Have you ever stood at the top of a mountain, soaking in a 360-degree view and thought to yourself: how am I ever going to capture this through my camera lens? Although our photos might never do our experiences justice, panoramic settings can come pretty close to capturing the feeling of what it meant to be there.
The trick to creating a quality panorama is to seamlessly stitch several images together. The best way to achieve this is through Adobe Photoshop. CreativeLive instructor Ben Willmore has made it simple. Check out these awesome tips below:
Organize Your Photos
Once you’ve picked out the images you want to merge, open them in Bridge and “Select All.” Then hit the file menu and choose “Open in Camera RAW.”
Time To Edit
You want to make any edits before stitching your shots together, so pick an image and go to town working on the exposure, highlights, colors and saturation. Or you can always edit in Wiley Coyote –– whatever floats your boat. Just make sure the “Select All” button is turned on while making overall edits so that your changes apply to all images that are being stitched. Click “Done” and head back to Bridge.
Stitch Your Images
In Bridge, select your images and head up to Tools > Photoshop > Photomerge. You’ll be able to choose the panorama settings (Ben recommends using Auto), and then simply click “Merge.” Keep in mind that each photo will have its own layer mask, but you can combine them by going into the Layer Menu and clicking “Merge Visible.”
Crop / Fill Your Borders
Once you’ve stitched your images together, you’ll likely end up with uneven edges. Either crop them away with the Crop Tool, or fill empty areas in the photo by hitting Command, heading to the Layers panel, clicking the thumbnail of the active layer, and making the following selection: Select>-Inverse followed by Select>Modify>Expand. Type 1, press OK, head up to Edit>Fill and then hit “Content-Aware” in the pop-up. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy reliving your moment on the mountain top.
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