How to Shoot a Panorama Photo
Step 1
FIND A SWEEPING VISTA
Panoramas are great for wide landscapes and very tall images. Find a place that has a lot of scope, width or expanse to shoot.
Step 2
GET YOUR CAMERA
Any camera will do. Just about any lens will do as well, except a fish-eye. Traditionally a 50 mm or something equivalent would be necessary to make blending the images possible but not any more.
Step 3
SHOOT SOME FRAMES
Turn your camera's orientation to the opposite to your desired final image, ie shoot portrait if you want a landscape panorama or shoot landscape if you want a portrait panorama. Start at one end of what you want to capture trying to include more in your frame than you will need. Take as many images as you need to capture everything you want with about one quarter to a third of each image overlapping the previous.
Make sure you take a wider image than you really need so that you don't loose something in the crop once they are stitched together.
The more overlap you have the easier it will be for the computer to merge the images.
Step 4
LOAD THE FRAMES UP IN (INSERT PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE HERE)
Lightroom Classic: Select all the frames from your panorama, right click on the images and select photo merge/panorama. You will be given a dialogue box with a preview of your panorama with options to change the projection, auto crop off any missing sections or to stretch the image out to fill in missing areas around the image. Play with the settings until you get the look you want then click merge. You will be given a new raw file with your images stitched together which you can edit as normal.
Adobe Camera Raw: Open all the frames of your panorama in to Adobe Camera Raw. Select all the images on the left side panel, right click and choose 'Merge to Panorama'. There will be a new dialogue box with options to change the projection, to automatically crop off any missing spaces around your image or to warp the boundaries into these missing areas. Once you have the panorama looking the way you want click merge and save your new raw file which will then automatically open in ACR. Edit as normal.
Photoshop: In Photoshop go to File/Automate/Photomerge. In this dialogue box you have options for the layout of your panorama on the left, in the middle you need to select the frames for you panorama by either loading the files or the folder containing all the files. At the bottom you should select the options 'Blend images together', 'Vignette Removal' and 'Geometric Distortion Correction'. You can also have Photoshop fill in any missing areas around the boarders of your image using the 'Content Aware Fill Transparent Areas' option but if you captured more than you were planning on using then this shouldn't be necessary. Click okay once you have everything sorted and wait for the computer to work it's magic. You will have a new Photoshop file with all your images blended together which you can work on as you normally would.
Step 5
Profit!... I mean finish your image.
Now you can edit your panorama in the same way you would with any other photo.
