Cameras

Quick Tip: Using Lightroom to Stitch a Panorama and Export in RAW

Chris Gampat
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11/20/2015
2 Mins read

one-scene

In this clip from CreativeLive’s free Lightroom CC Crash Course, professional photographers, Matt Kloskowski and Jared Platt describe in detail the incredible capabilities of the new Adobe software upgrade.

Previously, to create a panorama from multiple photographs required exporting each individually edited file, then stitching together in a secondary software such as Photoshop or Autopano Giga (which is both expensive and cumbersome).

The technique required that you export the image files (jpeg or tiff), then re-imported back into Lightroom to edit the final image. While this process worked, it lost the ability to edit the final image file as a RAW image, thereby losing a large portion of the tonal and exposure range that you get with RAW.

Now, merging and editing can be done entirely within one platform, Lightroom. And the final image remains in RAW format. This dramatically increases the editing capabilities of the photographer. This is truly a fantastic upgrade that doesn’t seem to get the attention it deserves. In this video, Jared Platt is clearly very excited about this.

The above video provides step-by-step guide for how to accomplish this; here are some of the main points to consider when creating your own panorama:

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  • Taking the photo: using a tripod, make sure to overlap by 20-30% for each photo (gives the software something to work with).
  • In Lightroom: Matt recommended to not do any developing ahead of time.
  • Top menu: Photo → Photo Merge → Panorama
  • Lightroom will create a preview. In terms of settings, it is recommended to select “auto select projection,” and “Spherical.”
    • You can select “auto crop,” or crop later on your own; it is entirely up to you.
    • Unless you are using the perfect panorama shifting ball-head, the framing will not be perfect, and you will lose some space on either end that needs to be cropped out.

Bonus tip: In the video, Matt will guide you through an additional step you can take in Photoshop to auto-fill those empty spaces, and keep your image at its original intended size.

 

Justin Katz works as a Marketing Manager at CreativeLive, and as an avid outdoor and landscape photographer at his website.

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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.