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Add This to My Lightroom Wish List
I'm finally getting up to speed with Photoshop CS3 and I'm really excited about the new Photomerge. The old one was ok, but the new one really rocks and does a great job of merging and blending multiple images shot in sequence. I just wish it integrated better with Lightroom.
Here is an example of what I’m talking about. It was a big weekend here in San Francisco and North Beach was hoping with Columbus Day celebrations. The Blue Angels were also in town and I took my two young daughters and climbed to the top of our roof to get a better view of the air show. I shot several vertically oriented three-frame sequences, starting with our roof, and ending with a shot of the Angels over the bay.
Importing the shots into Lightroom was, of course, no problem.
I really prefer Lightroom’s image editing environments over, say Adobe Bridge, and it was easy to pick the shots I wanted to stitch together. I selected the three shots, and then right/clicked on them to bring up the contextual menu. I choose Edit in Photoshop CS3, and in the resulting dialog box, selected what you see here.
The images opened in Photoshop and I selected File > Automate> Photomerge and choose Add Open File from the dialog box you see here. After hitting Ok, I waited as Photomerge did the job.
When Photomerge was finished stitching the three shots into one long vertical shot I cropped the edges, saved my work, and ended up with what you see below. Everything was fine up to this point. But now, because I saved the “new” panorama” in Photoshop, Lightroom had no record of it. I guess I could have just stopped there, and used Photoshop to print my work, but I really like the Lightroom Print module and I wanted to use it on the panorama. I had to go back to Lightroom and Import the panorama from my harddrive. Adobe says they are really serious about Photoshop/Lightroom integration. If that is true, then making things go smoother with Photomerge and Lightroom should be on the top of their list.
Comments (8)
I have the same issue when I further edit TIFFs and save as a new copy, LR doesn't keep track of them. For now I use the "synchronize folder" trick to import them (of course it implies you saved in a folder already referenced in your catalog).
If at least this could be handled better with the Photomerge and HDR tools, I'd be really glad.
Yup,
I found the same thing coming back from the round trip from Lightroom to Photomatix. LR doesn't pick up on the unique file name created by Photomatix. Another thought - it might be nice to have the possibility of switching to more than 2 external editors.
or better yet.. add photomerge to lightroom.
I've been thinking about this too, and my approach was to put the pano file into one of the PSDs that was generated by Lightroom. I will just discard the other photos of the panos. However, I don't have to re-import the Pano in LR.
But - adding the photomerge in LR would be the best! :)
Panos in LR also frequently run into the 10,000 pixel-a-side limit. Otherwise, I agree with most: A Lightroom stitching module is high on my LR wishlist.
Great point Daveed. I haven't run into the 10,000 pixel wall yet, but I can see it coming
And Mike, when you say, "put the pano file into one of the PSDs that was generated by Lightroom" what do you mean exactly? Cut and paste and save? or what?
I use the same technique as Mike. To answer Mikkel's question, say you choose to edit files A, B and C in PS. When your editing effort is complete, save the file as A (likely A-Edit.psd if you've left Lightroom settings alone) and discard the B-Edit.psd and C-Edit.psd files. The A-Edit.psd item in Lightroom will be updated with the PS changes.
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