Photoshop Elements 7: The Missing Manual

Chapter 11. Photomerge: Creating Panoramas, Group Shots, and More

Everyone’s had the experience of trying to photograph an awesome view—a city skyline or a mountain range, say—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 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.

Elements includes the same great Photomerge feature that’s part of Photoshop CS3, which makes it incredibly easy to create super panoramas.

Not only that, but Adobe gives you a couple of fun twists on Photomerge that are unique to Elements: Faces and Group Shot, which let you easily move features from one face to another, and replace folks in a group photo. And Elements 7 brings yet another new kind of merge: Scene Cleaner, for all those times when your almost perfect vacation shot is spoiled by strangers managing to get into your perfect scenic composition.

If you’re into photographing buildings (especially tall ones), then you know that you often need some kind of perspective correction: The building appears to be leaning backward or sideways as a result of distortion caused by your camera’s lens. This chapter shows ...