Tutorial: Hand Blending a Panoramic

[DavidL]

Firstly, I think that the secret of success when doing this type of work is to use a Graphic Tablet and Pen rather than a mouse. I’m an Artist and a pen feels much more natural to me and also gives me the control I need when hand-blending water or other fine detail in an image.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/dlewinsphotography/blending/handblend_1.jpg

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/dlewinsphotography/blending/handblend_2.jpg

1. The four files were converted from RAW in Bridge and saved as *.tif files, these were then stitched using Photomerge in CS3. After several attempts to find the best stitch I chose Cylindrical and deactivated the Blend Images Together which allows you to blend the images manually.


After Photoshop had done its work I added Layer Masks to the last three images.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/dlewinsphotography/blending/handblend_3.jpg
2. Using the Rectangular Marquee tool I selected an area on the second image in which to work, taking care not to go too far into the next image. Then using the Gradient tool set to Linear, Foreground to Transparent with default Foreground and Background colours.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/dlewinsphotography/blending/handblend_4.jpg
Pressing the Shift Key, I Click/Dragged into the selected area to begin the blend, this still left part of the hills showing from the image I was blending. I did a second sweep using the same settings which helped but didn’t totally resolve the problems.

I then selected the Brush tool and working within the masked area hand-blended the offending areas by adjusting the Opacity and Flow of the Brush tool to control the work and smooth-out the area.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/dlewinsphotography/blending/handblend_5.jpg
4. Looking at the image I could see that there were still several issues with the water and also the land. The line which extended through the ripples on the water I will deal with first. These were easily altered using the brush tool and blending them in using the Opacity and Flow to control the amount of blending.

I then used the same process as above to blend the following two images and complete the panoramic whole image.

5. After flattening the image I went back over the area of the water using the Clone tool again adjusting the Opacity and Flow to allow a smooth transition.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/dlewinsphotography/blending/handblend_6.jpg
6. However, I was still left with a large problem on the first blended image which couldn’t be resolved using the hand-blending method. In this case all I could do was alter the landscape after flattening the image using the Clone Tool in order to hide the offending problem.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/dlewinsphotography/blending/handblend_7.jpg

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/dlewinsphotography/blending/handblend_8.jpg


After completing the Blending and Cloning of the image, it was cropped and then given further basic post processing.

[Cameron]

Excellent tutorial, David.
Many thanks for taking the time to post. :thumbsup:

[John]

Good stuff David, and to repeat myself in the original post. I agree with Cameron:
Seconded. http://bestsmileys.com/thumbs/2.gif

[Dimitri]

Very nice of you David to take the time.

[lesmac]

Excellent, very informative :)

[DavidL]

Excellent tutorial, David.
Many thanks for taking the time to post. :thumbsup:

Good stuff David, and to repeat myself in the original post. I agree with Cameron:

Very nice of you David to take the time.

Excellent, very informative :)


You're welcome!;)