Tutorial 2

James Paterson reveals a handy new Adobe CC feature that enables you to create epic, highly detailed panoramas in seconds

Merge a series of images in a highly-detailed Raw panoramic vista

Both Photoshop’s Camera Raw plug-in and Lightroom have long offered separate HDR and Panorama features, but recently a new feature has been introduced that combines the two commands into one.

Previously, we’d have to merge HDRS first and then stitch them into a panorama after, but this handy new command performs both tasks at once. It produces a detail-rich Raw panorama with a heavily expanded dynamic range, making it easier to tease detail out

of the tonal extremes. In this straightforward tutorial, we’ll explain how it’s done.

There are many situations in which a HDR panorama might be a useful technique. More often than not, the point of a panorama is to capture a sweeping landscape, achieved by shooting several segments, then stitching them together. However with landscapes there’s usually a slight imbalance between land and sky – if we expose for the sky the land comes out dark, while exposing for the land can end up blowing out the sky.

The solution is to shoot bracketed images for each of these segments. We of course start by using a tripod, engaging the camera’s bracketing feature and then we shoot at least three frames for the first ‘segment’ of the panorama, then pan the camera horizontally (ensuring there’s a little overlap) and shoot another bracketed set, going on until the whole scene is covered. We may, as you would expect, end up with a dozen or more shots, thankfully they’re easily united with the ‘Merge to HDR Panorama’ feature…