Using the Photo Merge > Panoramic option in Adobe Lightroom Classic helped me save an image I wanted to create.
With only about a half-hour to spend on the amazing US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, MN, I didn’t have much time to consider the usual “other” images to create other than my typical architectural detail shots.
I knew that I had to get the Viking ship though as it’s really part of the overall design and well, it is the home of the Minnesota Vikings.
Feeling rushed though I wasn’t really paying as much attention as if I had more time. I just grabbed a couple of wide shots that included the Viking head. When I got home and wanted to edit one of these images, they didn’t really work. When I tried to straighten them I ended up losing part of the stadium and it just didn’t look right.
Luckily for me, I had two images that were just slightly composed to include space to the right and left of the Viking ship bow.
How I created the 2-image panoramic
First I did my usual spot removal (ugh, I need to clean my camera). Then I selected both images and went to Photo > Photo Merge > Panorama.
Lightroom merged the two images I chose and creates the panoramic from them. I always click on the Spherical, Cylindrical and Perspective options to see what creates the best image. In this particular case, Perspective worked best.
Once I had the panoramic image, I double-checked spots, then took it into Adobe Photoshop to remove any little distractions like trash on the ground, bright yellow road signs and a few antennae on the roof.
I finalized any edits I wanted to make and voilà! My single images combined saved the wide view of the US Bank Stadium.
Had I intended on creating a pano of this, I would have taken 7-10 portrait-oriented images to combine. It would have been better than what I did, but I managed to get this to work for me.
