My son was showing me some of the High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography samples on Google images and in doing more research I’ve learned that this effect can be achieved using Adobe Photoshop even if your digital camera is not capable of HDR photography. I need to do more study and try it myself in the near future. I’ll let everyone know how it goes, this should prove to be interesting!!!

In the course of researching the creation of HDR Photos in Photoshop I stumbled across something else that can be done using Photoshop that I found interesting and fun. I suppose if I’d actually learn about all the features of Photoshop I’d have known this, but I’m learning by trial and error so it’s new to me.

I’m using Adobe Photoshop CS3 but I’m sure this information can be adapted to other versions of Photoshop. I found that individual images with overlapping edges can be combined together to form a panoramic view even if the camera is not capable of this. To accomplish this you will need two or more photos with an overlapping edge(s), the example I’ve put together uses 7 photos.

Photo Comment: This is a panorama photo created using 7 individual photos of the road and surrounding area in the campground at Sakatah Lake State Park near Waterville, MN. The road runs straight through where I was standing, as you pan from side to side you can see what the camera saw as I turned my head.

Step 1. Take a series of pictures of a subject of your choice, scenery works well for this. Photos should be in order from “right to left” or “left to right”. It works well to use a tripod to help keep the photos on the same plane, my example shows why.

Step 2. Upload the photos from your camera to a folder of your choice. NOTE: Work from this folder not the files on the camera.

Step 3. Open Adobe Photoshop, click on “File”, in the dropdown choose “Automate”> and then “Photomerge”. In the box that opens click on “Browse” choose the location of your photo upload and then highlight the files you want to use and click “OK”.

Step 4. Allow Photoshop to process the files; this may take quite some time depending on your computer and processor speed. When done Photoshop will display a preview which can be saved as a .PSD or .PDD file which will be quite a large file or you can save as a .JPG file which will be smaller. Your file can also be saved in many other formats including .RAW by opening the “Format” dropdown box in the “Save As” box.

Step 5. Edit as desired and “Save As” again choosing a name for your file. NOTE: I recommend editing a copy of the file, not the original file itself.

My example is as Photoshop rendered it with no cropping or editing. As you can see a tripod would have helped keep the horizontal line more consistent. Also positioning the camera in “Portrait” instead of “Landscape” would give a taller “Ceiling” but doing this requires the rotation of your photos 90 degrees before combining them into a panorama.