Photoshop Elements 11: The Missing Manual

Chapter 11. Photomerge: Creating Panoramas, Group Shots, and More

Everyone’s had the frustrating experience of trying to photograph an awesome view—like a city skyline or a mountain range—only to find that it’s too wide to fit into one picture. Elements, once again, comes to the rescue. With the Photomerge command, you can stitch together a group of photos you shot while panning across the horizon to create a panorama that’s much larger than any single photo your camera can take. Panoramas can become addictive once you’ve tried them, and they’re a great way to get those wide, wide shots that are beyond the capability of your camera lens.

Elements includes the same great Photomerge feature that’s part of Photoshop, which makes it incredibly easy to create super panoramas. Not only that, but Adobe also gives you a few fun twists on Photomerge that are unique to Elements: Faces, which lets you easily move features from one face to another; Group Shot, which lets you replace folks in group photos; and Scene Cleaner, for those times when your almost-perfect vacation shot is spoiled by strangers walking into the frame. You also get Style Match, which lets you copy the overall look of one photo into another. Like the Ansel Adams-ish look you came up with for one of your images? With Style Match, you can just tell Elements to copy that onto a different photo.

Note

Elements includes one more kind of merge: Photomerge Exposure, which lets you blend differently exposed versions of the same scene ...