Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook

2.1. Stage 1

2.1.1. The best time to shoot?

I would be on location in Reims for only a day, so I had to decide the best time to take the photographs. I quickly chose the end of the day, when the bluish twilight outside would blend nicely with the warm lighting of the room. This would also allow me to avoid having overly bright halos around the windows.

I then had to solve the other major problem inherent in photographing interiors: the glare on areas close to artificial light sources, such as the table in the right foreground. This phenomenon is often made worse by digital cameras, which can quickly turn highlights into hot spots. The simplest way to solve the problem is to shoot two identical photographs at different exposures, use Photoshop to combine the images, and use the resulting picture as part of the assembled series in the final panorama.

At midday, the halo around windows is very difficult to eliminate, even when you use two superimposed photographs.

2.1.2. A panoramic head?

Today's panorama assembly programs are so powerful they can create montages that are very hard to distinguish from a photograph taken with a true panoramic film camera. Combined with Photoshop's masking, retouching, and blending capabilities, you can create extremely realistic-looking photographs without a big financial investment.

To assemble a panorama, a number of applications can stitch together photos without visible seams. The programs vary, of course, but they all work much better if the ...