27. CREATING PANORAMIC IMAGES

LIGHTROOM MAKES IT easier than ever to create panoramic images using images shot with your DSLR camera. One of the things I like most about this is how fast Lightroom can produce the results, as well as the steps they’ve taken to make sure you don’t lose any data during the process. Let’s take a quick look at how to make this happen.

To create a panoramic image in Lightroom you need a minimum of two images with some form of overlap. I’ve used as many as 12 images to create a single panorama.

I know a lot of people who want to experiment with panoramic images believe there is a set of special tools that you need to use or processes you have to follow in order to create a good panoramic image. I’m here to tell you that you should just go nuts and play with it. You can create a panoramic image with horizontal or vertical pictures. I prefer to use vertical images for my panoramas because it gives me a lot more data to work with if I have to crop the image down.

A lot of times I just mount my camera on a tripod and turn the head slightly after I take each shot. I don’t really keep an eye on exactly how much overlap there is, just so long as I have a subject that is not moving. Adobe says you need to have about 20 percent overlap between the pictures to make a panoramic image, so I just make sure there is something in the frame that can repeat across all of the different files. Other than that, it’s just a matter of rotating from left to right or right to left—it’s up to you.

Once you’ve shot your images and imported them into Lightroom, select the images you want to use for the panorama by Command-clicking on each image in the filmstrip or in the Grid View mode. Then right-click on one of the selected images and select Photo Merge > Panorama from the menu (Figure 27.1).

One of the things that will surprise you is how fast the Panorama Merge Preview window will appear. What it’s doing here is using the JPG files that are embedded in the RAW files to create a preview of the panorama. This significantly decreases the amount of time you have to wait to see this preview. There have been many times when I tried to create a panorama in Photoshop and waited forever for it to render, only to find out that I didn’t get the best panoramic image and all of that time was lost because I couldn’t do anything else in Photoshop while I waited.

Lightroom merged the four 36-megapixel files shown in Figure 27.1 in about five seconds, which is extremely fast. Now I can make a judgment as to whether or not I want to proceed with this panorama.

Figure 27.1 Merging images to create a panorama in Lightroom.

In the Panorama Merge Preview window you have a series of different options for extending and finishing the panorama (Figure 27.2). Lightroom automatically detects the best option for your image, but you can choose a different one if you wish to.

The Perspective Projection option uses a center image as the foundation for the transformation, and then transforms the images to the left and right by skewing the perspective toward the center. This often results in an image that looks a lot like a bow tie (Figure 27.3).

The Cylindrical option uses the same center image as the basis for perspective, but then merges the left and right images together as if you had an unrolled cylinder (Figure 27.4). You’ll see a little less bow-tie distortion here.

Finally, the Spherical option uses the center image as a base, and then stitches the left and right images together as if the panorama came from the inside of a sphere (Figure 27.5). This is really good for 360-degree panoramas, but you don’t necessarily see that here. In my opinion, this is the one that creates the least amount of waste in the shot.

Figure 27.2 You can select a Projection type in the Panorama Merge Preview window.

Figure 27.3 The Perspective Projection option often creates an imaged shaped like a bow tie.

Figure 27.4 The Cylindrical Projection option produces a little less distortion than the Perspective option.

Figure 27.5 The Spherical Projection option produces the least amount of waste when stitching images into a panorama.

The Auto Crop checkbox removes a lot of the white space that you see around the edges of the picture (Figure 27.6). You don’t need to worry about losing any information here because this isn’t destructive. You can always go back and increase or decrease the crop later in the Develop module.

Finally, Boundary Warp will warp the edges of the picture toward the edges of the frame itself (Figure 27.7). This creates a little bit of distortion, but you will definitely want to use it because it removes the need to excessively crop the image.

Figure 27.6 Auto Crop removes the white space around the panoramic image.

Figure 27.7 Boundary Warp warps the edges of the picture toward the edges of the frame.

After you’ve selected your transformation options, you can hit Merge, and the final panorama will be generated and placed in your Lightroom catalog. An important thing to note here is that the panorama is now a DNG file, so you can adjust things like exposure and white balance with the latitude that you’d expect out of a RAW file. The DNG file has the extension “-pano” added to it.

Lightroom will take longer to produce the final panorama, but as I mentioned earlier, the image is created in the background, so the process does not tie up your Lightroom resources (Figure 27.8). This means you can go back into your catalog and work on different images if you need to. The speed at which your computer renders panoramas largely depends on the speed of its processor, as well as the amount of RAM that you have on it, so your results may vary.

The last thing to point out here is that you can run this process in Headless Mode. When you hold down the Shift key and go to Photo Merge > Panorama, your images will be merged using the previous settings, and you will not see the Panorama Merge Preview window. Lightroom simply merges the RAW files in the background as you work on other projects.

Once you have merged your files into a single panoramic image, you can go back into the Develop module and use all of the sliders to get the most out of this large image (Figure 27.9).

If you want to see the image in its entirety, hit the letter F to enter full screen mode. This gets rid of all of the Lightroom elements so that you can bask in your newly created pano. Hit the letter F again to exit full screen mode and go back into Lightroom.

Figure 27.8 The panoramic image is processed in the background in Lightroom.

Figure 27.9 Once you’ve created your panorama, you can make adjustments to the image in the Develop module.

Share Your Best Panoramic Image!

Once you’ve captured your best panoramic image, share it with the Enthusiast’s Guide community! Follow @EnthusiastsGuides and post your image to Instagram with the hashtag #EGPanorama. Don’t forget that you can also search that same hashtag to view all the posts and be inspired by what others are shooting.

Figure 27.10 The final panoramic image.