Panorama Assignment

Some simple guidelines to photographing panoramas

Tripod - Whenever possible, use a tripod. This will make the construction of the image in photoshop much easier. It will also slow down the process of photographing - allowing more time to contemplate the scene being captured.

Vertical (Portrait) - Whenever possible, make the photographs vertically (portrait). This will maximize the resolution of your final image.

Overlap - For each exposure that is made, the next exposure should share about 20% of the frame as the previous one. Photoshop and you will need reference points to match up the images.

Start Simple - Avoid visually complicated scenes at first as they are more difficult to construct/fix later.

What to turn in?

Photograph and construct three final panoramas, each consisting of no less than five images each. Use the steps below to construct the three panoramas (Constructing panoramas using Photoshop CS4 and CS5 - THE EASY WAY). Construct another panorama consisting of two images, manually, THE HARD WAY, the way that was demoed in class. You will be turning in the four digital files and one panoramic print. What you choose to photograph is up to you! The assignment is due at the end of class on 3.25.2011.

Constructing panoramas using Photoshop CS4 and CS5 - THE EASY WAY

1. Open all the images in your panorama.

2. Find the left most image in the panorama, copy and paste the image onto a new canvas.

Do this by choosing, Select -> All, Edit -> Copy, File -> New, Click OK, Edit -> Paste.

3. Find the next image, copy and paste it into the canvas that was created in step 2. Repeat this process until the new canvas contains as many layers as there are images in your panorama with the left most image as the bottom layer and the adjacent images stacked one upon the other. Delete the Background layer.

4. Select all the layers by clicking the bottom layer, holding down the Shift key and clicking the top layer.

5. Chose Edit -> Auto-Align Layers, Click OK.

6. Chose Edit -> Auto-Blend Layers. Make sure Panorama is selected and Seemless Tones and Colors is checked.

7. Crop and save the image. Boom!

8. Check for any layer blending problems by viewing the image at 100%. You'll notice that Photoshop, even thought it does a wonderful job, is not perfect. Correct all the errors that you find. Save the the image.

9. Make any adjustments to contrast, tone and color. Save the image. Boom!