Photostitching and Panoramic images will change photography forever

Photostitching has been around since photographers started making images. In the days of film, a photographer would take multiple images of a scene and then “stick” them together either by using staples or glue on a back board. By doing that, the viewer got a sense of the panoramic vista that the photographer saw as opposed to the single frame view that most people would expect to see. This was a great way of representing a scene in a different way, but it wasn’t very glamourous. The reason was that you could see the overlaps and sometimes there was distortion, but you generally got  the idea. The digital photography era changed this forever. Digital images can be stitched together seamlessly and blended to make sure that a panoramic images looks like it was taken as a single shot. This has changed the way images are being taken. All that is requires is some understanding of how to shoot the image in camera and then using some software either in Photoshop or other photo stitching software (I use autopano giga) to do the difficult work. I have often been amazed at the results once I have stitched an image together, there is something magical about seeing the whole scene in one shot.This ability to stitch these images seamlessly means that we are seeing images of places today in a way we have never seen them before. I believe that this will change they ways we capture scenes photographically going forward and it will impact the way we view these images too.

So give it a try, when you are next trying to figure out how you can make the landscape scene before you look more exciting, take a few images and stitch them together. Here are some tips on getting the shots right:

1. Shoot on manual mode and don’t vary the exposure

2.  Keep your white balance setting (not AWB)

3. Keep the camera level & use a tripod

4. Overlap your shots by 30% or more

5. Don’t use a polariser

6. Avoid subjects in the foreground

7. Don’t process your individual images in Photoshop

8. It is best to photograph vertically

After that, you can process the stitching in Photoshop, if you arent sure how to do this, make a comment here and I can put a tutorial up. You can also use a product called Auto Pano Giga…check out the website here:

http://www.kolor.com/