Recent Panoramas

Devil's Gulch




Inks Lake

Here are two recent "hand-held" panoramas that I have completed.
I was hiking at Inks Lake State Park, Texas with only my camera
and some lenses, with no tripod. I decided to try taking 4 shots with my
Canon 5D and my Canon i.s. (image stabilization) 70-200 2.8 zoom lens,
with the idea that I should be able to "stitch" them all together in Photoshop
using the "Photomerge" tool. Here's a quick description of the process: (I want to empahasize that it is better to use a tripod if you have one with you. it will guarantee that all of your shots will be tack sharp, you have more leeway in the range of exposure values to choose from, and your shots will all be evenly aligned).
First, you need to take the shots, however many you need to make the panorama.
Holding your camera as steady as possible, start from either the left or the right side
and take your first shot, maintaining the camera level, shift your upper body just enough
to move the camera over for your second shot. You should allow for some overlap, maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the first shot. Keeping the camera as level and steady as you can, repeat this process until you have covered the entire scene that you want to include in the panorama.

2nd: Now you have your shots which will need to be processed correctly to achieve a balanced exposure and tonal value when they are combined together. assuming you have shot in Raw format, open the first image in Camera Raw, optimize it to your taste, then save your settings to apply them to the other 3 or 4 images that you will open next. You can now open the image in Photoshop, then repeat the process for the other images. At this point, You should save the images, preferably in a new folder that you may want to name something like: "panoramas".

3rd: Now you are ready to combine the images together. Go to: File/Automate/Photomerge.
Below you will see the resulting dialog box:




As you see you can browse to the folder that contains your saved images. Once there,
click on all of them holding down your opt (Mac) ctrl (PC) key so they will all be selected.
on the left side you will see that you have a number of different layout options to choose
from. I usually use the first one, "Auto". It seems to work best for me. (You may want to
experiment with all of them to get an idea of what each one does and does not do).
Be sure that the "Blend Images Together" checkbox is checked, and click on "OK".

Be patient, it may take a while for the process to complete.

Your "stitched" together panorama will open up in Photoshop automatically once the processing is finished. Because the "finished" image will have imperfections along the outside edges, You will probably still need to do some cropping and maybe some cloning to correct the edges to your satisfaction.

That's basically it. I usually will do some more enhancements on the image (as I usually do) until it matches what I want it to look like as a finished product.