Sewing Pictures Together with Photoshop

One of the tools I frequent in Photoshop is ‘photomerge’. I use it mainly for panoramas. Here’s a run-down of my process. Hope its helpful.

It automatically stitches together images. They don’t have to be long panoramas either. You can snap a bunch of random pictures from a vantage point, and as long as some of them overlap, Photoshop will understand.

There are all sorts of ways to get this similar photo-stitching effect. Apps that do it automatically and cameras that do it internally. We’re using a semi-old school method. Like most things DIY, you’re hands get dirty and it allows for much more options.

Photomerge has been around for many versions, but it was enhanced a lot in CS3. I’m using CS4 for this.

Before you shoot…set the camera settings to manual shutter speed. If it’s on automatic, some snapshots may take a different reading and let a variant amount of light in. Making it a pain to color match later.

Here’s a step-by-step process of the last one I did:

1. Open all the photos in Photoshop.

2. File > Automate > Photomerge….

   

   1. Click “Add Open Files” and select the files.

   2. Uncheck “Blend Images Together” (we’ll be messing with the layers so we don’t want them flattened).

   3. Click “Perspective” on the left. I’ll go through these three steps and notice the outcome until I get the effect I’m looking for. Yes, it’s very trial-and-error.

      

3. See how it did

   

   If you don’t like it, try changing some settings on the last screen and repeat. We have some editing to do. Matching up the colors to completely remove the edges is most definitely the hardest part of this. It’ll help to have a general understanding of Photoshop’s standard editing tools.

4. Do it one layer at a time

   

   There are so many steps in here, I’m just going to go through the ones I use. Sift through the following tools until two layers match.

   1. Image > Adjustments > Levels
   2. Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast
   3. Image > Adjustments > Exposure
   4. Image > Adjustments > Vibrance
   5. Image > Adjustments > Replace Color
   

   A note on ‘replace color’: this is a powerful tool for matching skies or making any broad color adjustments. It selects similar colors in a layer, and allows them to be edited without the painful use of manual selection tools.

   Make slight adjustments, less than you’d think. Reorganizing the layers as you see fit.

   I find it tempting to do a little editing on every layer. My eyes dart around to an easy fix. Naturally, non-chaotic focus yields much more efficient results. Once two layers are matched, work on another one to match it to those two.

   It can be tedious work to equalize colors. I move my head up and down towards the monitor to attempt to flush out all inconsistencies.

5. Feather the edges

   1. Saving the blurring for of the hard edges for last promotes better color matching.
   2. Select the “Magic Wand” tool. Change the “Feather” option to 50px.
   3. Select the hard edges on the layers with a big loop and delete. This will offer some soft opacity so the layers will blend together along their perimeter.

6. Crop

   

   Like feathering, this can be done earlier. Its a good final step though. You never know how that skewed triangle at the edge might look post-production. Might be a beaut.

7. Fill in the holes.

   

   CS4 user’s out there use the ‘clone stamp tool’, CS5 user’s use magic. (aka ‘content-aware fill’) This feels like cheating to me. Creating images of the universe that do not exist. I do it in small doses, for my mentality and it looks scrappy if overdone. A good crop job limit gaps like this.

8. Merge ‘em all.

   
   1. Here I’m making a copy of each layer before I merge them all. Just in case.
   2. Take the flattened image and apply alterations, as needed, from Step 4.

9. Save…