Using Windows XP > Digital Photography

Creating great panoramas

Published: February 15, 2006

A panorama is a picture that is made by combining a series of photos into one large picture. By combining a series of photos, you can provide a complete view of an area or location that cannot fit in a single shot. Panoramas are usually made by taking a series of photos across a horizontal (or, at times, vertical) line.

This article will walk you through the process of creating a panorama—from using your digital camera to take the photos that you plan to use in a panorama to creating the actual panorama by using Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006.

Photo showing a panorama of a city skyline

Photo showing a panorama of a lake at sunset

The first step in creating a panorama is to decide what you want to show. The following is a list of ideas of places or other things that you might want to feature in a panorama. Of course, this is only a few of the many subjects you might choose to feature.

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City skyline. Capture the vast city skyline at night or during the day to show the different buildings and other landmarks for different cities. This is a great way to show a city that you might have recently visited.

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Mountain range. Show the wonderful snow capped mountains or barren mountain range. Making a panorama of a mountain range lets you show the mountains at a large size and show the different peaks in the range.

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Lakes or oceans. Show small or vast bodies of water in great detail. You can show the stretch of land that eventually leads to a body of water.

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Countryside. Show the rolling hills or the vast flat land of the countryside.

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Large groups of people. Show a large gathering of people, ranging from a group get-together or a family reunion. If so, in a regular photo, you might not be able to see individual faces in detail because you would need to be far away or have your camera zoomed out, so that you can fit everyone in the single photo. However, with a panorama, you can take a series of pictures to get all the people in the resulting panorama that you create.

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Preparing to make a panorama

Before you begin to take the pictures and eventually create the panorama, there are a few things you will need to have to make great panoramas:

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Digital camera. By taking photos using a digital camera, you can take digital photos that you can use in your panorama.

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Graphics editing software that lets you stitch photos together to create a panoramic photo. You can use Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006 to create a panorama by using the Panoramic Stitch tool.

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Disk space available on your storage card. To create a panorama, you need to have enough free disk space on your storage card to store the series of photos that you take. Therefore, make sure that your storage card has enough available disk space to hold all the photos you plan to take and use for your panorama. For rough estimates about how much free disk space is needed for different digital cameras, see the article Five tips for buying storage cards for your digital camera.

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Tripod. If you have a tripod, using it will help you get much better photos because it keeps the camera still and focused along a horizontal line. If you are using a tripod when taking the pictures, simply use the handle of the tripod to move horizontally to the next part of the scene that you want to capture, and then take another photo.

Tips for taking photos for your panorama

When you are taking the photos that you plan to use in your panoramas, here are a couple of quick tips that can help you to make better panoramas more quickly.

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Take a few practice shots. Before you take the sequence of pictures, make sure that the photo quality is good. When taking your practice shots, make sure you take pictures in different parts of the scene because the lighting can change from one part of the scene to the next. Remember that your pictures do not need to be perfect because you can edit the final panorama in Digital Image Suite 2006 after you create it. However, make sure that you have high-quality photos to start with and use in your panorama.

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Mark the point where the sequence of photos begins and ends. Before you take the first photo that you plan to use in your panorama and after you take the last photo that you plan to use, "mark" the place where the sequence of photos begins and ends. For example, you could mark the place where the sequence starts by taking a photo of something unrelated, such as the ground, a blank sheet of paper, or another unrelated object. Do the same at the end of the sequence. This is helpful to do especially if you camera does not have a mode for taking digital photos for a panoramic images.

If you do not want to take up storage space on your storage card with these unused shots, another way to mark the beginning and end of the sequence is to simply write on paper the name and number of the first and last photo in the sequence of photos that you plan to use in your panorama.

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Use a tripod or place the camera on a level surface. Use a tripod when you take the photos to help keep the camera level across the sequence of photos you take. Also, using a tripod lets you smoothly pan horizontally across the scene from one part to the next. Tripods come in many different sizes, so choose one that will work well for your needs.

Photo showing three tripods that are different sizes

If you do not have a tripod, if possible, place the camera on a level surface. Just make sure that the camera is secured and will not fall off the edge of the surface.

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Make sure there is overlap between one photo and the next. When taking the photos, make sure that each photo overlaps the other by at least one-third or half. This prevents gaps from appearing in your final panorama. In the following image, the amount that the two photos overlap is shown in the area that is shaded white.

Photo that shows the overlap between two digital photos

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Minimize the number of fast moving objects in your photos. If possible, minimize the amount of fast moving objects you have in each photo that you take. Fast moving objects will move from one part of the scene to the next. Therefore, you might only capture half of the object in the final panoramic, or the moving object might appear two times in your final panorama. This might occur if the object moves from one part of the scene to the next, and you take different photos that have the same moving object in different parts of the landscape.

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Keep the focal length consistent throughout your photos. As you take one photo and then another, be careful not to zoom in or zoom out.

Taking pictures for panorama with your digital camera

One of the most important parts of making great panoramas is taking great digital photos that you will use in the panorama. Here are the general steps for taking the digital photos that you want to use as the source images for your panoramic image.

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Identify the subject that you want to feature in your panorama.

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Do one of the following, depending on the settings for your specific digital camera.

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If your camera has a mode that helps you take photos that you can use in panorama, set your camera to that mode. This mode, sometimes called stitch assist, is a setting that some digital cameras have that will let you align the objects from one photo to the next when taking each shot.

Photo of a digital camera in a panoramic stitching assist mode

This camera setting helps to keep the exposure consistent across the sequence of photos because settings such as the shutter speed and aperture are locked, so the photos in the sequence are consistent. This results in consistent exposures for all the photos in your panorama.

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If you camera does not have a mode to help you when taking photos to make a panorama, if possible, use the Manual Exposure camera setting. If you use the Manual Exposure setting (often indicated by an M on the mode dial on your digital camera), you have control over the shutter speed and aperture. This helps to keep the photos consistent in color as you take each photo that you plan to include in your final panoramic image.

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Take one or two photos, and then preview the photos in the LCD monitor of your digital camera. This lets you check the photo quality to make sure that the settings are appropriate for the scene that you plan to capture and feature in your panorama image.

When you take these practice shots, you might want to take the shots across different parts of the scene because the lighting for different parts of the scene might be darker or brighter in different parts.

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Focus your digital camera on the edge of the scene that you want to include in your panorama. This is the photo that will be the first photo that is used in your panorama.

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Frame the shot, and then take the photo.

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Move the camera slightly along the horizontal plane, so that there is an overlap by at least one-third or half in the object in the first photo you took and the second photo that you are about to take, and then take the second photo. If you are using a tripod, you can easily do this by moving the handle slightly to pan to the next part of the scene that you want to capture.

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Repeat step 6 to capture the entire scene or landscape.

Creating a panorama in Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006

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In Digital Image Suite 2006 Editor, on the File menu, click Open.

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Locate and select the first photo that you want to appear on the left-most edge of your final panorama, hold down the SHIFT key, select the last photo in the sequence of photos for your panorama, and then click OK.

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Make sure that no other photos (besides the ones that you want to include in your panorama) are opened in Microsoft Digital Images Suite 2006 Editor.

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On the Tools menu, click Panoramic Stitching.

Screen shot with the Panoramic Stitching command highlighted

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In the task pane, click Select all pictures, and then click Next.

After a few moments, a preview of the panorama appears. The larger your photos, the more time it will take to process them.

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If the Panoramic Stitching message box appears, click OK.

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If you want to adjust a specific part of the panorama, click that part, and drag it up, down, left, or right, as necessary.

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In the task pane, choose an output size for the panorama by dragging the slider, and then click Next.

The actual size can be quite large, since the size of the final panorama is based on the size of each photo featured in the panorama. Because of this, it's a good idea to resize the final panoramic image.

Screen shot with the slider for adjusting the final size highlighted

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Do one of the following:

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If you are satisfied with the panorama and do not want to crop it, click Done.

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If the top and bottom edges are ragged, you may want to crop the panorama. To do this, drag a rectangle around the part of the picture you want to keep, and then click Done. For example, you might want to crop the panorama so that no white area appears in your panorama.

Screen shot showing a panoramic image that will be cropped

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On the File menu, click Save and, in the File name box, type a file name, and then click Save.

After you create the panoramic image in Digital Image Suite, you can edit the panorama just like you would with any other digital photo. When making panoramas, you might need to make additional edits, such as removing unwanted objects, blending areas of the panorama, cropping or resizing the panorama, or making the panorama brighter or darker.