Automation
You can try to stitch all these images manually if you have an abundance of time and a masochistic tendency, but you probably have better things to do, so thankfully automating most of this process is pretty easy and several of them are free.
Software Options
Many image editors have the ability to stitch (Photoshop, Lightroom, Affinity, GIMP etc.). Although they’re not free, considering you’re likely to own one already it’s often a good place to start. If you've tried these options and find them slow, fiddly or lacking in features you're in luck because there are usually better options - here’s a list of some dedicated stitching apps:
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Microsoft ICE (Free / Discontinued)
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Hugin (Free)
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Autostitch (Free / Discontinued)
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Kolor AutoPano (Free / Discontinued)
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PTGui (€187)
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Panorama Plus X4 (Free / Discontinued))
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ArcSoft Panorama Maker (€40)
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PanoWeaver 10 ($150-400)
Platform Key
Windows Only
Win + Mac
Win + Mac + Linux
I don't have any experience with Apple or Linux, so I can't advise anything there. However, if you are using Adobe software on Windows to stitch panoramas and are finding it slow, you're not alone. It is mind-boggling how bad Adobe PS & LR are at this, plus they eat infinitely more RAM while having zero benefit compared to third-party software. If you're thinking "maybe the latest update might have fixed this", think again, it has been this way for nearly 20 years at this point!!!!
I could rant about Adobe all day, but anyway, if you haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend giving Microsoft ICE a try. It's free software that was disontinued a decade ago, but you should still be able to get hold of it (if not try here). If your stitching software is struggle with alignment issues, some software might do that part better, but it is very important to hone your panorma rotation skills anyway because that will always make your stitches better
Pre-Stitch Processing
You can put your batch of images straight from the camera into the Stitching program. Most software will do a pretty good job of eliminating the issues, but for best results you can help out by doing this process manually beforehand. You don’t have to shoot RAW for this, although it does help. These are some basic steps I apply when saving the batch of RAW files as JPG:
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Vignette removal
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Distortion correction
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Lateral Chromatic Aberration removal
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White Balance changes
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Highlights & Shadow Retrieval
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Curves Adjustment
Stitch Settings
This will depend greatly on which software you’re using. I have not used them all, but here are some common themes to look out for:
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Image Quality
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Rotation Type
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Automatic Lens Corrections
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Blending
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Projection
Post-Stitch Processing
After I crop the resulting stitch, I tend to take the image back in to Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) for a bit more processing. Your image is no longer a RAW (although you might be able to output a higher bit-depth, which will help), so it won’t open here by default. If your image is open in Photoshop CC this can be done by pressing ‘Ctrl+Shift+A’. I then usually apply the following changes:
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White Balance (fine tune)
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Post crop vignetting
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Curves (fine tune)
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Exposure Gradient
Hardware Requirements
You don’t need a powerful computer for this, but of course it won't hurt. It more depends on how long you’re prepared to wait. I’m not aware of any software that does this on a mobile device yet with any degree of control, so a proper PC (Windows, Mac or Linux) is a minimum requirement.
Photoshop has the ability to stitch RAW files so that might be a good option if you’re going for extreme quality, but bear in mind that even 6 megapixel images can produce a final result in the hundreds of megapixels, so you may not need it. My personal favourite currently is Microsoft ICE. Although it is free, it is PC only. I find it easy to use, fast to process, and it has the best projection options that I have seen, even emulating a perspective correction lens (shift lens).
Stitching single images of mostly blur often means they get left out with the software mentioned so far. Some software has the ability to align these through manually adding control points (Hugin). I find this tedious however, if you do as well then try AutoStitch. It’s very old & basic, has no projection options and only inputs/outputs jpgs, but it does a great job with very blurred images, and it blends between each image extremely well when they don’t quite align.
NOTE: A good deal of dedicated stitching software (Kolor Auto Pano, Serif Panorama Plus X4 & ArcSoft Panorama Maker) have been discontinued over the years, thus this section is much shorter than it once was.
Stitching Errors: Solutions
No matter how hard you try some stitches fail. There may be nothing you can do, but some times it’s fixable with some small tweaks. Here are some solutions that have saved my stitch from oblivion. It could be caused by a lack of overlap, a large amount of blank area in several photos (like over-exposed sky), motion blur, excessive camera movement (not pivoting around the lense’s nodal point), a failure to lock settings (perhaps your white balance or focus shifted). It could be any or many things.
If you’re convinced that there is no reason it’s not working there may still be hope. Of course you could stitch the images manually, but if that just sounds silly to you, here are some other options:
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Use different stitching software
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Remove potentiallly problematic images
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Try stitching smaller parts of the batch
Fixing Parallax Errors
Parallax errors are a break in the image alignment. Some of the details will not match up between frames, either because something in your scene moved, or more likely; you rotated / moved the camera incorrectly during the shoot (see right).
This will be easier for people with advanced knowledge of Photoshop. Even if this is the case it will likely be more time consuming than the rest of the process. If you don’t want to (or can’t) fix these kinds of issues in the post processing then do your best to avoid those errors early on (refer to ‘Camera Rotation’ ).
This issue usually isn’t easily noticeable in things like foliage. If you have some light wind affecting those elements in your scene you might be surprised at how little the errors show. Geometric detail alignment issues are the big issue here. Most of the time you will be able to fix a small issue by choosing a single image covering the affected area, pasting it over the top, aligning it and masking a small area over the stitch error. Bear in mind that aligning these areas will get more complicated the closer they are to the corners of the stitch when using certain projections methods (eg. Perspective).
