Create an HDR panorama
Combine editing tricks in Adobe CC
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 then stitch them into a panorama after, but the new command performs both tasks at once. It produces a detail-rich panorama with an expanded dynamic range, making it easier to tease detail out of the tonal extremes. In this tutorial, we’ll explain how it’s done.
There are lots of situations in which an 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. But with landscapes there’s usually an imbalance between land and sky – if we expose for the sky the land comes out dark, while exposing for the land can blow out the sky.
The solution is to shoot bracketed frames for each segment. We start by using a tripod, engage the camera’s bracketing feature and 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 end up with a dozen or more shots, but they’re easily united with the ‘Merge to HDR Panorama’ feature…
Open the image set
Open Adobe Bridge and navigate to the set of images (if using Lightroom, import the photos and go to the Library). Click on the first image, then hold Shift and click on the last to select them all. Then right-click them and ‘Open in Camera Raw’.
Begin the merge
Once open, hit Cmd/ctrl+a to select all the images in Camera Raw, then click the fly-out menu at top left (next to the word ‘Filmstrip’) and choose ‘Merge to HDR Panorama’. After a few seconds, the merged image will appear in the ‘HDR Panorama Merge’ dialog box.
Experiment with projection
The three options – Spherical, Cylindrical and Perspective – at the top right each affect the way the panorama is stitched. Click through to find the best option for your image set. At this stage it can be useful to uncheck ’Auto Crop’ so you can see the edges.
Fix the edges
The Boundary Warp slider works by reshaping the edges of the panorama. Here dragging it to 80 allows us to correct for the tilt in the set of shots (which often happens with panoramas). We can recheck Auto-crop to tidy the edges up. Once happy, hit Merge.
Tidy ghosting
One of the drawbacks of the HDR Panorama feature is the lack of a Deghost option, which can only be found when merging individual HDRS. For us, slight movement has caused ghosting in the foreground flowers. We can grab the Spot Removal tool from the toolbar and paint to remove them.
Enhance the tones
Lastly, we can use tonal sliders and the local adjustment tools to enhance our shot. Get the Graduated Filter tool, click the minus icon next to the ‘Exposure’ slider and drag down from sky to land. Next, up Dehaze to make the clouds more intense. Make any final tonal changes.