My Canon EOS M3 does not have a panorama feature, consequently, I am using Photoshop’s Photomerge function (external link) to produce wide area shots. This is the first time I’ve gone through this process and I am pleased with the results.

Nevada’s Red Rock Canyon is only twenty minutes from my place so I went out to a viewing site and set up my tripod. The day was quite hazy from a strong wind blowing a tremendous amount of desert dirt into the sky. I knew I could partially correct today’s pale color in Photoshop so that’s what I did in the final panorama.

I took seven shots, moving the camera to the right a bit at each time. The advice I read was that each shot should overlap by 40% but I simply guessed and things turned out well. I’ve included just four of the original seven shots below. Click on the panorama image at the bottom to see the result.

Picture 01

Picture 02

Picture 03

Picture 04

The final panorama, much reduced to fit on the web. Click to view a larger image:

For those keeping score, here are the statistics on the final image which exists on my computer’s hard dive:

18,441 pixels wide or 61″ across
3,298 pixels high or 10.99 inches tall

300 dpi

174 meg file

Original pictures taken in RAW

One last note. I didn’t have enough sky in my original pictures. I needed more at the top. Make sure you have enough sky if you attempt something like this. You can always crop the blue away if you don’t need it. But I had to add more sky by using Photoshop’s “liquify” tool. It works for the web but the results would be too messy for print.