Lessons

Lesson Info

Image Merge: Panorama + Full Image Edit

1 Another tool that you will find in the right click menu 2 in the grid is the Panoramic tool. 3 And Panoramic is another one of those merge tools. 4 You simply have to have a set of images 5 that have been taken in succession. 6 So you just start over on the left or on the right, 7 and you swing through 8 and take a photo of each section of the scene 9 and then you get it stitched together. 10 So in this case, I am taking a photo 11 of Neuschwanstein Castle. 12 And if I click on all of these vertical images, 13 and that's actually the best way to take 14 a panoramic is vertically so that 15 you turn the camera and you've got a vertical image 16 and then you take the pictures like this 17 so that the bowing is, 18 the natural bowing of the lens is more on the edges 19 of the horizontal. 20 And so, if you turn it vertical like that, 21 then the bow happens up below your feet and up here. 22 So it's much more natural for it to do that. 23 If you go this way, 24 and you take a photo hor...

izontally and keep doing this, 25 then you're actually dealing 26 with the curvature of the lens here. 27 And so that's trying to match up with the curvature 28 of the lens on the next image over. 29 It's not so good. It can be done and Lightroom can do it, 30 but you're better off doing it this way, 31 because you get more height, 32 and then you just fill the horizontal with more photographs. 33 So that's the best way to take a pano image. 34 But, in order to stitch them together, 35 you simply just choose all of the images 36 in the series and then right click those images. 37 And then, you're gonna go down to 38 the Photo Merge option. 39 And then, you're going to click on Panorama Merge. 40 Now, if you happen to do an HDR panoramic, 41 then you're gonna take three 42 or five images of this section 43 and then three or five of that one and the same of this one, 44 this one, this one, this one. 45 So instead of one image, each one, 46 each slice will have three or five images. 47 And if you do that, you have a lot more to do, 48 and you just highlight all of 'em. 49 So don't try and like merge the HDRs together 50 and then merge the whole panorama. 51 What you want to do is just highlight everything 52 that has to do with that whole panoramic, the bright, 53 the dark, everything, 54 and then Lightroom will sort it out. 55 So just highlight the whole mess of images 56 and say, "Go," and it'll do it. 57 But right now, we're just gonna merge a panoramic image. 58 So Photo Merge 59 and Panoramic Image. 60 It's gonna generate a preview. 61 That's what it looks like. 62 Did a great job, and it didn't take very long to do it. 63 Then, I've got a couple options up here. 64 So let me kind of go over these with you. 65 So basically you have three options, Spherical, 66 Cylindrical, and Perspective. 67 Think of it this way, Spherical is as if 68 you were inside of a basketball. 69 And it's trying to project the image 70 all around you in a spherical pattern like this. 71 And so most cases, Spherical works, 72 because you're doing that vertical, 73 and you're kind of going like this, 74 and it kind of bows over the top of you. 75 And that works for most things. 76 If Spherical doesn't work, 77 then Cylindrical is your next best option. 78 And usually Cylindrical, 79 think of yourself like in a toilet paper roll 80 or a tube of some, a pipe. 81 And if it's projecting the image like this, 82 it's not bowing over the top of you. 83 It's just in a straight line this way. 84 So usually this works best 85 when you're shooting like a landscape that's way out there, 86 and you're using a long lens, 87 and you're just going boom, boom, boom, 88 boom, boom, like this. 89 But, it's a long way away, 90 so there's not like this feeling 91 of it bowing over the top of you. 92 So it's almost like a Spherical is 93 a wide angle panorama and a Cylindrical is 94 more of a long lens panorama 95 way out there in the distance. 96 And then, there's Perspective. 97 And Perspective is made for like cities 98 and things like that where you're doing a panoramic, 99 but you've got like these perspectives going like this, 100 and the buildings have to maintain that perspective. 101 And if you didn't tell it that you were doing that, 102 it might change it all up, 103 and it might mess up all the buildings 104 and make 'em all scatty wampus, 105 because it just doesn't know what it's doing 106 because of all those weird lines. 107 So, in this case, I'm gonna choose Spherical, 108 and this is what it looks like. 109 And now if I choose Cylindrical, 110 you can see that it kind of bows in a little bit. 111 And then, if I were to choose Perspective, 112 you'll see that it goes, 113 see how it does even a weirder thing. 114 So those are my three different options. 115 And I think that Spherical looks pretty good, 116 so I'm just gonna stick with that. 117 Now, you notice that there's these white edges, 118 and that's just because I wasn't perfect in stitching 119 all my photos together. 120 I wasn't like perfectly level. 121 I did this handheld, so I didn't even use a a tripod for it. 122 And I've got several different ways to fix that. 123 The first one is Boundary Warp, 124 which I just simply grab this little slider 125 and slide it, 126 and it starts warping the boundary 127 until it fills the entire frame. 128 And if the thing that you're photographing is in the middle, 129 then that usually works, 130 and it doesn't do anything negative to the photograph. 131 And so it's the easiest, fastest way to deal 132 with those borders. 133 The other option is to do a fill edges. 134 And this is very much like going into Photoshop 135 and doing like a Content Aware Fill 136 or even today a Generative Fill. 137 But if I click on it, it does a great job, 138 especially with trees and with sky and things like that. 139 So that did a great job as well. 140 It's a little weird right up here at the top. 141 And so, I think that my Boundary Warp was a better option, 142 so I'm just gonna do the Boundary Warp instead. 143 And then, of course I can apply Auto settings. 144 I can do an Auto Crop if I want. 145 If I chose not to do the Boundary Warp, 146 I could just Auto Crop it, 147 and it crops it so that it doesn't have 148 any of the white space around it, 149 which actually worked just fine as well. 150 So not sure which one I like. 151 I think I like the Boundary Warp better, 152 so we're gonna go with that one. 153 And I'm gonna hit Merge. 154 So now, it's going to take all of those images, 155 it's gonna stitch 'em together based 156 on the preview that it showed me. 157 And it only takes, 158 it'll take about 20 seconds to do it. 159 And then, oh, there it is less, than 20 seconds. 160 And now, if I double click that, the image itself is 161 11,000 pixels wide by 6,000 pixels tall, 162 because the camera was 6,000 pixels wide, 163 and I turned it vertical. 164 So, that's why it's that tall. 165 Okay, so now it's just a matter of going in 166 and adjusting the image, playing with the image, 167 making it great. 168 So I'm gonna make this fast by clicking on Auto. 169 And it did nothing almost. 170 Oh, that's because it already did an Auto on the way, 171 'cause I told it to do the Auto Adjust 172 and this was the Auto Adjust. 173 I didn't agree with the Auto Adjust on it. 174 So I'm gonna brighten it up just a little bit, 175 and I'm gonna add a little contrast to it, 176 and I'm gonna bring the shadows down just a little bit. 177 And then, I'm going to go into the color, 178 and I'm gonna make it colder. 179 I don't want it to be warm. 180 I want it cold, 'cause it's fog. 181 And it was very cold that day, 182 so it might as well feel cold. 183 Good. 184 And the other thing I'm gonna do is 185 I'm gonna go into the Effects 186 and I'm gonna take the Dehaze and turn it off. 187 It tried to do the Dehaze on its own. 188 So the Auto was Dehaze, 189 'cause it wants to see through the fog. 190 I don't wanna see through the fog. 191 I like the fog. 192 That's why I took the picture. 193 So I'm gonna double click that, 194 so that I'm seeing all of the fog. 195 Do you see how that was what it was trying to do? 196 I'm gonna double click that 197 so that I actually have the fog and the clarity. 198 Get rid of that clarity, 199 'cause I just want that fog to be there. 200 Now, the other thing that I want to do is 201 I'm gonna go up to the Profile, 202 and I'm gonna drop down that Profile, 203 and I'm gonna go to my Cool Color Shift. 204 That looks really great. 205 So I'm gonna click on that as my profile. 206 And then, I can go down to zero 207 and decide how much of that I actually want. 208 And I really like that blue in there, 209 so I'm gonna go to about there, which is 86%. 210 I like that a lot. 211 I'm gonna go to the crop, 212 and I'm going to get 213 that thing straightened up there, 214 so that the castle is right at the edge of that line. 215 So I want the line to be up perpendicular, 216 but I'm also gonna go to the guided geometry, 217 and I'm gonna just make sure that this edge 218 of the castle is straight, 219 and this edge of the castle is straight like that. 220 There. 221 And then, I could go through 222 and just kind of create a line across 223 where I think it ought to be. 224 This is not good, 225 because it's at an angle, 226 so I don't wanna follow it. 227 I don't wanna follow that angle there, 228 because it'll make it weird. 229 I just wanna show it where I think that that line should be. 230 So I think that line should be something like this. 231 And I was wrong. 232 Yeah, I'm gonna delete that. 233 So I'm gonna delete this middle one here. 234 There. 235 Okay, so we're just gonna do the vertical 236 as opposed to trying getting the horizontal right. 237 And I think that looks pretty good. 238 So now, I have my crop. 239 I'm gonna make this into a 16 by nine, 240 so it's got a cinematic look to it. 241 And I'm going to negotiate this up higher. 242 And this area down here is more interesting 243 than these trees over here, 244 so I'm going to collapse this in a little bit here. 245 And I'm gonna lower this like that. 246 Good. 247 And now, I'm gonna hit enter. There's our crop. 248 The only thing that I wish 249 that was different about this photo is 250 that I wish I couldn't see these trees 251 over in the left hand side. 252 So I'm gonna create a mask. 253 So I go to the Mask 254 and I'm just gonna use a brush. 255 Actually instead of a brush, 256 I'm gonna go in and create a mask 257 and just create a radial gradient. 258 And I'm just gonna draw a radial gradient right there. 259 And then I'm gonna go into the Effects Panel, 260 and I'm gonna grab the Dehaze. 261 And instead of going up with it like that, 262 which cuts through the fog, 263 I'm gonna go down with it to create fog there. 264 And I'm also gonna remove some of that clarity 265 and texture. 266 There. 267 Now it's kind of looks more like fog. 268 See that? 269 I've got like a little area of fog 270 that I can kind of play with. 271 That looks perfect. Done. 272 So now I don't have this like dark area of trees to look at 273 that distracts me from the castle. 274 So the castle should be the only thing 275 that I'm really interested in looking at. 276 And everything else should kind of be subdued by the fog. 277 So I've accomplished that. 278 I really like the image. I'm gonna keep it. 279 So when you're doing a panorama, 280 remember you don't just go left to right, right to left, 281 or you can do up and down as well. 282 But, you can also do kind of in a square. 283 So if you want to take a picture, 284 and you don't have enough height 285 and you don't have enough width, 286 you can kind of go like this, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, 287 and then up a little bit, 288 and then go back and then up a little bit, 289 and then go back and make a grid of photos as well. 290 And it will stitch those together as well. 291 So like in this case, 292 I'm in St. Peter's Cathedral 293 and I want to get an image of the whole area, 294 but I just don't have a wide enough lens. 295 So I take a a series of photographs 296 of the rotunda there and right click it 297 and click Photo Merge, Panoramic Merge. 298 And it's just gonna figure out 299 how to stitch all this together to make 300 some sense of this crazy image that I've put together. 301 And here we go. 302 So I did a pretty good job of trying to piece together 303 all of those images. 304 And now I have looking straight up 305 into that beautiful rotunda. 306 I've got a nice image. 307 And I think that then if I chose maybe Cylindrical, 308 no, that didn't work. 309 Perspective. 310 Ah, there see, Perspective, 311 now Perspective is trying to actually put into play 312 all of those features of architecture. 313 So it knows that there's perspective, 314 and it actually made more sense to do it this way. 315 Like, it actually is starting to look a little bit 316 more natural, but it's also very tall and strange looking. 317 I wonder what happens when we do Boundary Warp on this one. 318 Hmm, interesting. 319 The circles become a little bit odd, 320 but that actually helps things. 321 It's kind of has an M.C. Escher kind of feel 322 where you don't know what's going on. 323 So I think that the best option is the Spherical 324 with a bit of a Boundary Warp to it. 325 So that's what it looks like if you don't Boundary Warp it. 326 And then this is what it looks like 327 if you do 100% Boundary Warp, which is too much. 328 So maybe if we do a little bit of a Boundary Warp. 329 See how it's starting to spin the image around a little bit? 330 There we go. 331 And then, after that, we'll Auto Crop it. 332 And that looks pretty good. 333 It's not quite perfect, 334 because I probably could have been better 335 at being in the middle. 336 I was probably shooting too far over to the edge, 337 but that's a pretty good version of that roof, 338 considering the fact that I just took 339 a bunch of pictures. 340 And I have no rhyme or reason to the pictures I was taking. 341 I was just up there trying to get 342 a grid of photos to represent what I was seeing. 343 So just know that you have the ability to do 344 a lot more with a panoramic than just 345 your typical panoramic.