Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook

8.7. Stage 7

8.7.1. Finishing touches

Stitcher 4 is not only a panorama montage program; it also does conversions. To avoid any unpleasant surprises, I first had it create a document in Cubic QTVR format so I could check for any mistakes made in Photoshop (Tools→Panorama Conversion). I chose one of the six faces (it doesn't matter which one) and specified the Cubic QTVR export type, leaving the initial size unchanged.

I thought the picture looked OK, so I went on to the next stage. Here, I asked Stitcher to produce a new export, transforming the six 3600 × 3600-pixel files into a single rectangular file in a 2:1 ratio (in this case, 14400 × 7200 pixels).

The advantage of having this new image is that I would be able to make adjustments—such as adjusting Curves or Levels—uniformly over the entire panorama.

I again used Tools→Panorama Conversion, chose one of the six faces, and specified Spherical as the export type. I chose TIF for the output format, since PSD was no longer an option.

When the conversion was finished, I temporarily closed Stitcher and returned to Photoshop.

I finally looked at the whole thing—it was more than 520 MB! Thanks to my Canon EOS 300D's CCD sensor and its 17–40mm lens, I can capture intense colors and detail. I only needed a minor Curves adjustment to bring out a few more details inthe shadows.

My panorama was finished! All I had to do was export and publish it.

I would be creating two separate files: the first, for a CD-ROM, would be about 6 MB; the ...