Photo 101: Easy Panoramics
Monday, January 26th, 2009
by Joe
Thanks to Adobe Photoshop CS3, panoramics have never been easier to do.
Below I’ll give a step by step on how I to “stitch” together several photos to make amazing, well blended, panoramics. Of course, there are more ways then one to skin a cat and photoshop you can just about do anything in multiple ways but I’m going to show you how I do it. If you can skip a step or know of an easier way by all means post in the comments!
First, select the photos that you are going to be using and bring them into Photoshop:
Second, create a blank canvas and drop the photos onto the canvas, each photo making a new layer:
Third, this is where the magic happens, select all your layers except the background layer. Go Edit -> Auto-Align Layers. It will ask you how you want to do it align the layers, you can play around with these options on your own but I usually leave it on Auto-Align. Sit back, relax, let Photoshop do the heavy lifting.
Now the images are aligned but they look all funky because you took the photo in different spots so the camera metered them all slightly differently depending on the necessary exposure. The outcome should look like this
Fourth, keeping the layers selected, go Edit -> Auto-Blend. Sit back and let Photoshop again do all the work for you. Maybe take the time to open a notepad and begin writing a lovely, well thought out comment for the blog post. 
Fifth, you’re done! Well, almost. Gotta make it look good right? Crop and save.
Congrats! All done! Here’s what mine looks like:
Post your’s if you got one… I’d love to check it out!
