Soe Homepage

TTh, CLA 4-27
1:00 PM -2:50 PM
CRN 71857

Photomerge

Work licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

CIS 421 › Photoshop > Photomerge

Photomerge several photos into one continuous image

What it does.

Photomerge combines several photos into one continuous image to create a panorama.

What do you need?

Several photos taken from the same position of the same subject with vertical and/or horizontal overlap between the different images
images should overlap approximately 15% to 40% and not overlap too much (say 70%)
Use the same focal length if you have a zoom lens
Keep the camera level
keep the same exposure
if the photos are in camera raw or if you set Photoshop to open JPEGs in Camera Raw, you can apply the same adjustments to all the photos by opening them all in Camera Raw
Then click the Select All button, and applying the same adjustments to all the photos.

Try Photomerge

Open the photos you want to merge in Photoshop -- download these photos to give it a try:
or this set of photos:
Click File>Automate>Photomerge

photomerge dialog box

Click Add Open Files, to load the files

Try different layout options

Auto

Photoshop analyzes the images and chooses Perspective or Cylindrical layout, based on the images

Perspective

Perspective lets you designate one of the source images as the center image, and then transforms the other images around them
there is a perspective point that you can move to adjust the perspective point.

Cylindrical

Cylindrical reduces the squeezed distortion that perspective layout can create.
It places the reference image at the center
works best with wide panoramas

Reposition

Reposition only aligns the layers with overlapping content but doesn't transform the source layers

Interactive Layout

Interactive layout opens the merged images in a separate window and lets you adjust them
Blend Images Together has Photoshop set the optimal borders between the images and blend them together.
Snap to image snaps the images together where they overlap

Results

The results will be panoramic image with layers that each contain a piece of the final image.
If you select Interactive Layout, you can adjust the perspective point and choose to horizontally align the resulting image.
Once you have an image you like, you need to crop away the transparent part.
In order to apply smart filters or make other alterations to the resulting image, you need to convert it to a smart image, which merges the individual layers that come from the starting images.
You can also merge the layers (layers>merge visible, or Layers>flatten image) if you want to apply some change that does not work with smart images.
If the focus is on the image, click the Move tool on the toolbar to open layer group alignment adjustments in the tool options bar.

Examples

Panorama image without perspecctive

Resulting Panorama image without perspective applied and not cropped

Panorama image with perspective applied

Resulting Panorama image with perspective applied and not cropped

Resources