Project 6: Photo Stitching and Text Application

Click on the pictures to view a larger version.

First thing I did was copy, resize the photos and change the resolution from 300 to 72 dpi for displaying on the internet.

I made a new image that is 25 inches long and 5 inches in height. I selected the Left Anchor Arrow on the Image canvas size to align all photos going in one direction and kept the canvas size the same as the new image size. Allowing extra space in the width or height makes it easier to move the photos up and down if the alignment isn’t just so. You can crop the canvas as one single picture when you’re completed stitching all photos together. I also found that if the width is not long enough you can go back to Image – Canvas Size and add extra space to the height. It then adds the extra space to the overall canvas without disrupting any work that is already established.

As I opened and used the move tool to move the photos to the new canvas I changed the layer names to 1, 2, 3, etc. I find this helpful if I were to use many photos. Some sort of layering logic necessary for sanity purposes.

I then zoomed in on the first two photos to the left. The next step was to lower the Opacity on the second photo from the left and align with the first photo. I repeated this step with each additional photo added, moving toward the right until all the objects in the photos were aligned.

Sometimes I switched the stacking order of the layers if I had problems with alignment. What I found useful was the Free Transform Tool. This allowed stretching, rotating, aligning a photo all in one. I liked this better than the Scale or Rotate Tools as it allows total freedom to manipulate without having to change from one Transform tool to another. Another useful thing to do was to lock layers as I went. This was helpful as I used the Edit - Step Backwards or Undo option frequently and found myself stepping back to far and undoing too much. No consideration was made that I would need to align poles and telephone wires when taking these photos, making alignment somewhat of a challenge. Another issue was blending the sky together because of the different shades of blue grey. I used the Polygonal Lasso Tool to select portions of the photos and then selected a color of the sky with the Color Picker Tool and then used Edit – Fill – Foreground Color and played with the opacity to blend the sky together. I used this for shading also in blending in the snow banks. I also used layer adjustments to Darken and Lighten portions. I used the Clone Stamp Tool to blend and next to the telephone wires. I also used the Blend Tool on the sky. Time for the Text. I made 2 layers added the text and put a drop shadow behind them. Saying ok, enough is enough, I flattened the photos, added a 3 pixel dark blue border and called it panorama. Altogether there are 6 photos used to make this panorama photo. I have another one I am working on and hopefully will upload it shortly. Panoramas are fun!