Tips for Shooting Panoramas, Part 2


5. Press your shutter button halfway down to set your exposure, then look in your viewfinder and make note of the f-stop and shutter speed. Now switch your camera to manual mode and dial in that f-stop and shutter speed. If you don't, and you shoot in an auto exposure mode of any kind, your exposure may (will) change for one or more of the segments, and this will drive you insane when working in Photoshop.




6. Once you focus on the first segment, turn off auto focus for your lens. That way, your camera doesn't refocus as you shoot the different segments, which would be (will be) very bad.




7. Before you shoot your first segment, shoot one shot with your finger in front of the lensthat way you'll know where your pano starts. Do it again after the last shot.




8. Overlap each segment by 2025%. That's right, make sure that about 1/4 of your first shot appears in the second shot. Each segment needs to overlap by at least 20% so Photoshop's stitching software can match things up. This is very important.




9. Shoot fairly quicklyespecially if clouds are moving behind your landscape. Don't be lollygagging for two minutes between each shot. Git 'er done, or something could change (lighting, clouds, etc.) in your pano, which will really mess things up.




10. Use a shutter release, or at the very least a self timer, so you don't have any camera movement as you're shooting each segment. Nothing's worse than one segment that is blurry.


Now, if you followed the rules set out on the previous two pages, the rest is easy:


Step One. Open Photoshop and then open all the photo segments (so all the photo segments are open at the same time).




Step Two. Go under Photoshop's File menu, under Automate, and choose Photomerge.




Step Three. In the resulting dialog, from the Use pop-up menu, choose Open Files. Make sure the Attempt to Automatically Arrange Source Images checkbox is turned on, and then click OK.




Step Four. When the main Photomerge dialog appears, it will stitch the photos together into one seamless panorama (well, as long as you followed the rules laid out earlier). If you see a small seam at the top, between two segments, go ahead and click OK anywaychances are it will be gone when the final image is created. If for some reason it's not, use the Clone Stamp tool (S) to cover it by pressing-and-holding the Option key (PC: Alt key) and clicking nearby in an area of sky that looks similar to sample that area. Then, choose a soft-edged brush from the Brush Picker and clone (paint) over the little seam to hide it.


 

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