Pixiq

The panoramic print has gained a lot of attention over the past few years. A long print showing a wide view of an area gives the viewer a new perspective on a scene. While especially popular among landscape photographers, panoramic images work with many subjects.

Photoshop has made it easier than ever to produce panoramas with its advanced alignment algorithms. In addition, ArcSoft PanoramaMaker continues to be a great software value that rivals programs many times its price. It also has encouraged many photographers to try panoramas.

Epson was the first printer company to offer ink jets that could print the long images that panoramic photos require. Using their standard printers, you can easily print photos up to the full width of the paper and 44 inches long, and Epson's graphic printers have no length limit. Panoramic images definitely gained in popularity because Epson printers were available to print them.

Still, just because you can print a panoramic format image doesn’t mean any subject will make a good panoramic print. You must compose and shoot an image that uses the entire subject area effectively. A Panoramic image must work across the full print from left to right. Common mistakes are:

To make a good panoramic print, you could shoot with a panoramic camera and scan the resulting negative or transparency. It will be too big for most film scanners, so you’ll need to use something like a high-resolution flatbed scanner with transparency adapter.

Most photographers today are building panoramics from images shot with a standard digital camera. This has become easy to do, and while sophisticated tripod heads can make the process work smoother, they are not a necessity.

To do this, shoot a series of photos from one side of the scene to the other, overlapping each shot. Then put them together in the computer. One advantage to this is that you can use the equipment you already have.

Once you have your shots, bring them into the computer. With a digital camera, this is a relatively straightforward step, since all the images should be identical in size. Do not crop or change the image size at this point.

There are two basic ways of dealing with a panoramic image composed of several individual images. You can use a stitching program that does the work for you, or you can use image-processing software that has layers and you do it yourself. There are advantages and disadvantages to each method. Stitching programs (such as ArcSoft’s Panorama Maker (www.arcsoft.com), or the Photomerge option in both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements (www.adobe.com) are very easy, but work best when there are distinct objects in the overlapped areas. In addition, they should have a healthy overlap of the images (20–50%) to do their stitching. Some programs have some “morphing” capabilities that allow the images to blend better when things don’t match perfectly.

With a stitching program, the steps are pretty straightforward. First, you need to check all of your photos to be sure they are consistent in size and tonality. Any big changes in brightness, for example, will show up as unevenness in the final image.

Make any adjustments needed to give them the required consistency before you try to stitch them together and then import them into your stitching program. While some programs claim to be able to figure out the order of your photos automatically, you can usually help the program work more efficiently if you put the pictures in order from left to right (or top to bottom).

Then tell the program to go to work. Depending on the processing speed and RAM of your computer, this will take a little time. RAM is really critical, as panoramic photos can get quite large. Once the processing is complete, take a look at your photo. You may find a section that is a problem due to uneven tones. You may have to go back and adjust that photo, then redo the panoramic. Minor problems can often be corrected with the cloning tool. You’ll usually have to crop the final image to fix the edges.

The sky part of a constructed panoramic photo is one place where you will often run into problems. Inconsistencies of tone here can really make an otherwise good panoramic look bad.

Probably the easiest way to fix skies is to use a combination of selections and layers. Let’s look at how you would do this to replace an entire sky. This is simplest to do with a small sky area without clouds (these tend to show problems more, anyway).

Once you complete your panoramic image, you’ll want to print it out on your Epson printer. This is not a problem except that you need to have long paper. You can buy Epson photo-quality paper in rolls that are precut to a standard panoramic size of 8.3 x 23.4 inches (21 x 59 cm).

When you print, you need to tell your printer the type of paper and the size you are using. Obviously, a very big panoramic will take some time to print. Be careful to support the paper going into and coming out of the printer so it does not fold or crease, which will damage your photo.