The Fool’s Circle Photo Blog

Photo Details:
Camera: Nikon D80

F-Stop: f/4.5
Focal Length: 18 mm
Exposure Bias: 0
Speed: 1/125
ISO: 200

Assembled in Photoshop CS3

This is actually 7 photos combined into one panorama. I was on an evening cruise in Norfolk, VA, and liked the contrast of the cranes against the sunset. Up until this point, I really hadn’t been all that impressed with Photoshop’s panorama assembly features, mainly because it did a wonky job of matching the photos together until this latest version. In fact, it was faster for me to simply assemble panoramas by hand and I was generally happier with my efforts than that of the software.

If you’ve never actually built a panorama before and you have a copy of Photoshop, here’s a really quick tutorial:

1. Shoot your photos:

I generally take somewhere between three to eight pictures for a panorama. If it’s a sunny day and there’s not a lot of shadows, I’ll keep my camera in its automatic mode because the light won’t change too much. For things like sunsets or when there is a lot of light variation, I’ll shoot in manual so I can keep the lighting roughly the same between each shot (having photos with vastly different light levels makes Photoshop unhappy later on).

2. Import your photos to your computer, put them together into a folder.

‘Nuff said.

3. Assemble the panorama.

This is a lot less complex than you might think. Simply go to File > Automate > Photomerge.

You’ll be presented with a number of options as to how you want the final image to be assembled. I generally use the “Auto” feature, mainly because it makes the final result a lot easier to crop down afterwards. After you’ve made your choice, just sit back and let Photoshop do all the heavy lifting.

4. Crop generated image

5. Bask in the worship of your fans.