tranquil222
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Ok, so you have 2 or more pictures you want to turn into one(as in Fig. 1). Ideally, each image in the panorama should have a decent-sized vertical swath where the two intersect. The more the better.
1. Open them both.
2. File?>New Canvas. This should be the sum of the width of all of the pictures that you want to stitch, plus a buffer of about 15% of the total. Give yourself a buffer of about the same on Hieght too, as you may need to skew/distort the image depending on how much lens distortion the images contain. You can always estimate these sizes.
3. Drag the new layers on this canvas and close the originals to save disk space.
4. Make new layer sets, if desired, for each layer, as you may be grouping many layers and adjustment layers to each image.
5. Match up the two pictures as best you can. An aid for this is to adjust the opacity of one of the layers.
6. Now apply layer masks to each image and grab the softest round brush with no spacing.
7. Now comes the creative part. Sometimes you need to fib a little about what is where, or if it is even there. Draw on the layer mask on the edges of the image. You will notice instantly, because you?re using a soft brush, that the edges will be much less harsh, and in some parts that contain only texture and no form, indiscernable, Where theyre visible, you will need to use some creative energy. Brush out the edges/ledges of the image that you think most likely won?t be missed, and most likely will meet up with the adjacent image seamlessly. One way to aid this is to adjust the opacity, another is to just experiment. With my image, there are some trees that were kind of wacky(fig 2), so I brushed out the part on the right image meet at the v(fig 3). This gave the illusion of a continuous set of trees. Sometimes when you?re brushing parts that have more contrast and form, you will need to use a harder brush.(Shift + ] adjusts hardness when the brush is selected). Not exactly true to the original scenery, but it looks like it. I did the same to the mountain. The left image?s mountain was tilted slightly counterclockwise, so I masked the right image to meet up with it. This results in slightly more rounded flanks on the mt. than the original, but close. Also it works for me with the clouds over it. If you don?t want to change the form of it, use the next step.
8. Use the transform function to adjust any imperfect camera angles if the image is slightly skewed. Most of the time, skew will match up only one general area of the image(fig.4), in my case I chose the mountain. Make sure to match up the most important parts with this, then use step 7 to do the rest. Regarding transform: the skew command is good to start out on, and if that doesn?t help, then go to distort
Note: With images with a lot of straight lines, you should selectively distort the lines only, and then clone stamp in the triangle holes on the top and bottom, given that the top and bottom both contain textures that aren?t important to the composition.
9. Adjust the color. I start off by using a curves adjustment layer. Sometimes I have to use more than one adj. layer(fig.5) and mask off the elements I dont want to change for each element(one for the sky, one for the mt. and one for the trees). For me, this curve works ok for the sky only, so I masked off the rest of the image. Replace color is also a good tool for slight tweaks in color, but this will do irreparable damage to the original pixels, so I use curves if at all possible.
10. Save the original.
11. Crop the image.
You?re done. Feel free to ask any questions, as im not sure I?ve covered every possible situation, but this is the basic approach that I take with my photos.
1. Open them both.
2. File?>New Canvas. This should be the sum of the width of all of the pictures that you want to stitch, plus a buffer of about 15% of the total. Give yourself a buffer of about the same on Hieght too, as you may need to skew/distort the image depending on how much lens distortion the images contain. You can always estimate these sizes.
3. Drag the new layers on this canvas and close the originals to save disk space.
4. Make new layer sets, if desired, for each layer, as you may be grouping many layers and adjustment layers to each image.
5. Match up the two pictures as best you can. An aid for this is to adjust the opacity of one of the layers.
6. Now apply layer masks to each image and grab the softest round brush with no spacing.
7. Now comes the creative part. Sometimes you need to fib a little about what is where, or if it is even there. Draw on the layer mask on the edges of the image. You will notice instantly, because you?re using a soft brush, that the edges will be much less harsh, and in some parts that contain only texture and no form, indiscernable, Where theyre visible, you will need to use some creative energy. Brush out the edges/ledges of the image that you think most likely won?t be missed, and most likely will meet up with the adjacent image seamlessly. One way to aid this is to adjust the opacity, another is to just experiment. With my image, there are some trees that were kind of wacky(fig 2), so I brushed out the part on the right image meet at the v(fig 3). This gave the illusion of a continuous set of trees. Sometimes when you?re brushing parts that have more contrast and form, you will need to use a harder brush.(Shift + ] adjusts hardness when the brush is selected). Not exactly true to the original scenery, but it looks like it. I did the same to the mountain. The left image?s mountain was tilted slightly counterclockwise, so I masked the right image to meet up with it. This results in slightly more rounded flanks on the mt. than the original, but close. Also it works for me with the clouds over it. If you don?t want to change the form of it, use the next step.
8. Use the transform function to adjust any imperfect camera angles if the image is slightly skewed. Most of the time, skew will match up only one general area of the image(fig.4), in my case I chose the mountain. Make sure to match up the most important parts with this, then use step 7 to do the rest. Regarding transform: the skew command is good to start out on, and if that doesn?t help, then go to distort
Note: With images with a lot of straight lines, you should selectively distort the lines only, and then clone stamp in the triangle holes on the top and bottom, given that the top and bottom both contain textures that aren?t important to the composition.
9. Adjust the color. I start off by using a curves adjustment layer. Sometimes I have to use more than one adj. layer(fig.5) and mask off the elements I dont want to change for each element(one for the sky, one for the mt. and one for the trees). For me, this curve works ok for the sky only, so I masked off the rest of the image. Replace color is also a good tool for slight tweaks in color, but this will do irreparable damage to the original pixels, so I use curves if at all possible.
10. Save the original.
11. Crop the image.
You?re done. Feel free to ask any questions, as im not sure I?ve covered every possible situation, but this is the basic approach that I take with my photos.
