Super Resolution with Panoramic Photography

On this video professional photographer, Karl Taylor demonstrates how he takes a panoramic image comprised of several pictures and stitches them together in both Lightroom and Photoshop to create an ultra-high-resolution single image.

If you are a landscape or product photographer, you have the option to create an ultra-high-resolution image by combining several shots together in post. This is quite simple actually and be done in most common photo editing software (some are even free).

The first step is taking the images. When it comes to the landscape you need to make sure to have the least amount of movement between shots – so don’t wait and also try and keep the image with as little moving subjects as possible (especially in the cross between images). Talking about the overlap between images – about 30% overlap is a good minimum number (others say anywhere from 40%-70% is good – try it yourself and see what works for you). The more overlap the less resolution you will be getting. Also, keep in mind that some shooters prefer to shoot panoramas vertically (with more images), this gives them a larger panorama since the sensor is wider than it is taller. You will probably need a good L-bracket for this type of shoot. Alternatively, you can shoot two rows (see this page for a calculator and more info).

After you got your images its time to bring them into the editing software (don’t forget to shoot in RAW of course). With Lightroom (classic) it is super easy. Taylor shot 5 images (you can shoot less or more depending on what you want to get), all you need to do is select all the images, right-click and choose “photo marge>panorama”. You have the option of spherical/cylindrical/perspective and you might want to choose “fill edges”. This can take a little bit and you have your panorama.

In Photoshop the best practice (not shown in this video actually) is to first bring in the RAW files into Camera RAW, process the first image and apply the changes to all the other images (all the relevant ones of course like saturation, exposure, contrast etc.) and then click on the top left filmstrip small lines and choose marge to panorama and follow the same steps as you do with Lightroom.

Tylor got with 5 images (around 20MP~ each) a finished Panorama of well over 100MP – better than almost any medium format camera on the market.

You can find a lot more info on stitching images here.

Bonus video 1: Tony Northrup on high megapixel images

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Bonus video 2: Tony Northrup on printing high megapixel images

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You can also find many more helpful photography tips on our Photography tips section.

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

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