How To Stitch Photos Together In Photoshop With Photomerge

I’ll be the first to admit that when using my digital SLR camera, I can become a little narrow sighted and stuck looking at the world in a 3:2 aspect ratio.

However, when I come across a scene that cries out to be photographed as a panoramic, I like to think that I’m up to the challenge. So, what’s the easiest way to take multiple images and blend them together into a panorama that you can be proud of?

Photoshop makes it incredibly easy to stitch multiple images together to create a panorama from scratch and the best part is Adobe Photoshop CS5 does an amazing job that I honestly can’t fault, which can’t be said for older versions of the software.

In fact it does such a great job that you’ll almost never need to position your lens directly over its nodal point and that’s pretty impressive. The process of capturing and creating a panorama is fairly straight forward as your about to find out:

1. ) Capture Series Of Overlapping Images

Start by capturing multiple images of the same scene using a tripod and making sure that they all overlap evenly and were shot using the same exposure settings.


If you wish to use a Motion Control Head or a Pan Tilt Bracket they will provide you with more precision and options for creating not only panoramas but time-lapse videos.

2. ) Open Bridge & Select Sequence Of Images

Open Adobe Bridge and begin browsing to identify which images would be ideal for superimposing to create your panorama.

Keeping in mind that the alignment, movement and exposure of each frame can influence how realistic and seamless the end result.

After labelling and rating your files, select them by holding down the Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac) key and clicking on each photo. Then import your images into Photoshop by right-clicking on the selection and choosing open with Camera Raw.

3. ) Edit Images Within Camera Raw Or Lightroom

Open and edit all images identically within Adobe’s Camera Raw. Save all images with the same resolution, color profile working space and file format to ensure consistency.

Finally, open all of your saved images within Photoshop.

4. ) Open Photomerge In Photoshop

In Photoshop go to the main navigational menu and select… File / Automate / Photomerge…

Once the photomerge dialog window appears you’ll be asked to select and open all the images that go together to make up your panorama.


5. ) Select Layout Option

In the layout settings, select the type of panorama you’re creating. In most cases, you can get away with using the “auto” option, unless of course you know exactly what type of lens distortions are within your photographs.

Finally, make sure you have “Blend Images Together” checked and then choose whether or not you would like “Vignette Removal” and/or “Geometric Distortion Correction” applied. Then click “OK”.

6. ) Check For Imperfections

Double check the quality of the merge and look for any imperfections that may have occurred in the stitching process that require your attention to fix. In most cases you will need to view your image at 50-100 percent in order to visually find any problem areas.


If you focus your attention predominantly around where the images have been stitched together you can’t really go wrong. By turning off individual layers you’ll be able to see where the layer masks connect.

7. ) Crop Image

One of the common problems you may face with your panorama is that your image maybe missing sections either top, bottom or on either side.

If this happens you have two options. Either crop your image tightly and work with what you’ve got or utilize Photoshop’s content-aware fill to fill in these areas. Content-aware fill isn’t perfect, but it does give you a great starting point from which you can work from.)

I think you’d agree that the results speak for themselves… I hope you found this tutorial to be helpful and informative. If you have any further questions that I haven’t answered, please don’t hesitate to ask them in the comments below.