How to make a panorama in Photoshop

Photoshop CS3 makes creating a panorama so easy, the only thing you need are the photos for it to stitch together.

First, here are some tips when you’re taking photos for your panorama.

1. Overlap. When you’re taking photos for your panorama, make sure to overlap each photo by 20-25%. For example, if you have a boat in one shot, move your camera, so that at least 20% of the boat is in your next shot.

2. Shoot your hand. If you’re shooting more than one set of the same panorama it can be difficult to determine where the end of one pano series ends and where the next pano series begins. I used to have this problem until I found about this trick… Take a picture of your hand before you start your panorama and then take another shot of your hand when you finish. Or take a picture of one finger when you start and then two fingers when you finish. You can you any kind of marker you want, but this trick makes it a lot easy to see where your panorama series start and finish.

OK, after you’ve taken your photographs and loaded have them onto your computer, it’s time to open up Photoshop.

In Photoshop, click the File menu, then choose Automate>Photomerge…

In the Photomerge dialog box, click the Browse button to locate and select your photos. Leave the Layout option on Auto. And then click OK and Photoshop will work it’s magic. If your images are big in file size and if you have a lot of them, it could take a while. So, sit back, relax, have some brownies and milk.

Photoshop will stitch all of the photos together and blend the colors so they’re consistent across the whole panorama.