Photomerge panorama in Photoshop Elements 2020 doesn't seem to be working

Report · Jun 06, 2023

I have 4 photos that I am trying to merge. I select Photomerge Panorama from the Guided Edits menu and select Auto Panorama. Regardless of which other settings I select, I get the same result. After I click 'Create Panorama' and 'Select All' (files), it chunters away. I can see entries in the View History window such as 'Open', 'Make Layer' etc. but then it simply returns me to the Guided Edit menu with no merged image nor any message to say what was wrong.

It cannot (presumably) be the file sizes, as it does the same with smaller images that I created.

Any suggestions? Is there an error log anywhere?

Report · Jun 06, 2023

You need to ask program questions in the forum for the program you are using
To ask in the forum for your program please start at https://community.adobe.com/
Moving from Using the Community (which is about the forums) to the correct forum

Report · Jun 06, 2023

Has it ever worked for you? If so, try resetting the preferences file. Go to the Edit>Preferences>General tab and click the Reset Preferences on next launch button.

Report · Jun 06, 2023

I do not recall ever having tried it before, so cannot be certain.

I know that one is supposed to put put the camera on manual and use a tried, but I only had time to rattle off four shots before moving on. I suspect that PE was struggling to align the images. However, I would have expeced some sort of error message to come up if that were the case.
On further investigation, I managed to merge the first two and the last two together. Problems recoccurred when I tried to merge those two composites together. Amongst the many options I tried, I did see a dialog box with an error message on one occasion.

I shall try again in the near future to see if I can get it to work with better images.

Report · Jun 06, 2023

If you want to attach the images here, we can try to see what the problem may be. There has to be some overlap in the images for it to work properly. Adobe recommends a 15-40% overlap. See this HelpX article.

Report · Jun 16, 2023

Thank you to all for the replies. Today I went out and took a number of shots to try the photomerge exerise again. I had mixed success.

The first four images were successfully merged. "Great", I thought, "I've cracked it!" However, the moment I changed any of the default settings such as 'Vignette Removal', 'Geometric Distortion Correction', or 'Content Aware Fill Transparent Areas', it was back to the old problem of simply returning to the Guided Edits screen.

I did manage to successfully merge six images in portrait mode at one point. However, other selections of images had mixed results. Sometimes even two images would fail to merge. I am very disappointed that no error message comes up to say why it had failed. There are no entries in the Windows Event Viewer either. Is there really no error log to look at?