Tutorials - Panorama Photo Editing Tutorial

In this photo editing tutorial, I show my complete workflow for creating high-quality panoramic images.

I use the tricky panorama I took at Cape Woolamai as an example image. The light that evening was spectacular but also fleeting, so I had to work fast. Because my wide-angle lens wasn't sufficient to capture the whole cove, I opted for a panorama combined with bracketing.

With the direct sunlight, the rolling waves, and the fact that I wasn't using a nodal rail or special panorama equipment, putting the photo together to create a high-quality result involved a set of unique techniques.

Tutorial Content

The tutorial consists of two major parts, each 75 minutes in length.

Part 1 is about the stitching and blending of the panorama. I explain:

• How the individual photos for the panorama were taken
• The Pre-Processing in Lightroom
• The advanced stitching using the free software Hugin
• The exposure blending of the bracketed exposures and the cleanup
• Techniques to enhance the look of the sun in the photo
• Special image transformations and cropping

Part 2 contains my creative workflow, in which I recreate the atmosphere. It contains:

• Sky enhancement techniques
• My dodge and burn workflow
• Contrast and color adjustments
• My workflow in ColorEfex to bring more vibrance to the photo
• Methods for balancing colors in the photo
• Multi-pass sharpening to work out the details in the photo
• Sharpening for Web
• Sharpening for Print

Prerequisites

This video tutorial is for the advanced Photoshop user. I assume you are familiar with layers, masks, filters, and adjustment layers. If not, I recommend watching my free tutorials first.

I use Adobe Lightroom 6 and Photoshop CS6 in the tutorial. Photoshop CS5 or later is generally sufficient to apply the shown techniques. If you are using newer versions of Photoshop from the Adobe Creative Cloud, you'll also be fine. The techniques I show work the same way in the latest versions of Photoshop and Lightroom.

I also use some filters from the Nik Collection, which are available for free.

For the stitching, I use Hugin the Panorama Stitcher.