8 Steps to Create a Dynamic Vertical Panorama

Photography Tips

We’ve covered how to create stunning panoramas, but let’s be different today. Let’s step it up and learn how to create a beautiful, mind-blowing panorama that stands out from the rest and really grabs the viewer’s attention—the vertical panorama from an aerial view! Russel Brown provides a great tutorial on how to stitch together multiple photos to create one fantastic image that blends different perspectives from above:

In this tutorial, Brown is using a series of aerial photos taken on the DJI Vision Plus Camera by Romeo Durscher. He uses Adobe Photoshop CC 14 to edit, stitch and blend the images together.

To begin, you can get your image sequence by just pointing the camera directly down from your vantage point in the sky and slowly moving it up toward the horizon. Take anywhere between four and eight photos to get the best results.

Take a sequence of 4-8 photos to use in the vertical panorama.

Using Photoshop to Stitch Together Images

1. Color correct your images and apply the Lens Profile.

2. In Adobe Bridge, select all your images and rotate them. This will give the best results when you merge the photos together in Photoshop. Hold down cmd or ctrl + [ to rotate left.

3. Open in Photoshop. Go to Tools, Photoshop, Load Files into Photoshop Layers. By doing it this way, Photoshop will treat all of the images as one single horizontal image, which will give you the least amount of distortion.

4.  Merge all the images together. Select all the images in the Layers panel, go to Edit, Auto-Align Layers and select the Spherical setting.

Merge the images.

5. Blend the layers to make the seams and lines disappear in the image. Go to Edit > Auto-Blend Layers.

6. Merge the layers. Go to the flyout menu in the top right corner of the Layers panel and select Merge Layers.

7. Right click on the now single image and Convert to Smart Object. Now you can rotate the image clockwise.

8. You can crop this image now or do a little distortion with the Liquify tool first. Go to Filter, then Liquify to apply a non-destructive distortion.

Apply a non-destructive distortion.

Vertical Panorama

This technique will give you a unique and dynamic final image that really captures the viewer’s attention. Give it a try!