Tutorial: Handstitching Multi-shot Panoramas (repost)

[JakeB.]

Multi-shot Panoramas There are several great programs for creating multi-shot panoramas, but for those that prefer to have total control over the blending, or can’t find a program that they like, here is how to blend your pano’s by hand. I’m using Photoshop 7, but this can be done with any version. First, I took these shots using a Panosaurus Panoramic Head. 6 portrait oriented shots with about 60% overlap. You don’t need to have this much overlap, but it definitely makes blending the shots easier. I used Adobe Lightroom for color adjustments then exported the shots to PS. I saved the color adjustments from the first shot edited and applied the same edits to all the shots. The first step is to have all the shots opened in PS To create the pano, the shots all have to be dragged into one file. Before we do that, we’ll increase the canvas to accommodate the additional layers. I usually just guess at how long the canvas should be, and go a little bigger on height in case there are some discrepancies in alignment. I drag each layer into the psd I’m working with. I do a rough alignment and minimize the originals to help keep track of which ones I’m done with. Once the shots are aligned fairly well, I crop off the excess canvas. Now I work on individual frame alignments. I reduce the opacity of whichever layer is on top and pick a spot to make the alignment. In this shot, I picked the buildings on the distant shore. The buildings are stationary, so they make a better anchor point than the trees. You can see in the above shot that not everything lines up well, so we’re going to use a soft, fat eraser to remove part of the top layer. Notice I use this eraser at 100% opacity. I do the blending of the shots with both layers turned on, but here is what was erased from the top layer. If you look back at the fourth and fifth pictures, you can see that the colors of the layers don’t exactly match. I just did a bit of color balancing to try and correct this. I align and blend the rest of the shots the same way as above. You can see on the left side of this shot how the soft, fat eraser effected the blending. Most of the time this is good, but sometimes it leaves a hazy blended area. So, I went back and used a smaller brush to touch things up. For cityscapes, you might have to use a completely hard eraser. Once I got all the layers blended to my liking, I flattened the layers. Finally, I cropped the image to its final composition. Once I got done I did a slight curves adjustment and added my signature. Disclaimer: There is a difference in color between the tutorial shots and the final product because I edited in AdobeRGB(1998) and screen captures were in sRGB.

This ad is not displayed to registered or logged-in members. Register your free account today and become a member on Honda-Tech!