Considering that I’ve had handheld panoramas that failed to stitch in Lightroom or PS come together effortlessly in PTGui makes this software a must-have for me. PSB for Photoshop that preserves all the images on individual layers, with layer masks pre-applied, letting you easily clean up any issues on image margins in Photoshop.Īt $150 for a personal license, it’s not cheap software, but the performance and time saved versus Adobe’s stitching options are almost priceless.
It can take TIFFs from Lightroom, and spit out a. Lastly, it integrates perfectly with the Lightroom and Photoshop stack. The interface is clean, and thanks to being focused solely on panoramas, gives you instant access to a number of key panorama-related features.
I’ve covered many of these features in my full review, but some of the ones I’ve found most useful include the ability to manually set control points, a live preview, GPU acceleration, masking, and support for a wider variety of projections.
Beyond just being significantly faster, PTGui offers a host of features. PTGui, meanwhile, stitched the image in 43 seconds, including me changing the default projection.
Manual control over control points can make a huge difference when stitching complex images Photoshop took 210 seconds to stitch the 20 image pano, with the end result having both perspective issues and some stitching errors. My work with a relatively simple 20 image panorama proved yet again the need for a dedicated panorama stitching tool. There are times, however, where Photoshop just doesn’t cut it. In fact, that workflow is even well supported from Lightroom, letting you quickly move more-complex panorama sets from Lightroom (typically after a failed stitch there) over to Photoshop. Photoshop can create 200+ megapixel panoramas from a set of images, and it can do a pretty good job at it. If you’ve got a program like these that you rely on, let me know in the comments! Panoramas Furthermore, these aren’t the only great specialty programs out there - these are just the ones that I’ve worked extensively with and have found a place in my workflow. While I’ll be referencing Photoshop throughout this article, as it’s my tool of choice, a lot of these points will apply to alternate “jack of all trades” photo editing tools, like Affinity Photo. Want to see why you should consider snagging these programs that beat Photoshop at their own game? There are, however, a number of cases where I’ve just found a significantly better tool for the job, one that’s worth paying for. It’s an essential part of my workflow, and if you’re like most photographers, I’m sure it’s a part of yours. Just about every important image I publish or send to a client passes through Photoshop.