Panoramas in Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom Classic is a great choice for creating panoramas. Here is the Lightroom panorama workflow.

I discussed how to shoot panoramas in chapter 4, so I won’t repeat that information. Let’s begin with four images that we have captured for a panorama. Select all the images to be used in the panorama by Ctrl-/Command-clicking the thumbnails (Figure 7.1).

We need to prepare these images for stitching. We can perform some preliminary corrections by applying a lens profile. This step will dramatically increase the reliability of your merges.

Choose the Develop module and scroll down to the Lens Correction panel (Figure 7.2A). Apply a profile, as I described in the previous chapter:

1. Click Profile.
2. Select Enable Profile Corrections.
3. Choose the make (the manufacturer) of your camera.
4. Choose the model of your camera. Many of the newer DJI drones use a built-in profile. If this is the case, you will see Built-in as shown in (Figure 7.2B). This means the corrections are applied in-camera. In this case, skip the profile step as it isn’t needed.

If you don’t see your camera, choose something similar and experiment with the Distortion slider to remove the majority of the lens barreling.

Now that the majority of the lens distortion is removed from your photo, you want to pass these settings on to the rest of the images in the panorama (Figure 7.3):

1. Make sure the images are all selected in the filmstrip.
2. Either click the Sync button on the lower left of the right panel in the Develop module or choose Settings > Sync Settings from the top menus.
3. You will see the Synchronize Settings dialog. Click the Check None button to turn off all settings.
4. Select the Lens Corrections checkbox to only sync the lens profiles and nothing else. If you adjusted anything else in the single image, then make sure to sync those settings, too, or just click the Check All button in that case.
5. Click Synchronize, and all the selected photos will now have the same settings applied to them to match the profile.
6. It’s time to make the panorama.Right-click and choose Photo Merge > Panorama. You will see three projection options. For most panoramas, Spherical will work best.

If you are shooting vertical panoramas or shooting directly down and flying in a grid to create a mapping style panorama, then use Perspective. These are the only times when Perspective might look good.

Note that if the camera was not level during shooting, you will see a wavy horizon or stair stepping no matter what you do. Either reshoot the panorama or use the Photoshop method in the next section.

Fixing the edges

You will notice a white boundary around the panorama. These are transparent areas. You will need to get your panorama into a rectangle, and there are two options for this: fill the white area, or crop it out. There are some useful tools for this.

BOUNDARY WARP

A fantastic feature is Boundary Warp. Once the white areas are cropped, you can lose some important information. The Boundary Warp will stretch the pixels to fill the rectangle, sort of like printing on silly putty and stretching it. Slide the Boundary Warp slider to the right and notice how Lightroom warps the image to recover the white space and unwrap the photo (Figure 7.5). You can push it all the way to the right and recover every pixel. However, at full strength, it could result in unnatural-looking warping in the image or a wavy horizon line. Find that balance of a straight horizon and recovered information.

FILL EDGES

There is a third tool available, the Fill Edges (Figure 7.6) tool. Fill edges does content aware fill on the white edges. It automatically clones and stamps from the surrounding image to fill the hole. This tool works quite well in skies, foliage and areas lacking specific structures and other more random textures. Sometimes, you can see doubling of objects near the edges. Most of the time, it does a good-enough job that you can crop out the artifacts on the corners and get a good result without having to crop your images too tightly.

My favorite approach is a combination of all these three tools to get the best compromise. You can see that here in Figure 7.7.

You can choose to crop at any time; however, Boundary Warp and Fill Edges can only be applied in the initial merge preview window.

Click Merge and Lightroom will merge the photos together and create a merged panorama. The resulting image is a DNG file that still contains the full dynamic range of the image.

Note that if you shot your panorama as a grid and encompassed more than a single row, you don’t do anything different. Simply select all the images that you want to use in the panorama and merge it just as we did here.

Here is the same panorama with the corrections from the previous chapter applied (Figure 7.10).

If you are curious, here are the settings I used in Figure 7.9. I also applied the Gradient filter to the sky and slightly turned down the exposure and the color balance. This is covered in the previous chapter.

Panoramas in Photoshop

There are a number of other applications that can merge panoramas, including PT GUI. I don’t have space to cover them all here, so I’m sticking to Lightroom and Photoshop, which is what I use anyway. Photoshop is great if the image is too distorted in Lightroom, if you don’t have Lightroom, or if you just prefer doing it in Photoshop. Here are instructions for making Panoramas in Adobe Photoshop.

Open the Images in Lightroom or Adobe Bridge (it comes free with Photoshop). If you are doing it in Bridge, here are a couple of steps to follow (Figure 7.11).

Select all the photos that you want to include in the panorama. Right-click a thumbnail and choose Open in Camera Raw.

In Camera Raw, we are going to apply the lens profile to reduce distortion (Figure 7.12).

1. In the Filmstrip, select all the images by pressing Ctrl/ Command+A, or right-click a thumbnail and choose Select All. Whatever adjustments you make to an individual image are now going to affect them all.
2. Click the Optics panel.
3. Apply the lens profile.
4. Check that it’s using the correct profile. If not, choose your camera from the options. If it says built-in, don’t worry about this step, as the profile is applied in camera.
5. Click Done to apply the settings and return to Bridge.

Time to pass the images off to Photoshop. From Bridge, choose Tools > Photoshop > Photomerge (Figure 7.13).

A great way to work is to start in Lightroom and hand off the photos to Photoshop to do the merging. Apply the lens corrections first in Lightroom, like we did in the previous tutorial. Then right-click and choose Edit In > Merge to Panorama in Photoshop (Figure 7.14).

It doesn’t matter if you start from either Lightroom or Bridge, the result is the same and they both open in the same tool in Photoshop.

You will now see the Photomerge dialog in Photoshop (Figure 7.15).

1. Source files show the images that will be included. Notice support for RAW files.
2. Choose a projection method (layout). Cylindrical works best for the majority of stitches, or try Auto.
3. You will see a few options. Blend Images Together is turned on; otherwise, the images will only be aligned and not masked together.
4. To save time, Vignette Removal and Geometric Distortion Correction are turned off, because they were already done when we applied the Camera Lens profile. It won’t harm the image to turn these options on; it will just take longer to complete the stitch.
5. Content Aware Fill Transparent Areas is a nice option to save you time, and we used it in the Lightroom Panorama previously. However, we are going to be doing some manual corrections, so we will leave it off because it’s pointless applying it at this stage of our workflow. Click OK to finish.

After a bit of a wait, Photoshop will complete the merging of all the different photos and you will see something that looks like a caveman rug with your panorama on it (Figure 7.16).

FIXING DISTORTION IN PHOTOSHOP

We are going to stretch our image around a bit and clean up the edges.

With all the layers selected, press Ctrl/Command+E to merge all the layers into a single layer (Figure 7.17).

Choose Filter > Adaptive Wide Angle to enter a tool that we can use to repair distortion and bending. It will automatically choose the Panorama option in the top right. (If you are bringing in a finished panorama from Lightroom for correction, try changing to the Fisheye option.)

To use this tool, drag the Constraint tool across bent areas to straighten them. It’s a bit of a balancing act, like multiple people jumping on a trampoline at once. Sometimes an adjustment will look good, and other times it will ruin the rest of the image; be prepared to frequently press Ctrl/Command+Z to undo. Here is how I like to approach the Adaptive Wide Angle tool to straighten images.

The first thing we need to do is create a level horizon (often, this is the only correction I do to a panorama) (Figure 7.18). On the left side, drag the Constraint tool across what should be the horizon line. Hold down the Shift key and the line will turn yellow. This means that it will force the pixels underneath to a perfectly horizontal line and the rest of the image will be rotated and warped to fit.

Repeat for the right side of the image. This will level the entire image. You can’t do it all in a single line; you have to approach it from the left and the right separately.

Now we can straighten key elements in the photograph. Be careful that you don’t overdo it, but take your time and have fun. Notice that the building at the bottom is bent. Drag the line out and you will see that it curves with the distortion (Figure 7.19).

I decided not to hold down Shift on this because I didn’t want to rotate the slope of the hill, just remove the bending. See the result in Figure 7.20.

1. Notice that the horizontal lines display in yellow while the angled ones display in blue.
2. Vertical lines can be set to a perfect 90 degrees by holding down Shift. Notice I straightened some of the buildings on this.
3. I also straightened the top of the building on the right with another adjustment.

When you are satisfied with the result, click OK to apply. Try to get all your work done at once; going back into the Adaptive Wide Angle more than once doesn’t produce the best results.

To finish up the panorama we need to crop the final image (Figure 7.21). Choose the Crop tool and decide on the size of the final image. It’s OK to leave a few gaps on the sides and maybe the corners because we can fill these back up later. When you are happy with the crop, press the Enter key.

We need to fill up the gaps. Ctrl-/Command-click the thumbnail in the Layers panel to select all the transparent parts of the image (Figure 7.22).

Press Ctrl+Alt+I (Command+Option+I on Mac) to invert the selection.

We also need to expand the selection so that there is some overlap. Choose Select > Modify > Expand. Choose about 10 pixels (Figure 7.23).

Now, fill with the Content-Aware Fill. Choose Edit > Fill, and choose Content-Aware from the option (Figure 7.24).

All the edges should now be filled with a similar pattern and texture. If not, select those areas and re-apply Content-Aware Fill (Figure 7.25).

Dodge and Burn, Painting with Light and Shadow

One of the last things I like to do, right before sharpening, is dodge and burn. Dodging and burning come from the photographic darkroom, where light is selectively increased or blocked from the enlarger during the process of printing from a negative. Burning is when extra light is applied to certain areas of the image. This can be done by cupping the hand or cutting out a stencil. This will darken the area that receives the extra light (remember they are working from a negative).

Dodging is achieved by blocking light from part of the photograph with a card or shape on a wire. This area receives less light on the image and is therefore lightened or “dodged.” Although we are employing this technique to a certain degree, I am also using shading techniques from traditional painting and digital art to create a hybrid technique that I call painting with light and shadow.

When you look at an image, the darker areas seem to go away from the viewer, while the lighter areas seem to come forward. This adds a lot of dept to an image and makes it appear almost 3D.

Let’s begin with an HDR image from a Mavic 2 Pro that is processed and ready (Figure 7.76).

While Holding down the Alt/Option key, click the New Layer icon. The Alt/Option key will invoke the dialog box, rather than just create a new layer.

Change the blend mode to Overlay. You will see the Fill with 50% gray option is available. Click the box to fill with 50% gray, which will be invisible because of the overlay blending mode. I have named this layer “Big.” We are going to do two passes. The “Big” is a traditional dodge and burn; the second pass will be to add dimension. You will see both approaches applied.

The last step in the setup is to prepare the brushes. Choose the brush tool.

Press the D key to reset the foreground and background colors to black and white.

Make sure you are in Normal blending mode. Change the Flow to 10% so the effect happens more slowly, so we can build it up. Turn Brush smoothing to 0 or you will find your brushes lag when painting.

If you are using a Wacom, Surface, or other pressure sensitive pen tablet, choose the Window>Brush Settings. Turn on transfer and set Flow and Opacity jitter to Pen Pressure (Figure 7.80).

This will allow you to shade the effect by varying how hard you press, like you would with a pencil.

Set the foreground color to black and we will start by painting around the edges of the image to darken it (Figure 7.81).

Press the X key to choose white and paint gently over the subject area to lighten it slightly. We are directing the viewer’s eye into the image with this hand-painted vignette effect (Figure 7.82).

OK, let’s get into the good stuff. Create another layer in Overlay mode (as we did before) and name it small S for shadow (Figure 7.83).

This time paint with black to darken the areas surrounding the train.

Change to white and paint some light coming out of the headlight. I would normally use different layers for lightening and darkening, but I want the light to replace shadows, so it works on the same layer in this case (Figure 7.84).

If you look at the layer in normal blending mode, you can see where we have painted. The gray will be invisible; the darker and lighter areas affect the image (Figure 7.85).

Let’s add some highlight area that will add the depth (painting with light). Create a new layer as before in Overlay mode and name it small h for highlights (Figure 7.86).

Set white as the foreground color and paint your highlights. See how it adds so much to the image? (Figure 7.87)

Just for reference Figure 7.88 shows where we have painted with white. If you overlay it over the image in Figure 7.89, you can see where I painted.

Removing Distractions

Let’s do some distraction removal. A number of tools are capable of performing this task, such as the Clone Stamp tool or the Content Aware Fill. In this case, we are going to use the Patch tool. The Content Aware Patch tool works like the Content Aware Fill tool, but it will work with a Smart Object, so you don’t have to rasterize your layer to work on it. This makes it easier to make changes and also preserves the quality of the image.

Here is an image (Figure 7.90) that is being cropped. Notice the transparent areas in the corners, as well as the distractions such as the flare. All manner of objects can be removed and areas patched using the following tools.

You will notice that this image is a Smart Object. Look in the Layers panel and you will see a badge. Here is how to apply nondestructive Content Aware Fill to a Smart Object (Figure 7.91).

1. Create a new, blank layer above the Smart Object.
2. Choose the Patch tool.
3. Select Content Aware as the method.
4. Turn on the Sample All Layers option.
5. With the Patch tool, make a selection around the blemish or area to remove.
6. Drag the selection to a similar area that you would like to fill.

When you release your cursor, the area will be healed. The patch is on a separate layer, so you didn’t have to rasterize your Smart Object.

Use the Patch tool to fill in the transparent areas left over when we cropped this image. Also use it to remove the lens flare in the bottom left of the image. Continue to use the same blank layer to patch the image. If you hide the bottom layer and look at the patch layer by itself, you will see that all the repairs are on a separate layer (Figure 7.92).

If you look at the image with both layers on, you will see how nicely the patch tool hid all the blemishes and areas of transparency (Figure 7.93).

One thing you have to be careful about is making adjustments to the Smart Object layer. If you make adjustments to that and not to the patches, they won’t match anymore. What we need to do is combine them.

High Pass Sharpening

Let’s sharpen this image, but only sharpen the areas closest to the viewer to really make it pop. High Pass Sharpening is powerful because it’s on a separate layer, so it can be turned on or off, or masked. Also, the intensity of this effect can be adjusted with the layer opacity.

If the top layer is a composite layer, duplicate this layer. If not, create a composite layer on top (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E on Windows or Cmd+Option+Shift+E on Mac).

Change the blend mode to Overlay (Figure 7.94). The image will look a bit strange for a moment, but it’s just a transitional appearance.

Choose Filter > Other > High Pass (Figure 7.95). Notice the image looks normal again.

Adjust the Radius to create the sharpening effect—usually between 1 and 4 works best (Figure 7.96). Look at your image to see how much sharpening looks right. You want the details to pop, but you don’t want halos or for the photo to look unnatural. The amount of sharpening will depend on the resolution of the image and the intended medium. For online, you will choose a little less sharpening than you would use for print work.

Here is the resulting image with sharpening on the top layer (Figure 7.97). One of the powerful things about High Pass Sharpening is the ability to sharpen selectively using layer masks. You can see the mask on the top layer in Figure 7.98 that the areas painted black do not receive sharpening. This allows you to sharpen the foreground while keeping the background soft. This adds more depth to the image.

Sky Replacement

Sometimes you get to the location at the right time: the light is doing exactly what you want and you capture what is almost the dream shot. Maybe everything is spot on except the sky. Either you have a gray marine layer, or perhaps there are no clouds at all and the sky is bland. When I’m local, I look up at the sky before heading to my location to see if it’s going to be any good. When you are traveling or on a deadline, you can’t always wait for the right conditions. Photoshop has a great tool to replace the sky in photos and it works quite well.

First let me show you how it works, then we will dig into the options a bit deeper.

Begin with your image (Figure 7.99). It’s a good shot, the sun is even setting perfectly, but the sky is really boring.

Choose Edit > Sky Replacement (Figure 7.100). Choose a Sky from the thumbnails, or add your own (we will cover that in a moment). You will see a preview of the new sky. Click OK to apply and you have changed the sky, as easy as that.

Let’s look at the options available to us.

You will see all the different layers in the layers panel. All of these settings can be adjusted in the Sky Replacement dialog box. Once the adjustments are applied then you can change any of the settings in the layers.

The settings are broken into three areas: the sky, the foreground, and the transition (Figure 7.101).

TRANSITION

Shift Edge: move the edge up or down so your horizon blends where it should.

Fade Edge: adjust the haze on the horizon.

FOREGROUND ADJUSTMENTS

Color Adjustment: match the color with the color of the sky.

Lightness Adjustment: change the brightness of the foreground.

Lighting Mode: either lightens or darkens the transition.

In this chart (Figure 7.104), I have mapped the settings in Sky Replacement to the results in the Layers panel, so you can see what each adjustment does. You won’t be able to see the layers and the Sky Replacement at the same time while working in Photoshop. I broke it all out so you can see under the hood and understand exactly how it works. I hope this is useful for you.

Tilt Shift

The tilt shift effect is a lot of fun. This can be used in a practical way to bring the viewer’s eye into a portion of a photo and provide some of depth of field. Usually you end up with a very large depth of field with wide-angle lenses, and everything is in focus. It’s useful to cut through the clutter with some simulated depth-of-field blur. Let’s apply the effect to this image. This image is a vertical panorama at Balboa Peninsula at Newport Beach, California (Figure 7.105).

Right-click the image thumbnail and choose Convert to Smart Object. (The filter can be applied directly to a layer if you choose; we are using a Smart Object because that will make it re-editable.) (Figure 7.106)

Choose Filter > Blur Gallery > Tilt Shift, and you will see the blur gallery at its default state, as you see here (Figure 7.107).

You can create a tilt shift lens effect by dragging the different lines. You will get a strip of focus with blur on the edges; this can also be used to make a photograph look like a miniature model.

1. The Blur slider controls the amount of blur outside the lines.
2. The focus area is between these two lines and can be dragged wherever you like. It can also be rotated.
3. Fall off. The blur will be blended between these dashed lines and the solid lines. Everything outside the dashed lines has a uniform blur of the amount that you set in step 1.

When you are happy with the result, click OK to apply to your Smart Object (Figure 7.108).

And the result looks like Figure 7.109.

Because we are using a Smart Object, we can double-click the name of the filter in the Layers panel to open the settings. You can now change the settings.

In this next example, we are going to bring the lines closer together for more of a miniaturization effect (Figure 7.110).

If you look at the ferry, it now looks a little like a toy. This works because the blur looks like something you would see from a macro lens; it’s much quicker than something you would see on a life-sized photo and thus fools the eye into thinking it’s looking at a small-scale model (Figure 7.111).

Figure 7.112 is another example.

360-Degree Tiny Planet

Another one of my favorites is the tiny planet. I remember doing this effect before I was using drones. As soon as I started flying a drone, I knew this would work really well. I’m seeing quite a few people trying this effect now. Here is how to get it.

Start with a wide panorama. Technically, you should be shooting 360 degrees, all the way around. However, if there is ocean on one side, you can skip a few panels and no one will be the wiser; actually, it will be a more interesting planet. Make sure to fly lower so that some of the features stick up above the horizon, or your planet will look flat and boring (Figure 7.113).

Although we could eagerly jump in and make our tiny planet right now, there is a little trick we should do first; this will ensure we don’t get an unsightly seam in our planet that will take a long time to fix.

Make a selection on the side that shows a horizon. Use the Rectangular Marquee tool for this (Figure 7.114).

Press Ctrl/Command+J to copy this selected area to a new layer. We will call this our “strip” for clarification.

Holding down Shift (to keep it aligned), drag the copied strip all the way to the other side of the image. Zoom in nice and close, so that you can align it perfectly with the edge (Figure 7.115).

We now need to flip this layer horizontally, so that the edges will match later. Press Ctrl/Command+T for Free Transform. Right-click and choose Flip Horizontal (Figure 7.116).

Create a layer mask on the strip by clicking the Add a Layer Mask icon in the Layers panel (Figure 7.117).

Choose the Gradient tool and a black-to-white linear gradient. Make sure the blend mode is set to Normal and that Opacity is all the way up to 100. Drag the gradient in the strip from left to right; the copied strip should now seamlessly blend into the main image (Figure 7.118).

Now flatten the layers.

Now it’s time to make the tiny planet! Choose Image > Image Size. The goal here is to transform the image into a square. Make sure that you are reducing size, and not increasing it, or the image will look soft and pixelated. I made this one 3000 x 3000 pixels (Figure 7.119).

Now you have a square image; it looks weird at this point, but that’s OK. Make sure to rotate this 180 degrees so that it’s upside down. Choose Image > Image Rotation > 180 (Figure 7.120).

Choose Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates. Choose the Rectangular to Polar option (Figure 7.121).

Figure 7.122 shows your tiny planet effect. Pretty neat, huh?

Perform some cleanup work. In this case, I rotated the planet around. I also chose to crop out the extra stuff on the edges. Sometimes, you can use the Clone Stamp and Content Aware Fill tools to fill up the edges with more of the outside texture. It’s entirely up to you.

Phew! That was a lot of information to get through in one chapter. This chapter and the preceding one provide a great jumping-off point for you to get started making amazing aerial images. There are a ton of techniques in these pages. This book isn’t intended to be a guide to using Photoshop and Lightroom, and there are already plenty of good books and videos on basic Photoshop and Lightroom by Rocky Nook and at PhotoshopCAFE.com. This book is a survival guide for aerial photography, and I included the workflows and techniques that I use every single day on my aerial photographs.

Next up, we will take a brief look at working with aerial videos.