Caoimhe asked me to elaborate on how I created the panoramic photo that currently appears at the top of this page. Here’s how. You can download all the images I used (although they’re much smaller than the originals!) but the techniques described will be useful for other photos too.
- Load dsc06627.jpg, dsc06628.jpg and dsc06629.jpg into the GIMP.
- Create a new 1920×640 RGB image.
- Copy/paste dsc06629.jpg into the new image and move it to the left of the frame.
- Look at the layers dialog and right click on “Pasted Layer” and select “New layer”.
- Do the same for dsc06628.jpg and dsc06627.jpg moving them over to the right before making them into new layers. No need to line them up right away.
- Now line up “Pasted Layer#1″ with “Pasted Layer” as best you can. It helps if you select “Pasted Layer#1″ and move the Opacity slider to about 50%. Concentrate on getting the right side of the layer lined up with the bottom layer. The left side is always overlapped by the layer above.
- Now set the opacity to 100% again! You’ll hopefully see the mountains in the background join up nicely!
- You’ll have to adjust the colour of “Pasted Layer#1″ – Use Layers->Colours->Colour Balance, and Hue-Saturation. Don’t worry if the colours don’t match exactly.
- Do the same with “Pasted Layer#2″. Getting the trees lined up is a bit of a pain because of the branches, but if you clone out the branch tops after aligning it helps.
- When that’s done, you need to match up the layers using a layer mask and a gradient: select “Pasted Layer#1″, right click, and click “Add Layer Mask”, and click “OK”. Select the gradient tool (press “L” if you can’t find it) and draw a gradient from the top-left corner to the center of the layer. Click on the layers dialog again and “Apply Layer Mask” and then use another gradient on “Pasted Layer#1″ to match up the right of that layer with “Pasted Layer#2″.
- Crop the image, remove the white background and get rid of the rough edges!
You can look at sneem-panorama.xcf to see the layers and effects I used.
As part of your digital workflow you should also use the Layers->Colours->Curves, Hue-Saturation and Levels tools, and Filters->Enhance->Unsharp Mask plugin to improve the final image.
5 Comments
Caoimhe (6 comments.) on January 27, 2005 at 1:52 pm.
Gracias, can’t wait to take time out and try this!
Tim on August 19, 2005 at 6:12 pm.
The Pandora GIMP plugin makes this process nearly painless … all I usually need to do is line up the photos properly, and I’m good to go.
David on November 27, 2006 at 4:52 am.
Hmmm … what type of Layer Mask do you add – White, Black, Layer’s Alpha, Transfer Layer’s Alpha, Selection, or Grayscale copy of layer? And so far the Pandora GIMP plugin doesn’t seem to like Gimp 2.x …
devland (1 comments.) on May 15, 2009 at 10:43 pm.
A great guide.
allankliu (1 comments.) on July 13, 2010 at 10:14 am.
It is a great tutorial, However it really takes extra effort to put them together. It seems fisheye lens is perfect choice.