Canon PhotoStich Raw to JPEG

I've just begun using Canon's PhotoStich to turn my Canon Raw files into panos. I use the PhotoStich software to open and merge my Raw files. When saving the newly merged file, I'm not given any choice as to what size or quality level I want. The resulting file is a JPEG of about 1234KB. Shouldn't my file be larger (3 Raw images combined)?

Since I've heard so much about saving and re-saving JPEG's and losing data, I'm worried that my stiches won't be very high quality. Since I plan to use PS after the stiches have been made, I will lose even more data as the JPEG is re-saved.

On top of that, my resulting prints (about 2.25"x10.75" size on 8.5x11 paper) look grainy and washed out. Am I trying to print too much image data in too small of a space?

Please help, I'm a complete novice at this digital printing stuff!!

Thanks!


P.S. Perhaps one of the PS "experts" would be willing to take my emailed pano jpeg and tweak it with an explanation of what they did. (Hey, how about a Digital Image manipulation forum for learning/teaching?)

There should be an option to save to TIFF or PSD in the drop-down window when you go to name the file. These are the preferred formats to save and are lossless unlike JPEG (as I suspect you are aware of). It may just be set to JPEG as default the first time you open it, but the choices should be there.

Kurt,

I'm not sure what camera you have, but it's likely that you got Photoshop Elements 2 with it (I know my 10D included it). If I were you I would convert my RAW files to .tif and then use the panorama tools in Elements instead of Canon's awful software. That would give you far more control and better quality - the full version of Photoshop does not have these tools (although the new Photoshop CS will), so it would be worth your while to install Elements even if you already have Photoshop on your system.

cheers, Oliver

Thanks Greg and Oliver for the advice. I think my first mistake was saving the file as a jpeg so early in the process. I'll have to look for .tif as an option to save the images first.

So much to learn about this stuff...

Thanks!

As an update, I've now converted the images to TIFF files and stiched them in PS Elements 2.0. I adjusted Levels and cropped as needed. The resulting print is slightly richer and detailed than my JPEG pano, but not nearly what I was hoping for. Still quite a bit of what appears to be grain. Since it didn't show up on the monitor, I'm guessing that my Canon i550 printer can't quite do the job.

I'll give an update once I get a new printer (Epson 2200 or Canon i9100). Otherwise, if anyone wants a crack at the image, just let me know. I can email the file to you.

Thanks!!