[QUEEN OF HEARTS ...]

Now the only limitation you may run up against is Photoshop's ability to align and blend strong geometric lines that come close to the camera lens. If the camera is hand-held to capture the component images (you have not used a specialized tripod head designed for professional panoramic stitching work) then the problem of aligning both foreground and distant subject matter is a big problem for any software (Photoshop handles it better than the rest).

The camera should ideally be rotated around the nodal point of the lens to avoid something called parallax error. You will probably not encounter any problems with the new Photomerge feature unless you are working with strong lines in the immediate foreground. Notice how the curved lines in the image above are slightly crooked due to the fact that these images were shot with a 18mm focal length lens and the lines are very close to the lens. Still pretty good - but not perfect.




STEP 1

It is strongly recommended when using an older computer, or a computer with less than 1 GB of RAM, to downsize very large images - unless of course you want to wallpaper your room with the end result and are prepared to wait whilst Photoshop Elements creates a massive image. Go to 'File > Process Multiple Files'. Select the 'Source' folder of images (hit the Browse button) and then select a destination folder of where you would like your processed files to be saved. Check 'Resize Images' and select a more reasonable size. Check 'Convert Files to:' and choose the JPEG Max Quality option. Select OK to process the images.






STEP 2

Select all of the images from the destination folder you created in the process Multiple Files dialog box. Open the processed images in the Edit space of Photoshop Elements. From the File > New menu choose Photomerge Panorama.


Note

In this project I have used a total of twelve images using two different exposure setting. The camera was first set to a manual mode and an exposure was selected that was perfect for the rising sun in this scene (the brighter side of the panorama). Six images were then captured even though the exposure was not perfect for the right side of the panorama - away from the sunrise (the images are a little dark). A second set of six images was then created with an exposure that was optimized for the right side of the panorama (the dark side) but this has led to overexposure in the last two frames that point towards the sun.