Tutorial: Panoramic Photos with Photoshop

Sometimes you are in beautiful place but your digital camera cannot capture all the scene in one frame. To make this possible you have to take several photos and stitch them later in Photoshop. In this tutorial, I will show you how to create panoramic photos using Photomerge tool in Photoshop.

Learn how to create panoramic photos with Photomerge in Photoshop

The first step is to shoot several photos for your panorama. Some tips for better results:
a) Images should overlap by 30-40%. Photoshop use control points to stitch the panorama. Same as the quiz where we have to find similar points or objects.
b) Don’t move your camera up and down when shooting. Try to keep the center of your camera at one point and only rotate it right or left.
c) If you shooting with DSLR lock the exposure or shoot in manual mode.
d) Prefer wide-angle lens and avoid zooming. Zooming will generate perspective distortions and the Photoshop will have a hard time stitching your panorama.

Tutorial Details and Resources

Difficulty: Intermediate
Apps Used: Adobe Photoshop (CS5 or later)
Estimated Completion Time: 20-30′ Minutes
Resources: –

Step 1 > Photo Merge

Once you have the photos of your panorama you are ready to use Photomerge in Photoshop. Go to File > Automate > Photomerge. In the new tab browse and import the photos you want to merge. Use Reposition as option and press OK. After you press ok, Photoshop will automatically merge the panorama and create the layers for you.

a) Use Photomerge tool

b) Import images

c) Create the panoramic photo

Step 2 > Merge Layers

If your panorama looks good to merge all the layers by going to Layer > Merge Layers or press (Ctrl + E). You can fix any imperfections later.

Step 3 > Fix Imperfections

You may notice empty pixels around corners. To fix this problem you can crop the image or fill the empty pixels using Content-Aware Fill Tool.

a) Crop the image with Crop Tool (C)

b) Or go to Edit > Fill to fill empty pixels using Content-Aware Fill Tool (Shift + F5)

Conclusion

For this tutorial, i used 9 large images but you can use less or more. To use more images you must capture the image very carefully and avoid any camera shake or camera movement. You can also fix any stitching imperfections with clone stamp tool or content aware fill tool. Now you can create panoramic and high-resolution photos.