Combining Images in Photoshop

Photoshop is an amazing piece of software.

One of the really cool things it can do is merge images in several ways.

Two possibilities are:

1. Merge to a panorama, or
2. Merge into a composite.

The panorama is very useful when you have a scene that is just too wide (or tall) for the lens you may have available. So, you can shoot a series of images, overlapping them by about 20% or so and then through the magic of Photoshop, those images can be put together into a seamless panorama. That is the technique I used for the photo of the Grand Canyon, above.

The image of my son-in-law jumping off a cliff (yeah, I'm glad there was water below - Ha!), was created by shooting a fast series of shots as he jumped. Then, in Photoshop, I was able to layer the images together into the composite you see here. This photo was taken at Lake Powell in Utah which, by the way, is an incredible place to visit. You have to do it in a houseboat, but it is awesome!

I'm not as familiar with Photoshop Elements but I think it may have these same capabilities for much less money!