Before I start talking about panoramic photography or Lightroom, I’ll explain something about Lightroom, in case you identify with me. I don’t know if this will be your case, but I think many amateur photographers when we started we come up and we want to start build the house from the roof.
When I started to get interested in photography, this blog didn’t exist, blogs didn’t even exist… And that’s why I didn’t have anyone to tell me four things to avoid wasting time and money. There are not a few frustrations that I have had throughout my photographic journey…
And I started by buying the most expensive camera I could buy at that time to… blah use it in automatic mode. Then I continued to use Photoshop, I didn’t even want to hear about Lightroom, I wanted the best of the best and it seemed to me that Lightroom was not going to live up to my demands.
As you know, I was totally wrong. light room It is one of the best discoveries I have made as a photographer. It is complete, simple, goes to the point and has become a indispensable tool for me. I have not reopened Photoshop more than a few times.
Not only that, but every time it incorporates bigger and better applications. One of my latest discoveries is the possibility of using it to make the famous stitching in panoramic photography or, what is the same, put together several photos to get a panoramic format.
And, as the main objective of this blog is to share our knowledge to make our lives easier and more pleasant, today I am here to explain how to take a photograph panorama with Lightroom. You fancy? Well let’s see it.
Some basic notes on panoramic photography
We have a complete and wonderful detailed guide on how to take a panoramic photo, so I won’t dwell on this topic too much, just give you some basic tips as a reminder to keep in mind before you launch into your wonderful panoramic image.
- You will need a tripod.
- Find a landscape that seduces you.
- A focal length of 35 or 50mm would be ideal and, if you don’t have it, with what you have :-).
- If you are going to add a human element, be very still ;).
- Frame vertically, This way you will get an image with fewer aberrations.
- Use a diaphragm opening sufficient to have a good depth of field.
- Although the ideal is to use the hyperfocal.
- Edit all images with the same settings (in Lightroom you can easily copy and paste settings from one photo to another).
- Works at Manual mode, both exposure, white balance and focus. This way the parameters of the shot will not vary from one photo to another.
- search overlap by about 30%. Anything left over will be removed by Lightroom ;).
- Check out these tips for stunning panoramic photography :).
Steps to Stitch a Panoramic Photo in Lightroom
It’s so easy that you’ll fall at the feet of Lightroom ;).
The first thing we’re going to do is select the images that will be part of our panorama. Ideally, all images share the same editing settings.
For this, the best thing is, once selected, that you edit one of them and when you are satisfied with the results copy and paste those settings to the rest (as there are few I think it is a good option).
I haven’t said it before, but all these settings are in the Reveal module. I assume that you know it, but if you doubt with the development, take a look at this article beforehand.
Once you have all the photos with the same settings, select them all in the lower carousel:
Next, go to Photo —> Photo Combination–>Panorama
Once the option is selected Panoramathe following screen will appear, where you will see that Lightroom has already made the stitching or union of images:
As you can see, some areas of the image are lost. That’s because it’s not a great panorama; the terrain was irregular, the light was quite bad, etc, but since the purpose was simply to illustrate the article a little, I hoped that you would be kind with the result ;).
On this screen you have several setting options:
- The type of projection: spherical, cylindrical or perspective.
- Auto Crop: if you want Lightroom to remove blank areas from the image automatically (you can click no and do it manually if you prefer).
- Automatic settings: Lightroom adds a few basic adjustments to enhance the image as it sees fit.
This would be the result of the union of my five photographs:
How about? It couldn’t be simpler, right? And if you dare to practice it? You can have a very cool image to hang above the sofa, or the headboard of your bed, or in the hallway… you know how We are committed to not letting all your work get lost in the dark world of your hard drive.
Dare to practice, go out, make mistakes (like me) now to enjoy. Go out and find a good landscape or scenery, take the tripod, place the camera vertically (not like me 😉 ), set the settings and focus to manual and shoot 4 or 5 images in a row that partially overlap.
That’s it, you already have your panorama, now you just need to edit them a bit (if you want), and put them together in such a simple way that I just explained to you and you already have your photo :).
I hope this article has been useful to you. If so, share it with whoever you think might be interested. Thank you very much and until next time 🙂 .