Taking the pain out of panoramic…

A number of folk have been very kind about my attempts at panoramics so I thought it might help if I gave a step by step guide as to how I approach these. There is NO right or wrong here, but this is ‘my way’.  I am referencing Elements 10 for this.

1. Limit the shots to about 5 or 6 – generally

2. Shoot in portrait mode – more sky and foreground to help the program line up the skyline. I generally hand hold and overlap each pic by around 30%, keeping the camera as level as possible. I also auto focus the first shot and then flick focus back to MANUAL  Don’t shoot in auto focus for your panel as the camera/lens will just hunt and throw your compositions out

3. Load the pics up into the computer and carry out minimal post processing – this can come later. Name and save each pic under Save As (pano 1, pano 2 etc will do for now)

4. Go to NEW in the photo editor suite

5. Go to Photomerge Panorama.

7. Select Auto (diagrams on the left) and then, clicking on BROWSE, identify all the pics to go into the pano. When these are in the box click OK

8. The software will then select (in the right order!), join and blend the pics

9. It will complete the pano and then ask you if you want it to define the boundaries or not. I click on no and crop the shot myself. Don’t forget to go into LAYER (top menu) and flatten layer at this stage.

10. I then do whatever post processing I need to and save the output as a TIFF file and then as a jpeg file.

I hope this helps start you off!