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What do you mean by creating a Panorama in Elements 9? The earliest version I have on my machine is Elements 10.
Elements 2022 can create a side-by-side collage of two images just as you have described. If you want to create a collage of two 6x4 images, you could create a new file measuring 12x4 and drag, drop and position the two photos from the photo bin to the new file. If you really want to create a true Panorama, you will find tools in the Guided Edit>Photomerge panel:
As with most things Photoshop, there are multiple other ways to accomplish what you want.
As I said, I don't have Elements 9 on my machine any more, so I am trying to understand why you think it was easier in creating a collage in that version.
You may want to look at the Collage Creator in Elements 2022. It can create a collage with various templates and with a maximum of 8 images. You can select your desired photos in the Organizer and then go to Create>Photo Collage. The program will automatically create something like the following. Once the collage has been created, you can edit it further in the Collage Creator (by moving around and resizing the photos or changing the background), or in the Expert mode of the Editor where you can change everything.
Greg,
I do appreciate your inputs and certainly your time. Perhaps it was familiarity but it was pretty simple. After scannning and sizing, you pressed something like New>Create Panorama>Reposition>Browse, selected as many files as you desired and they all showed up in the window. Then you just moved them around to your liking before saving. End result like this, but it could be 20 or more if you wanted. If something wasn't to you liking you could rearrange it in a few seconds. You didn't need the Organizer, just the main editing window
Thans for your comment. One major problem is that the online manual is not for Elements 2022. For example, to create a panorama, the manual says to use File>New>Create Panorama.
By @linguine333
What do you mean by 'the online manual'?
What you are quoting seems to come from an old pdf manual, not the online manual available with recent versions of PSE.
Since Adobe does no longer update the pdf manuals (which is a pity) I have looked at the latest one I have downloaded, the 2019 version. Here is what I find about panoramas:
The online 2022 manual you find in the Help menu correctly points to the guided edit photomerge panorama.
One other issue is that there has been at least three ways to start a photomerge panorama in the past. The only way which has never changed is to start a panorama from the organizer, which I find logical since it's a project combining several images. Menu Edit > Photomerge > Photomerge panorama.
@99jon, in my quick experiments with the GE, it seemed to me that the GE was trying to line up the images as if they were a true panorama and not a collage. I used the Playbill images from the OPs screenshot and the program seemed to recognize that they had similar borders and tried to line up one of the single images with borders from the other 2 images. It (mistakenly?) cut out the centers of the Playbills perhaps because it was only trying to line up the edges. Hence, what remained was the transparent pixels from those other images that I think you are describing. I didn't try every configuration of the GE so I may be entirely wrong about that.
So, in the following screenshots, you will see that I have attempted a Panorama GE collage of 3 very different images. The GE threw up a message that some images could not be automatically alligned. The net result was that the basketball image became the base with the lizard placed in the middle, and the third baseball stadium image was almost entirely cropped out and hidden as the background layer. It was possible to resposition each of the layers in Expert Mode.
I think the bottom line is that the panorama GE is not intended for true collages, but allows for panoramic collages of the same scene with different images lined up to form contiguous pixels where possible, but not necessarily in a rectangular result.
The panorama guided edits are designed to "stitch images" together, which generally have a 25% overlap on the left and right edges.
My camera can do panoramas- but I'm a bit "old school"-- I take a photo, move the camera (but visually overlap about 25%, and I've never had any issues.
I now cannot even get the procedure suggested by Greg S. to work. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I will tell you that I am angry that software engineers would take a procedure so simple and turn it into a total disaster.
There is no need for a ongoing forum about this. I feel total frustration. All I need this program for is to adjust an image with regard to brightness, saturation, etc. and to make panoramas and I am unable to do even this. If there is a way, I'm sure it's probably a half-hour job instead of 2 minutes.
By @linguine333
The big issue in your post is the title of your post. You are fooling everybody into thinking you have a panorama stitching issue, while you have another totally uncommon requirement to stitch files together, which is more akin to a 'collage' issue. That's what Greg and Gwenn are trying to make clear. You have chosen in the past to use the 'panorama' options which did provide a solution for your own specific need.
So, to get a satisfying answer from Adobe or other volunteers (who have regularly updated their PSE version to adapt to the rapidly changing computer world) the first thing would be to start a discussion with your specific need and only stating the word 'panorama' as the tool you have chosen as a workaround. Think about the time and energy some have spent on discussing specifically on the changes of the 'panorama' photomerge tool.
The tool you were used to in your very old version has disappeared. There has been both technology and marketing big changes since that time. Old features on 32 bits computers had to be brought to 64 bits, IF that was worth the trouble. The purpose of Elements as the Adobe 'consumer' product has changed to promoting new 'automatic' and AI solutions for 'non-pro' users. So, you'll find a number of discussions relating to the three different ways Adobe made to starting the Photomerge panorama in the editor. That won't help you at all.
Simply put: a more useful discussion should start with your own specific need of stitching, the description of the old solution and asking for the implementation of a new technical solution.
Either Adobe finds that it's a feature that is worth the programming effort and that is in the line of the changing marketing purpose of this 'consumer' product,
or other volunteers can provide other 'workarounds', probably more based on 'collage' techniques than 'panorama' ones.
By the way, I am not so much interested in panoramas carefully set up on a tripod in the old way. I am just extremely happy to be able to use my fixed 35mm equiv. fixed lens Fuji 100S to take two or three overlapping handheld landscape shots if I miss a wide angle. And that works ideally for me. For other 'collages' needs, even if the 'guided' modes are smart enough, I consider the pleasure is in the manual editing, which is the basic tool in Elements, and not so difficult.
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