sightly different sharpening in each image in SP4. Since the camera position and bar are a fixed difference apart, the take-off, top of bar, coming down the other side shots are at reasonably constant distances too, so a sharpening change profile would be handy when you dealing with processing many jump sequences. Say 4-5 images per sequence, 3 goes per jumper at each height, 5-40 jumpers per group, male & female and different age groups (I'm photographing at the junior level).

It should be able to automatically group images based on Exif date, with 1-30s (adjustable) difference being considered to belong to the same sequence, but you can easily drag-and drop if it gets it wrong. There is a HDR program, FDRTools, that operates that way and it can be a big time saver.

http://fdrtools.com/eng/manual/fdrtools_2.6/nav/tutorial_iv.htm

You would think with the burst capabilities of modern DSLRs, someone would have created a program that assists with the panel/sequence composition & layout process.

Dan.

Last edited by dosdan; 12-19-2012 at 05:39 PM.

dosdan · 12-19-2012, 04:58 PM

For example, here is a U13 Boys 4-shot high jump sequence, I created it in PSP 10 (it loads a bit quicker than PSP 14). I did not keep the same composition and subject size in all shots because it would have wasted screen space. You can click on it to see the 1809x500 version. Made from four 1000px high images and resized to 1/2 height. It could have been much bigger: minimum frame height in the 4 shots was 1639px, but current size is sufficient for analysis purposes.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3opixxjt1a50ctp/Sequence1.jpg

Fancier versions could have a border around the outside, bigger spacing with 3D shadowed frames, a title etc.

Dan.

**Miguel** · 12-19-2012, 05:36 PM

No brainier for Lightroom.

M

emalvick · 12-20-2012, 02:46 PM

Originally posted by Miguel

No brainier for Lightroom.

M

Yes... Lightroom can give you the ability to "Stack" a sequence by EXIF date and time within a specific range such as the 30-sec you talk about. You'll probably have to play with it a bit through a trial, but I do suggest reading up on some of its features before you try it so you can jump right in since you are looking at some more specialized features.

12-17-2012, 01:09 AM	#1
dosdan Pentaxian Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Brisbane, Australia Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 1,741	Panel/Sequence of Shots Software for Sports Bursts I'm often doing bursts of sports shots with a K-5 e.g. a discus spin; a javelin throw; a long or triple jump; a swimming dive or backstroke start. Is there any software package that assists with the process of making a combination panel incorporating say 3-10 shots. It should make it easy to: Individually rotate images to get the same alignment, if shot handheld, or apply the same rotation to all shots, if shot from a tripod. Use the same crop frame, assuming that the distance and FL are the same for all shots, or easy individual resizing, if they aren't. Move the cropping frame easily around to get similar compositions in each shot in the panel. Add labels to each frame e.g. numbers or text. Optionally, vertical separators between each shoot in the panel, say a thin or thick vertical red line. I can do all of this in PaintShop Pro 14 or in XnView, but they both require a lot of work to create a sequence panel and I'd like to do this more often, rather than just present each shot in the sequence individually. Output should be a single, wide JPEG. I can create a stepping sequence (1-99 repeated frames, per shot, at say 25 fps) in Sony Vegas Pro, in say WMV output format, but I think a static multi-shot panel is more useful. Is any program optimised for this sort of task? Dan. Last edited by dosdan; 12-19-2012 at 01:19 PM.

12-17-2012, 10:37 PM	#2
Miguel Site Supporter Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Near Seattle Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,743	Dan, you have some nicely detailed requirements there. I think Lightroom can do just about all of these; if not, a round trip from Photoshop back to Lightroom for printing will meet your needs indeed. > Individually rotate images to get the same alignment, if shot handheld, or apply the same rotation to all shots, if shot from a tripod You can rotate an image in LR and then paste that degree of rotation onto other shots. You can also tweak them to coordinate a look. > Use the same crop frame, assuming that the distance and FL are the same for all shots, or easy individual resizing, if they aren't. Same thing, you can copy and paste a crop and aspect ratio among shots. For sports sequences I do this all the time. Very efficient. >Move the cropping frame easily around to get similar compositions in each shot in the panel. Sure, in LR the cropping frame is fluid as a whole, or rather the image behind the frame can be moved freely. Very intuitive. >Add labels to each frame e.g. numbers or text. Yep, in the Print module is an "Identity Plate" that is essentially a text box overlay with full graphics capability. I've used it for branding, but I've also used it for titles under a team photograph. It can be in front or behind the image, and scaled and opacified. >Optionally, vertical separators between each shoot in the panel, say a thin or thick vertical red line. This is the fun part. In LR Print you can design the print layout on any sized paper into countless frames into which a single or multiple images can drop into. Great for sequences. The frames are cells that can be laid out and have a border stroke of variable thickness or just background solid space between cells. Your page background color is determined by picking via a color wheel or gray scale gradient. Because LR is quite popular, many "user print templates" are available for downloading freely online. Scott Kelby has some very useful ones. I've created a few dozen to accommodate different aspect ratios, paper types, sizing, and printers. You can also print to jpeg with the custom caption or header and send it off to a lab. If you haven't download a 30 day trial of LR and play around. M

12-19-2012, 01:12 PM	#5
dosdan Pentaxian Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Brisbane, Australia Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 1,741 Original Poster	Originally posted by emalvick In light of all that, it looks like what you are trying to do is essentially the synchronization settings in LR such that you can synchronize or copy crops, rotations, corrections, etc from one image to multiple. It would seem that RT4 or SP4 could have similar features? SP4 has most of that too: Ctrtl-C, Ctrl-V to copy & paste all development parameters (except cropping frame). Can paste to multiple (selected) images. Partial paste dev params (you tick the ones to copy, including cropping frame) Tastes (user saved dev parameters) 4 Cloakrooms (temp clipboards for dev parameters) What SP doesn't have, but PSP does, is: A scripting language: Python. Record and edit scripts. PS plugin support A perspective-correction frame (drag the handles). The GIMP has a good one too. Local Contrast Enhancement. PSP 14: Weak in raw conversion Too much "dummy" stuff: "one-touch"; "automatic". Not all parts & tools in it are 16-bit. For example, I run a script to emulate PS SmartSharpen. As part of the process to create an edge mask to which a Gaussian blur is applied so that sharpening does not affect the edges, when it runs the Automatic Contrast Enhancement step (used to make the edges in the mask more distinct), it has to convert the image to 8-bit. No sharpening available as an adjustment layer. Dan Last edited by dosdan; 12-19-2012 at 01:28 PM.

12-19-2012, 04:58 PM	#8
dosdan Pentaxian Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Brisbane, Australia Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 1,741 Original Poster	For example, here is a U13 Boys 4-shot high jump sequence, I created it in PSP 10 (it loads a bit quicker than PSP 14). I did not keep the same composition and subject size in all shots because it would have wasted screen space. You can click on it to see the 1809x500 version. Made from four 1000px high images and resized to 1/2 height. It could have been much bigger: minimum frame height in the 4 shots was 1639px, but current size is sufficient for analysis purposes. https://www.dropbox.com/s/3opixxjt1a50ctp/Sequence1.jpg Fancier versions could have a border around the outside, bigger spacing with 3D shadowed frames, a title etc. Dan. Last edited by dosdan; 12-19-2012 at 05:32 PM.

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12-17-2012, 11:24 PM	#3
dosdan Pentaxian Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Brisbane, Australia Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 1,741 Original Poster	Thanks, Miguel. My XP machine can't run the current version of LR. But I've got the parts to a new Win 8 machine here which I hope to assemble over Christmans. I'll try LR 4 then. I didn't like the emphasis on cataloging in LR3 and, being a Pentax user, I prefer the look from SilkyPix Developer Pro 4 over ACR for raw development, but I suppose I could use LR just for sequence work. I hear that the NR in LR is now very good. Supposedly, so too is the improved NR in SP5. However, I prefer 2 (Blend, Colour Propagation) of the 4 highlight recovery methods in RawTherapee 4 over SP4, but RT is slow - at least on my current machine. So I only use RT4 specifically for work with blown images. I think LR's highlight recovery is good too, but does it offer multiple ways to work with recovery like RT does? Can't afford PhotoShop. Can LR make use of a video GPU? I wonder if Adobe got the idea of the moving and easily resizable crop frame in LR from Aldus Pagemaker which Adobe bought. I remember that PM5, PM6 & PM6.5 had a really nice crop frame that you could easily move around over the ghosted original image to recompose. Dan.

12-19-2012, 12:18 PM	#4
emalvick Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Davis, CA Photos: Gallery Posts: 1,642	Dan, LR is still emphasizing cataloging, but nothing says you have to make full use of it. I use a different software for cataloging and tend to build small catalogs of the folder I want to work in when I want to work rather than build a catalog of all my files. Although with LR3 I did build a catalog of all my files only utilizing the folder browsing aspects to work with LR. The noise reduction is better in LR from the past, but I think that is just getting better in all the software. LR's recovery, to me, is pretty good but not as detailed as it is in RawTherapee. RT4 is kind of secondary for me, so I'm not very comfortable with its highlight recovery and struggle with it when I can't get what I need out of LR. LR does not make use of GPU either, which can be a drawback, but not the end of the world if you are building a new machine anyway. In light of all that, it looks like what you are trying to do is essentially the synchronization settings in LR such that you can synchronize or copy crops, rotations, corrections, etc from one image to multiple. It would seem that RT4 or SP4 could have similar features? If not, and if you find that you do want LR, you can always do your processing in software such as RT4 or SP and then do the cropping, rotation, panel in LR. As for speed... I built a new PC a week ago, and all the software that seemed slow before is so much faster, and I attribute that mostly to CPU and an SSD for my software. RT is definitely faster. It is all relative, too. As long as you don't know better, it probably wouldn't bother you if it isn't as fast as it could be ultimately be (in reference to LR not using GPU). I really don't notice that.

12-19-2012, 02:27 PM	#6
emalvick Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Davis, CA Photos: Gallery Posts: 1,642	So a lot of what you are looking for may be accomplished in the software you have but maybe with a bit more effort. LR does dummy stuff down a bit, but as opposed to a lot of dummy features the items do seem to work very nicely. For what you are looking for, which really comes down to cropping and rotation type stuff, it will do well relatively simply, but it will still be mostly manual via synchronization settings for a bunch of images or tweaking from a baseline perhaps in a series of images. I'm not sure if you were looking for something to "automatically" crop and align your images for a sequence, LR won't necessarily work. This would be more of an issue for handheld shots where you'd have to adjust the crop and rotation of each image individually where a tripod sequence wouldn't be bad since you could crop and rotate once and then use the same settings for the remaining images of the sequence.

12-19-2012, 03:55 PM	#7
dosdan Pentaxian Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Brisbane, Australia Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 1,741 Original Poster	I'm looking for a program where you can switch between panel view and individual view, tweak in both. Copy rotation angles either globally (tripod) or individually (hand-held). Copy crop area & crop frame initial position globally (but allow tweaking of them afterwards). It's handy to be able to apply a sharpening change profile or different manual sharpening per image in a some sequences. For example, in the high jump, I use MF and 10x LV to accurately focus a Pentax-M 50/f1.7, on a tripod, on the horizontal bar itself. (I've used AF lenses for high jump too, but they often catch on a background object, so the jumper sometimes is OOF). Although I've used f/5.6 aperture to allow some DOF, the jump take-off in front of the bar, over the bar, coming down the other side, landing, are all at sightly different focusing distances. So I also apply sightly different sharpening in each image in SP4. Since the camera position and bar are a fixed difference apart, the take-off, top of bar, coming down the other side shots are at reasonably constant distances too, so a sharpening change profile would be handy when you dealing with processing many jump sequences. Say 4-5 images per sequence, 3 goes per jumper at each height, 5-40 jumpers per group, male & female and different age groups (I'm photographing at the junior level). It should be able to automatically group images based on Exif date, with 1-30s (adjustable) difference being considered to belong to the same sequence, but you can easily drag-and drop if it gets it wrong. There is a HDR program, FDRTools, that operates that way and it can be a big time saver. http://fdrtools.com/eng/manual/fdrtools_2.6/nav/tutorial_iv.htm You would think with the burst capabilities of modern DSLRs, someone would have created a program that assists with the panel/sequence composition & layout process. Dan. Last edited by dosdan; 12-19-2012 at 05:39 PM.

12-19-2012, 05:36 PM	#9
Miguel Site Supporter Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Near Seattle Photos: Gallery Posts: 2,743	No brainier for Lightroom. M

12-20-2012, 02:46 PM	#10
emalvick Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Davis, CA Photos: Gallery Posts: 1,642	Originally posted by Miguel No brainier for Lightroom. M Yes... Lightroom can give you the ability to "Stack" a sequence by EXIF date and time within a specific range such as the 30-sec you talk about. You'll probably have to play with it a bit through a trial, but I do suggest reading up on some of its features before you try it so you can jump right in since you are looking at some more specialized features.