Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook

5.6. Stage 6

5.6.1. Retouching the sky

At this stage, the image is coming along nicely; in fact, it's almost finished. To make the sky a little more even and add any needed texture, try using the Clone Stamp or the Healing Brush judiciously. Or you can simply apply a different sky to the entire image in Multiply mode. Here, I used a sky that I created using Bryce, a 3D landscape creation program. But there's nothing to prevent you from taking a sky from some other panoramic photograph.

I put this reworked sky on a layer in Multiply mode at 70% and gave it a layer mask that excluded the entire landscape; that way, only the sky was affected.

5.6.2. A little warmth

The image was now quite attractive, but it looked somewhat artificial. To remedy that, I made the sky's color a little warmer to better match the color of the buildings using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

With the image finished, all that remains is to show it to people and watch their reactions. As you have seen, technique is very important in creating this kind of panorama. But don't forget that the main thing is to find an interesting point of view, so your picture will be both surprising and meaningful. If you don't pay attention to composition, you may fool people with one or two pictures, but not a whole collection.