Our 60 megapixel camera

No, we didn't just get the newest Hasselblad or the Phase One P65+.
Sometimes software just delivers. I mean really smokes it down the center for a strike. Photoshop CS4's Photomerge is just one of those things.

We were teaching a week long class on CS4, mostly Illustrator and Photoshop, and eventually got to the Photomerge command. I was trying to draw a real life example of how and when the group might use this to improve their design lives. After all panoramas of beautiful landscapes are great but can have a limited use. What you can get out of a Photomerged image though is much higher resolution than you could achieve with even a high end DSLR. So after teaching that during the day we went for a walk around Modesto just before dinner. Armed with a Canon G10 we passed the Gallo Center for the Arts. First we made a quick shot of the entire building to compare resolution later, then we zoomed in and took 6 shots covering the entire building. No tripod, no planning, no RAW - total time spent - less than 5 min.

Back in Bridge CS4 I selected all six images, then went to the Tools>Photoshop>Photomerge... and choose OK.



The resulting image provided a 171mb file verses the 41mb file I got from the single shot. You can see the difference in the images of the lights below. Effective resolution bump - 14.7 megapixels to 60 megapixels.
Nice.




If this image was needed for anything of size such as a trade show booth graphic or a a poster background we would have had to rez the single shot up and risk a major loss of detail. Here is the final result.