Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Creating Panoramas with Elements

Everyone’s had the experience of trying to photograph an awesome view—a city skyline or a mountain range, for instance—only to find the whole scene won’t fit into one picture, because it’s just too wide. Elements, once again, comes to the rescue. With Elements’ Photomerge command, you can stitch together a group of photos that you’ve taken while panning across the horizon. You end up with a panorama that’s much larger than any single photo your camera can take. Panoramas can become addictive once you’ve tried them, and they’re a great way to get those wide, wide shots that are beyond the capability of your camera lens.

Tip

Some digital cameras have a built-in Panorama feature (Section 1.14). If yours does, you may have to install software from the CD that came with your camera to merge the shots instead of using Elements. See your camera’s instructions for details. But if your camera doesn’t do panoramas, this section’s for you.

The general procedure for creating a panorama in Elements is straightforward, but the devil’s in the details. First, you’ll learn how to use the Photomerge command to make panoramas. Since the angle of your image may need a little correcting afterwards, you also need to learn how to use Elements’ Transform commands to adjust the images you’ve created.

Figure 13-13 shows a three-photo panorama and the photos that went into it. You can download these photos (pavillion1.jpg, pavillion2.jpg, and pavillion3.jpg) from the “Missing ...