Photo-merging is taking a series of photographs and
"Stitching" them together to create an image that would have
otherwise been impossible. There are several different types of photo-merging,
but I will run through the two that i have used and talk about how I did them.
The most common form of photo-merging or "stitching" is
Panoramic Photography. Mainly used in landscape, Panoramic is a technique used
to get a long wide angle shot. The signature letterbox shape gives the images a
very fresh appearance, a nice change.
The Panoramic process could be achieved using a Wide or Super-wide
Angle lens, and then cropped into the letterbox shape. The issue with this,
however, is that the image quality is lowered and the images might not be able
to be printed or viewed in high quality. The Panoramic process allows an
unlimited field of view, with a super high quality print.
Panoramic images are created by taking a series of photographs and
putting them together on Photoshop. Panoramic images are now even easier as
Photoshop now has the ability to stitch the images for you. However, for the
sake of this post, I will be explaining how I do it (manually).
The first thing to note about these images is the equipment,
Although you can buy specialised tripod heads designed for panoramic
photography, this effect can be achieved using a normal tripod, and even
hand-holding if you have a steady enough grip.
A kit lens is usually the best lens to use for this, zooming in at
between 20-50mm. This is crucial as bellow 20mm is entering wide-angle views,
giving barrel distortion, altered perception and ultimately will not allow your
images to line up properly. So 20-50mm is preferred.
Once you have found a view you want to capture, face the camera at
the furthest left point of your desired image. Assuming you are handholding the
camera, keep your eye looking through the lens, and snap your furthest
left shot. Take note of an object in the
third vertical of your image (the right side).
Now, moving slowly, Twist your body and compose the shot with the object
in the left of the frame. Again, make note of an object in the right, and
continue lining up and shooting until you reached the desired length.
An argument has been made that instead of twisting your body, it
is better to keep the lens at the same spot and rotate around the lens. However
either will work.
So once you have the images, load a new page on Photoshop, make it
around 5000px width and 1000px height, this should give you plenty of room.
Load your first image into Photoshop and put it in the centre left of the page,
don’t make any adjustments to the size. Load in your next shot and change its
opacity to 50%, line up the key object in both shots. Continue adding
photographs at 50% opacity and lining them up until you have your panoramic
laid out. Now adjust all of them to 100% opacity, and give them all a layer.
Selecting the second shot of your sequence, get up the brush tool,
and make sure it's hardness as low as possible. With a fairly large brush, you should
be able to take off the edges of you images, lining them up and making the
images seamless.
When there is things like stones, clouds or a lumpy texture, some
clone stamping or blurring might be required to blend the images, however
usually, the images should merge quite nicely.
Once you are happy with the merge, flatten the image and make any
major adjustments. (Levels, Colour etc.) 
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