Produce panoramas with Lightroom’s Merge Panorama command – in just four simple steps

James paterson uses Lightroom’s Merge Panorama command to combine several frames

lightroom’s Merge Panorama command stitches several horizontal or vertical frames together to create a panoramic Raw file – perfect for those times when your lens can’t fit the whole landscape in, or if you want to pack in extra detail.

The Merge Panorama command offers three Projection modes, and as you’d expect these stitch the frames in slightly different ways. Spherical maps the frames as if on the inside of a sphere. It’s ideal for very wide panoramas, or ones that have several rows to them. Perspective maps the segments as if they were on a flat surface, and this keeps lines straight. For this reason, it’s great for architectural or city scenes, but can lead to extreme distortion and warping at the edges when used in the wrong way. Cylindrical maps the frames as if they are on the inside of a cylinder. It’s ideal for wide panoramic landscapes because distortion is minimal and vertical lines stay straight.