Panorama side-by-side in Photoshop

I'm having trouble merging two seperate landscape photos into a panoramic, side by side photo in PS. Drag and drop hasn't worked well nor cut and paste. Can anybody give me a quick rundown on how to do it? When merged I'll need to fine tune the midsection and probably crop the top/bottom of each side. Thanks, Larry

LarryW said:

I'm having trouble merging two seperate landscape photos into a
panoramic, side by side photo in PS. Drag and drop hasn't worked well nor
cut and paste. Can anybody give me a quick rundown on how to do it? When
merged I'll need to fine tune the midsection and probably crop the
top/bottom of each side. Thanks, Larry

Click to expand...

I'm sure those with more experience with PS have quicker ways of doing panoramas, but this works for me.

1. open a new blank image that is large enough hold the two images you want to merge

2. open the left-hand image and select all but about half of the overlap with the right-hand image
3. copy and paste the selection onto your new image and move it to the left side

4. open the right-hand image and select all but a slight degree of overlap with left-hand image

5. copy and paste the selection onto your new image and move it to where the overlap of the two images line up

6. if necessary, re-size, rotate, and color-balance one of the layers to get a better match
7. flatten the layers, then crop to eliminate uneven edges

Bill

Further to Bill's advice, I would like to add the following suggestions:

1) Select the whole images, including all the overlapping area, this will help you align the two pictures and obtain a smoother transition;

2) In order to properly line up the two images, set the opacity of the upper layer to approx. 50%. You may use also guides as reference for proper positioning.

3) Once the pictures have been aligned, and, if necessary, rotated, scaled, skewed etc., put back the opacity to 100% and try to adjust brightness, contrast and colors

4) In order to merge the two layers, add a mask (reveal all) to the upper layer and fill the overlapping part of it with the gradient tool in order to obtain a fading border.

5) If some details appear not properly aligned in the overlaping area (and you can see them twice) remove them, either form the upper or from lower layer, painting with a brush in the mask (in white or black, as appropriate).

6) After flattening the image, you may correct additional details with the Rubber Stamp.

I've worked for 12 hours with this technique to build up a panorama of Venice, composed of 21 photos, that I could stitch neither with Photo Vista, nor with Enroute. You may see the result at http://members2.clubphoto.com/giorgio194396/ in the album "A morning in Venice".

Have fun

Giorgio

Bill K. said:

LarryW said:

I'm having trouble merging two seperate landscape photos into a
panoramic, side by side photo in PS. Drag and drop hasn't worked well nor
cut and paste. Can anybody give me a quick rundown on how to do it? When
merged I'll need to fine tune the midsection and probably crop the
top/bottom of each side. Thanks, Larry

Click to expand...

I'm sure those with more experience with PS have quicker ways of doing
panoramas, but this works for me.
1. open a new blank image that is large enough hold the two images you
want to merge
2. open the left-hand image and select all but about half of the overlap
with the right-hand image
3. copy and paste the selection onto your new image and move it to the
left side
4. open the right-hand image and select all but a slight degree of
overlap with left-hand image
5. copy and paste the selection onto your new image and move it to where
the overlap of the two images line up
6. if necessary, re-size, rotate, and color-balance one of the layers to
get a better match
7. flatten the layers, then crop to eliminate uneven edges

Bill

Click to expand...

Hi Larry,

Stitching pictures together in Photoshop is one way of doing it, but I prefer the easy way of using a stitching program.

The one I use is called SpinPanorama by Picture Works ( http://www.pictureworks.com ). It costs $50 and it's a very easy program to use.

If you save the stitched image as a .jpg inside SpinPanorama, you can then open it up in Photoshop to touch it up if you need to.

I hope that helps.

Rick

LarryW said:

I'm having trouble merging two seperate landscape photos into a
panoramic, side by side photo in PS. Drag and drop hasn't worked well nor
cut and paste. Can anybody give me a quick rundown on how to do it? When
merged I'll need to fine tune the midsection and probably crop the
top/bottom of each side. Thanks, Larry

Click to expand...

Many thanks for your helpful tips---copy/paste works great and I'm learning to fine tune so they look pretty good. Giorgio, your panorama is beautiful; hope I get to visit Venice someday. I have enough trouble with two pictures, much less twenty one. Larry

LarryW said:

I'm having trouble merging two seperate landscape photos into a
panoramic, side by side photo in PS. Drag and drop hasn't worked well nor
cut and paste. Can anybody give me a quick rundown on how to do it? When
merged I'll need to fine tune the midsection and probably crop the
top/bottom of each side. Thanks, Larry

Click to expand...

how do you resize an image on a layer ?

Giorgio Terdina wrote:
Loved your pix of Venice (my favorite city to visit!) what camera ??

Hi Larry,

you are welcome. Remember that, when you work with different layers, you need to flatten the image (menu "layer") if you need to save a copy in JPEG format.

As far as the question of Pete is concerened, the pictures where taken with an Olympus C-2000 Zoom.

I thank both of you for the appreciation and wish you to visit Venice as soon as possible!

ciao

Giorgio