The fall colors last Friday evening were stellar as I cruised east into this small town on the border of South Dakota. Gary, South Dakota, to be exact. The sun seemed to kiss the landscape making the fall colors even more vibrant than ever before.
My dilemma? Catching all of that beauty surrounding me into one image.
A panoramic photo may be the answer here.
I set the camera manually to underexposed so I could keep detail in the sky and tried to keep the camera as level as I could (a tripod would have been better but didn’t have one with, at the time.). Took the first image to my right, moved camera to my left, overlapping about 25% and took the middle image, moved the camera to my left again while overlapping 25% and took the third image.
Now it’s time for some Photoshop magic using the photomerge feature.
I use Photoshop CS5 and so click on:
File > automate < photomerge
A new window opens so you can click browse to find your files you wish to merge. Shift click to select all three images and they are brought into the window. Click O.K. and watch the magic happen. The three images have now been stitched together.
I did some cropping to even up the edges and editing to keep the sky detail while brightening the image.
RJMeyerArts: Photo Tips & Bits 