Merging images  in Lightroom and Photoshop CC 2015

Merging images  in Lightroom and Photoshop CC 2015

January 1, 2016 ·

Alain Briot

I closed my eyes so I could see.
Paul Gauguin

The final image whose creation is the purpose of this essay

1 – Introduction

This essay describes how to create a collage, also referred to as a panorama, a merge or a stitch, by combining several digital captures in Lightroom and in Photoshop CC 2015.

2 – The image

In November 2015, while photographing during the 2015 Fine Art Photography Summit in Death Valley, I found myself on the Badwater salt flat at sunset. Due to recent flooding the playa was covered with water, a rare occurrence in a land known for its dryness. There were clouds in the sky, another uncommon occurrence. On top of that, about 10 minutes after sunset, the clouds turned red. When combined, these elements –the water, the reflections, the salt patterns, the clouds, the sunset colors — created an opportunity for a unique photograph.

Faced with having to decide how to compose the image I decided to capture the entire scene because to me this was the best way to show what was taking place in front of me. However, I was using a Phase One digital back on a Hasselblad SWCM-CF camera and the fixed 38mm Zeiss Biogon lens did not allow me to capture the entire scene in a single frame. To capture the whole scene I had to take three separate vertical captures. Doing so was not an uncommon approach for me over half of my work consists of digital collages.

3 – The process

Back in my studio I converted the images in Lightroom then merged them in Photoshop using the Photomerge command. This is my usual approach. Even though I can merge images directly in Lightroom I prefer to use Photoshop’s Photomerge. The reason why I prefer to do the merge in Photoshop is because Photoshop gives me the option of doing a Reposition merge. I like Reposition because it does not distort the image and it gives me straight borders. It does leave empty white areas but those can be filled in with the Content Aware fill Transparent Areas option offered in the Photomerge dialog box. Lightroom does not offer Reposition or Content Aware fill Transparent Areas as options. This means that in Lightroom either you have a merge with uneven borders that you have to fill out as best as you can or you need to crop the image to get straight borders. Because neither option is optimal from me, I prefer to merge images in Photoshop.

The problem here was that the result I got from Photoshop Photomerge was unsatisfying. The horizon did not merge properly and I got uneven lines both on the horizon and in the clouds:

The result obtained from Photoshop Photomerge (The person on the right side of the merge was cloned out in the final image)

While I had previously tested Lightroom’s photo merge function (called Panorama), I had never used it for serious work. However, in this instance I decided to give it a try because the result I got from Photoshop was unusable. Of course I could have tried using Photoshop’s other projections and I may have obtained better results with one of them, however, since these projections are available in Lightroom I decided to get the merge done from Raw files because merging Raw files would give me a higher quality image than merging converted Tiff or Photoshop files.

Below is the process I used, first in Photoshop (Section A) then after in Lightroom (Section B) after seeing that Photoshop gave me unsatisfying results.

A – The Photomerge Process in Photoshop

The three image captures I used for this collage

The settings I used in Photoshop’s Photomerge dialog box

The layer stack and the layer masks created by Photoshop’s Photomerge. This layer stack is available after the merge is completed.

Notice that Photoshop creates separate layers for each of the photos used in the merge, adds a layer mask to each of them and then creates a flattened layer on top of the merge layers. I normally do not keep these layers. Once I inspect the merge and approve the results I flatten the layer stack and save the image as a flat file.

Photoshop gives you access to the layers used to create the merge because it is layer-based. Lightroom, not being layer-based, does not. This is an advantage but only on paper. In reality there is little that can be done with these layers in order to improve the quality of the merged image or in order to remedy problematic merges such as disconnected lines, ghosting or other. Or, if there is a way to modify these layers to make a better collage, I have not found it.

B – The Photo merge process in LR CC 2015

In Lightroom, Photomerge is called Panorama and the command is found under the Photo menu (Photo>Photo Merge>Panorama). To create a panorama you go to the develop module where you select all the photographs you want to use for the collage. You do so in the film strip at the bottom of the screen. The photographs have to be located next to each other in the film strip so that they can be all selected at the same time. Depending on where the images are located you may need to move them in the film strip. To do so you simply select the photos and drag them next to the other photographs you want to use.

Once you have all the photos next to each other you need to select them all. When you select them a white or grey border appears around the images. This lets you know which images are selected. The images you want to use for the collage do not need to be in the correct order. Lightroom will find the proper order when the software completes the merging process.

At that time the next step is to go to the photo menu and select Photo Merge > Panorama. Lightroom will do its thing and when it is done it will present you with a preview of the merge. You will have three projection options to choose from: Spherical, Cylindrical and Perspective. Select the projection that gives you the image you like the best. You can also check ‘auto crop’ to let Lightroom crop the image for you or leave that box unchecked if you prefer to crop the image yourself or if you plan on filling the blank areas with content aware fill or with cloning in Photoshop.

Click ok and Lightroom will complete the merge according to the options you selected. When the merge is complete Lightroom will place the merged photograph, the panorama, in the film strip next to the last of the photographs you selected for the merge.

Locate this merged image in the film strip and click on it so you can view it and if necessary make further adjustments to the tonality, color or other. At this stage this merged image is not converted. When you are done making the adjustments you have the option of converting the merged file and save it as a tiff or a Photoshop file that you can continue editing in Photoshop. Alternatively, you can print this file directly from Lightroom or include it into a slideshow, a book, or a web page also from Lightroom.

The Merge results shown in the film strip in Lightroom

The Spherical Projection in Lightroom. The lens I used did not have a profile hence the mention about the lens profile being unavailable in the screenshot above and below.

The Perspective Projection in Lightroom (unavailable for this merge) — The Perspective Projection in Lightroom
(unavailable for this merge)

For this image I selected the Spherical projection with Auto Crop unchecked. Lightroom Auto Crop was cutting off areas of the sky and the lake that I wanted to preserve. Cutting them off meant that the top of the clouds was missing. The foreground salt patterns in the lake were also cut off. This arbitrary crop affected the integrity of the photograph. I am very careful not to cut off elements located along the borders of the image and it is rare that Auto Crop does as good of a job as I can do manually. This is because Auto Crop is a function that is designed to crop out white empty areas with no regards for artistic intent. When I crop a photograph I do the opposite which is crop with artistic intent then later fill out empty areas if necessary.

The Spherical Projection with Auto Crop selected and the clouds and foreground arbitrarily cut off

Using the spherical projection meant that the image had curved borders and that I needed to straighten those out. To do this I imported the image in Photoshop and used the Warp function to straighten the borders as much as possible.

The image as it came out of Lightroom with the Spherical projection

The image during the warping process. To do a warp do a Select All then Edit>Transform>Warp in Photoshop — The image during the warping process.
To do a warp do a Select All then Edit>Transform>Warp in Photoshop

Fortunately the curved areas were minimal and did not need much warping adjustments. This was following by selecting the remaining white areas and filling them with content aware fill wherever possible. I finished the job by cropping out the remaining white areas that couldn’t be straightened out or filled.

The image after warping, content aware fill and cropping have been completed but before color and contrast optimization and reformatting were done.

The image after reformatting was completed. To me this slightly taller format is more visually satisfying than the previous panoramic format.

I reformatted the image by increasing its height because I wanted a slightly less panoramic format.
In practice this means stretching the image vertically. This is done in the Image Format dialog box by unchecking the Keep Proportions option and typing a new dimension for the image height.

4 – A second example

In my first example, merging in Lightroom worked better than merging in Photoshop. However there are instances where the inverse is true. In this second example merging in Lightroom resulted in heavily distorted images (see the illustrations below). Furthermore, only the Spherical projection was available. The Cylindrical and Perspective projections were not available. Since I did not like the merge created by the Spherical projection, I had no other option than to do the merge in Photoshop.

Here are the four image captures I used for this merge and below are the merge results in Lightroom:

The Spherical Projection in Lightroom This was the only projection available — The Spherical Projection in Lightroom
This was the only projection available

The Cylindrical Projection was not available

The Perspective Projection was not available either. Being dissatisfied with the results provided by Lightroom I merged the same four files in Photoshop using the same settings I used for the merge shown in the first example. The result is below.

21-The-same-4-files-merged-in-PS

This is the image as it came out of Photoshop’s Photomerge with Content Aware Fill Transparent Areas selected. The merge was perfect right out of Photomerge. All I had left to do to create the final image was complete the color, contrast and reformatting adjustments.

5 – The respective advantages of Lightroom and Photoshop

As we just saw, sometimes the merge comes out better in Lightroom and sometimes it comes out better in Photoshop. For me the reason why I prefer to do the merge in Photoshop is because Photoshop gives me the option of doing a Reposition merge. As I said before I like Reposition only because it does not distort the image and it gives me straight borders. It does leave empty white areas but those can be filled in with the content aware auto fill option offered by Photoshop. Lightroom does not offer Reposition nor content aware auto fill. This means that in Lightroom either you have a merge with uneven borders that you have to fill out as best as you can or you need to crop the image to get straight borders. Neither option is optimal from me.

The advantage of doing a merge in Lightroom of course is that you are merging raw images instead of converted images. This means better image quality. You can also continue optimizing the merge in Lightroom after the collage is completed because Lightroom does not convert the image right away. You convert the image yourself after you have completed tonal adjustments and made the image look the way you want.

Another advantage of merging in Lightroom is that it provides an uninterrupted workflow when dealing with collages. When merging in Photoshop you have to convert the files, open and merge them in Photoshop, evaluate the results and finally decide if you like the collage or not. If you don’t like the results you have wasted a significant amount of time for nothing and you have interrupted your workflow.

When Merging in Lightroom you can see the results right away and decide on the spot if you like the merge or not. If you don’t like it you can move on to another collage without interrupting your workflow. In fact in Lightroom if you don’t like the look of a merged image you don’t actually have to merge it. You can simply click cancel and Lightroom will return you to the processing window without doing any merging. This is different from Photoshop where you must complete the merge in order to see what the collage looks like.

6 – Why I use the word collage

As you noticed I use the word collage instead of stitching or merge at times. I like to use the word collage, or collaging, instead of the word merge or merging, or even stitch or stitching, because collage is an artistic word while merge and stitch are technical words. I believe that using artistic words helps me focus my work in an artistic direction while using technical words tend to focus my work in a technical direction. This is not to say that technique is unimportant or that art is more important than technique. I just prefer to place technique at the service of art and not vice versa. In doing so I follow Ansel Adams who said ‘who needs a sharp rendering of a fuzzy concept’ (I paraphrase). This saying rings true both to me and to patrons who collect my work. In my experience, given the choice between a technically perfect image and one that exhibits slight technical flaws but has a strong artistic quality, it is the one that is artistically strong that gets chosen every time.

7 – Conclusion

In regards to image quality, my preference is for doing the merge in Lightroom because it is done from Raw files and the image quality is maximized. It also streamlines my workflow by making the merge a one step process.

However, if Lightroom cannot do the merge to my taste, or at all, then I turn to Photoshop and complete the merge there. The additional options offered by Photoshop pretty much mean that any collage can be completed, one way or another. Since I always complete my images in Photoshop, due to the fact that I use a layer-based workflow, working both in Lightroom and in Photoshop is not a problem.

In short, in regards to Photomerge, Lightroom provides higher quality but Photoshop offers important additional options. As it turns out these options are indispensable to the work that I do and this means that I cannot rely only on Lightroom for merging my images, at least not yet. I do hope that Reposition becomes available in a future version of Lightroom together with automatic content aware fill.

In regards to the image discussed in my first example, I liked the final result so much that I decided to make it the Print of the Season for 2015. The print of the season is an image that I release each December and which is offered in a limited edition of 15 to celebrate 2015. A different image was released in an edition of 14 in 2014. Different images will be released in an edition of 16 in 2016, 17 in 2017 and so on.

8 – About Alain Briot

You can find more information about my work, writings and tutorials as well as subscribe to my Free Monthly Newsletter on my website at http://www.beautiful-landscape.com. You receive 40 free eBooks when you subscribe to my newsletter.

11-ebooks

I create fine art photographs, teach workshops and offer DVD tutorials on composition, image conversion, optimization, printing and marketing. I am the author of Mastering Landscape Photography, Mastering Photographic Composition, Creativity and Personal Style, Marketing Fine Art Photography and How Photographs are Sold. All 4 books are available in eBook format on my website at this link: http://beautiful-landscape.com/Ebooks-Books-1-2-3.html. Free samplers are available so you can see the quality of these books for yourself.

Alain Briot
Vistancia, Arizona,
December 2015

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Alain Briot

See all articles by Alain Briot

Alain Briot creates fine art photographs, teaches workshops and offers DVD tutorials on composition, raw conversion, optimization, printing and marketing. Alain is the author of Mastering Landscape Photography, Mastering Photographic Composition and Marketing Fine Art Photography. All 3 books are available from Alain’s website as well as from most bookstores. You can find more information about Alain's work, writings and tutorials as well as subscribe to Alain’s Free Monthly Newsletter on his website. You will receive over 40 essays in PDF format, including chapters from Alain’s books, when you subscribe.