How to create a panorama (in 15 steps)
Monday, May 14th, 2012 at 8:50
Requirements: DSLR, Photoshop, Lightroom (optional)
- Find a cool spot to photograph
- Bring a tripod (oops, forgot!)
- Set your camera to the highest possible F-stop while still catching enough light i.e. avoid shooting F2.8, try F8 or F11 (this counts for all landscape photography)
- Hold your camera in portrait, this way you can capture more details and have more pictures to make up your panorama.
- Set camera to aperture priority to measure light
- Now set camera to manual so it doesn’t change settings while you shoot
- Shoot the pictures. Try to overlap 20% of each picture so Photoshop can make sense out of it. Take a picture of your hand at the first shot and a picture of your hand again at the last shot so you know where the panorama begins and ends.
- Import the pictures in Lightroom/Photoshop
- Export the pictures in a lower resolution as separate JPG files, your computer probably can’t handle to make a panorama out of 4+ 10-16MP pictures
- Use File > Automation > Photomerge in Photoshop and start merging
- (Optional) If you have CS6 use Filters > Adaptive Wide Angle to fix weird lines
- Make sure the horizon is straight, adjust if necessary
- Import into Lightroom
- Process (you don’t have a RAW file anymore so your options are limited)
- Export the result
- Show it to the world! ( http://cl.ly/192w3x313d1o1T2T2T09 )