Photoshop Elements 5: The Missing Manual

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Chapter 11

chapter

11

Creating Panoramas

and Correcting

Perspective

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 res-

cue. 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. Panora-

mas can become addicting 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.

The general procedure for creating a panorama in Elements is pretty straightfor-

ward, but the devil is in the details. In the first part of this chapter, you’ll learn how

to use the Photomerge command to make panoramas. Because the angle of your

image may need a little correcting afterwards, you’ll also learn how to use the

Transform commands to adjust the images you’ve created.

If you’re into photographing buildings (especially tall ones), you’ll know that you

often need some kind of perspective correction: a building appears to be leaning

backward or sideways as a result of distortion caused by your camera’s lens. You’ll

learn how to use the new Correct Camera Distortion filter to straighten things

back up. ...