panorama workflow using PS, LR and Camera Raw

Question

I have a question about the workflow for creating and editing panoramas – specifically whether Lightroom or Photoshop is a better place to create and perfect them. I wonder if the following is a good workflow but would appreciate hearing back if others disagree:

create panorama in Lightroom so you can do color correction etc. in the resultant Raw file as opposed to Photoshop which doesn’t give you a Raw file to work with for the assembled image;
Do color correction etc. in Camera Raw as opposed to Lightroom for better control (specifically, I like seeing where shadows and highlights are clipped in Camera Raw by clicking on the upper triangles in the histogram – can’t do that in LR);
After editing in Camera Raw, open into Photoshop for any other repairs as needed.

However, I also wonder if Photohsop does a better job creating panoramas than Lightroom, so maybe it is the best place to create panoramas, especially if you have a project that involves them exclusively and you have a lot of them. Thank you.

Conrad_C · Accepted Answer

The more you look at this question, the more you'll realize there isn't one clear-cut answer. Sometimes Lightroom/Adobe Camera Raw is a better solution, sometimes Photomerge in Photoshop is better.

This article compares Lightroom/ACR and Photoshop panorama workflows (disclaimer: I'm the author):

Creating a Panorama: Photoshop, Camera Raw, or Lightroom? Multiple solutions give you more options

Despite the advantage that Lightroom and ACR have in merging to DNG, there are some image sets that just don't work right in Lightroom/ACR, but Photoshop handles them no problem. In that case, it's good that they use different stitching methods, so that one might work when the other one fails.

I do as much of the panorama color correction as possible as DNG in Lightroom, because practically all the controls are the same as Camera Raw, right down to those highlight and shadow clipping indicators.

There are also situations where you'll take a DNG panorama into Photoshop just to use the Adaptive Wide Angle filter, which is able to remove some types of panorama distortion more effectively than anything available in Lightroom/Camera Raw.

davescm · Answer

Try bothLightroom does a great job of stitching and gives you the result in a DNG file. It also enables you to choose and preview the projection and warp the boundary with the boundary warp sliderbartonlew wrote, I like seeing where shadows and highlights are clipped in Camera Raw by clicking on the upper triangles in the histogram – can’t do that in LR);Of course you can do that in Lightroom, either with the arrows or by holding Alt whilst moving the Whites/Blacks sliders :Dave

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