Merging Photos into a Panorama in Photoshop Elements 13

[prkraus]

In the past, I have been able to merge photographs by dragging one over the other to a point where it suggests to the program how to merge them. I can't remember how I did it? Any advice? Thanks.

[Bob]

It sounds like you are talking about the "Interactive Layout Mode" in Photomerge. That was a feature in Premiere Elements 10 and 11, but it's not there anymore. It was removed beginning with Premiere Elements 12.

[Steve Grisetti]

You can create a Panorama Photomerge in Photoshop Elements 13 by selecting the option from the Enhance/Photomerge menu.

In version 14, the Photomerge options have been moved to the Guided Edits library.

[prkraus]

Thanks. Is there any way then to get Photoshop to create the panorama or to merge the photos if it is saying it can't in Photomerge?

[Steve Grisetti]

Well, of course you can do it manually.

But why is Photomerge unable to work with the photos? Are they all of the same scene, with a little overlap between photos?

[Bob]

Photomerge in Photoshop is pretty much the same as photomerge in Premiere Elements. Photoshop does have the ability to do auto alignment and auto blend separately outside of photomerge. But, I doubt that's really going to help here.

There are other panorama stitching programs available that may do a better job. You might try Microsoft's Image Composite Editor (ICE). It's free.

The primary reasons panoramas won't stitch is not enough image overlap. You should try for about a 1/3rd overlap between images. Another common reason panoramas won't overlap is that the individual images were shot without regard for the entrance pupil (often referred to as the nodal point) of the lens. If the image contains near objects, hand holding the camera and panning to get the shots to stitch will result in parallax errors that are going to make stitching difficult to achieve. If you don't have a tripod and a panorama head to properly align the camera, try to avoid photos with mid to near objects in the scene.

[prkraus]

I got it to work with Photomerge. Thank you for your comments.