5.5. Stage 5

5.5.1. Retouching with Photoshop

By now you should have a pretty good idea of what the final image will look like, as well the work that remains. First, you must deal with the four corners: use the Clone Stamp tool to fill them with sky. You don't have to be too meticulous here. It's no problem if a few stamp impressions can be seen; we'll soften them later.

The center of the image will require more time because it's the part that is the most apparent. Also, it often needs a lot of retouching that isn't always obvious. With the Liquify tool, start by straightening the shapes in the center, which were slightly stretched during spherization. Note that this stretching is only visible if the lower part has been chopped off. (For example, when you don't have enough photographs, which is the case here.)

This operation is hard to complete in a single pass. I always copy my picture onto three layers and straighten the shapes on each one of them as carefully as I can. I then choose the best parts—the areas of the various layers where my retouching was most successful—erase the rest, and flatten all the layers.

To fix other distorted elements in the picture, such as the front of the car, use one of the original photographs you shot. Just stick the picture on a new layer and distort it so that the part that you want to fix more or less overlays the one underneath in the montage—in this case, the car wheel. Once the picture is in place, move it with the Smudge tool until it matches the background perfectly.

As for the sand that is missing in the middle of the image, it's best to get the texture from an original photograph rather than using the Clone Stamp tool.

The center of a spherical panorama is always the trickiest and the most distorted. To make retouching it with Photoshop easier, I usually take three or four shots from different heights with the camera pointed toward the ground. Better to have too many pictures than not enough.