Panorama stitching

How can you make wide panoramic views and stitch in lightroom? What is the process beginning with taking the pictures....

Lighroom doesn't have a "Photomerge" function--Photoshop does.
If you don't have photoshop, consider something like this.
Your photos would need to overlap by at least 20%, and I'd recommend taking the shots vertically. That will give you more of a cushion when you have to crop at the end.

Hugin is free and does panoramas. I edit the pictures in LR and then export to a folder then load them in Hugin and finish it.

The advantage of doing the merge in photoshop is that once you have selected the images LR will allow you to send all of the images direct to the merge to panorama tool. Which pretty much automates the whole process for you. If you do not already have PS then I beleive that you can now get CS2 for free.

Most of my panorama's have not been pre planned and thus shot hand held. I find that overlapping by 50-60% helps get OK results. Also a normal or longer focal length to help reduce the effect of lens distrotions.

Alan

When shooting images, you want to try and control the variances between the images as much as possible. Some stitching programs can account for things like exposure or white balance issues, but some cannot.

My general mantra is "manual manual manual".

Full manual (M) exposure mode will keep the exposure consistent across the frames.
A non-auto white balance will keep the color shift consistent across the frames.
Manual focus will keep the DoF and focus distance consistent across the frames.

If you're an auto-everything shooter, you may find yourself trying to stitch together images that have varying exposure levels, white balance color shifts, and focus points, all of which may result in seams in the final image.

You also want to try and avoid shifting the camera around too much. Rotation around a single point is generally easier for stitching programs to deal with. If you are shooting with nearby foreground subjects or in very tight spaces, you may also have to get specialty equipment like a panohead or rail to make sure the camera only rotates around the "no-parallax" point of the lens to avoid parallax error keeping your final image from stitching, but for most simple landscape images, this is unnecessary. You can get away with handheld, and simply resting the camera's tripod hole on your thumb, and rotating around that.

Keeping your camera level (in roll) with a hotshoe bubble level or the built-in level if your camera/tripod has one can help with drifting horizons, as can shooting more coverage than you think you need, to help with rotation/cropping of the final panorama. You could shoot multiple rows, or shoot a row with the camera in portrait orientation to get more vertical coverage. Keeping your camera level (in pitch) can avoid the result of curved horizons in the final pano--but most stitching programs can also correct for this with a simple drag in the preview (Hugin and ICE both let you do this).

If there are moving subjects in your panorama, you may also want additional coverage in time as well as space . Layers and masks in Photoshop/the Gimp or the stitching program you choose can help with eliminating "ghosts" or "clones" in the final image.

Lastly, remember that you are only shooting a portion of the overall image. Composition still counts. Just stitching images together doesn't save you from making a boring image by itself.

inkista wrote in post #16098900
When shooting images, you want to try and control the variances between the images as much as possible. Some stitching programs can account for things like exposure or white balance issues, but some cannot.

My general mantra is "manual manual manual".

Full manual (M) exposure mode will keep the exposure consistent across the frames.
A non-auto white balance will keep the color shift consistent across the frames.
Manual focus will keep the DoF and focus distance consistent across the frames.

If you're an auto-everything shooter, you may find yourself trying to stitch together images that have varying exposure levels, white balance color shifts, and focus points, all of which may result in seams in the final image.

You also want to try and avoid shifting the camera around too much. Rotation around a single point is generally easier for stitching programs to deal with. If you are shooting with nearby foreground subjects or in very tight spaces, you may also have to get specialty equipment like a panohead or rail to make sure the camera only rotates around the "no-parallax" point of the lens to avoid parallax error keeping your final image from stitching, but for most simple landscape images, this is unnecessary. You can get away with handheld, and simply resting the camera's tripod hole on your thumb, and rotating around that.

Keeping your camera level (in roll) with a hotshoe bubble level or the built-in level if your camera/tripod has one can help with drifting horizons, as can shooting more coverage than you think you need, to help with rotation/cropping of the final panorama. You could shoot multiple rows, or shoot a row with the camera in portrait orientation to get more vertical coverage. Keeping your camera level (in pitch) can avoid the result of curved horizons in the final pano--but most stitching programs can also correct for this with a simple drag in the preview (Hugin and ICE both let you do this).

If there are moving subjects in your panorama, you may also want additional coverage in time as well as space . Layers and masks in Photoshop/the Gimp or the stitching program you choose can help with eliminating "ghosts" or "clones" in the final image.

Lastly, remember that you are only shooting a portion of the overall image. Composition still counts. Just stitching images together doesn't save you from making a boring image by itself.

Great write up, thanks