# how to fix uneditable edges in panoramas etc ?



## solsang (Oct 23, 2016)

Love making panoramas, and often tilt my photos, yet then appears an uneditable area, that makes it impossible to fix small missing edges with the heal or clone tool, or in other programs, there must be a way to make a photo "normal" after doing this (the locked area appears red or white)

I found i can open in pixelmator yet the locked area continues being when returning to lightroom, and if i use a jpg, it returns a file with white areas, so have to export from pixelmator and import into lightroom again, and the delete the "edited" file that has locked or white edges... (so the problem is in Lightroom)


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## Jimmsp (Oct 23, 2016)

I also shoot and process a lot of panos, but can't recall seeing what you are describing.
I use the warp and fill tool a lot in obtaining a pano.

Can you be a bit more specific on how you obtain this "uneditable" area.
# photos? raw or OOC jpegs?
Do you use the warp?
projection?
how to you tilt?

You say you have LR CC, which comes with Photoshop. What do you see if you take the pano into PS?

Can you post an example?


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## Johan Elzenga (Oct 23, 2016)

solsang said:


> Love making panoramas, and often tilt my photos, yet then appears an uneditable area, that makes it impossible to fix small missing edges with the heal or clone tool, or in other programs, there must be a way to make a photo "normal" after doing this (the locked area appears red or white)
> 
> I found i can open in pixelmator yet the locked area continues being when returning to lightroom, and if i use a jpg, it returns a file with white areas, so have to export from pixelmator and import into lightroom again, and the delete the "edited" file that has locked or white edges... (so the problem is in Lightroom)



That is where the new 'Boundary Warp' in Lightroom CC2015.7 comes in, but because you have the perpetual license you don't have that function. Lightroom can't clone outside the pixel areas, so if you can't simply crop these edges there is no choice but to go export the panorama to a pixel editor like Photoshop (or build the panorama in Photoshop) and let Photoshop use 'content-aware fill' to fill these edges. I'm not sure I understand the second part of your message for that reason. Why would Pixelmator not be able to do this?


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## clee01l (Oct 23, 2016)

Welcome to the forum.  This white areas do not have pixels that exist in the finished photo even though the frame of the photo is rectangular. In LR, you can fill in these areas by using the boundary Warp function in the Photomerge dialog.  Another option is to Edit In PhotoshopCC and use the content aware fill to fill in the area with similar pixels found along the edges of the merged photo.


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## solsang (Oct 23, 2016)

Thanks for the welcome and replies, sadly i have neither Warp option nor Photoshop, since i have the Lightroom standalone, which i bought after several years of consideration (my house has very limited internet, so i need to be independent of being online)

Guess i have to wait for lightroom 7 then, i had hoped for a hidden setting or control for removing the locked pixels - opening a photo from Lightroom into Pixelmator gives the possibility to fill the empty areas, yet when i close and return to Lightroom those areas are again cleared! Luckily i can export another copy from Pixelamtor and then import this into Lightroom as a workaround, yet i found it really strange that the official edited copy keeps the locked areas, and hoped i had made a mistake.

I should i have mentioned using the standalone it in the question too, since i see it can be misunderstood; i made sure that my info does says i have the Perpetual License, yet Lightroom Version is called "6.7 / CC 2015/7" as i cannot find a way to select 6.7 only, sorry for the misunderstanding!


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## clee01l (Oct 24, 2016)

Doubly sorry, as I read your profile and saw the license as CC Subscription.  My mistake I guess. 
You only get the features that you paid for when LR6.0 was released.  
You can still get a subscription and not take advantage of the LR Mobile functionality.  You only need limited internet with a subscription to validate your license once a month.  You will then get access to all of the LR6 added functionality AND Photoshop. (I think this is still a great deal even without LR Mobile).


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## Lanny Ziering (Jan 17, 2017)

solsang said:


> Love making panoramas, and often tilt my photos, yet then appears an uneditable area, that makes it impossible to fix small missing edges with the heal or clone tool, or in other programs, there must be a way to make a photo "normal" after doing this (the locked area appears red or white)
> 
> I found i can open in pixelmator yet the locked area continues being when returning to lightroom, and if i use a jpg, it returns a file with white areas, so have to export from pixelmator and import into lightroom again, and the delete the "edited" file that has locked or white edges... (so the problem is in Lightroom)



Not sure there is a solution in LR but if you get Photoshop it is pretty easy to use "Content Aware Fill" to solve the problem. The attached shot is a panorama made up from about 12 images  using Photo Merge in LR and then the rough edges fixed in Photoshop using Content Aware Fill.


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## Tony Jay (Jan 17, 2017)

Hi solsang, welcome to Lightroom Forums!

Stitching panoramas inevitably leads to edges that are not straight.
Dealing with this issue is much more an issue of dealing with the problem in-camera than struggling in post-processing.

Panoramas take a lot of planning - especially if more than two shots are required.
Handholding when shooting for a panorama is not recommended.
The best solution is to use a tripod head designed for the purpose - this gets the head properly levelled, it prevents any errors of parallax, and overlaps are precise.
However, in post-processing, the projections that are used to maintain the correct visual perspective will never give a straight line to the edges of the stitch. This needs to be taken into account with lens selection and focal length to allow for some redundancy around the edges of the stitch to make cropping an easy process without the issues that you raise.

Your reference to "tilt my photo " is a bit enigmatic and I am not certain whether you are referring to the use of tilt-shift lenses or the application of the tools in the transform sub-panel.
If it does refer to the transform sub-panel then redundancy in your framing in-camera, as mentioned above, is the way to go. Looser framing also allows one to get the lens properly horizontal thus obviating the need to use the transform panel in the first place.

I can attest to the effectiveness of planning one's panoramas - I have only once had to resort to using Photoshop to do a context-aware fill of a sky in a panorama. The editing capabilities of the various software tools are indeed fantastic but it is better to solve problems in-camera whenever possible.

It is possible that you are an accomplished panoramic photographer that puts my experience in the shade in which case I am preaching to the choir!

Tony Jay


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 17, 2017)

Guys, this thread is almost three months old! I'm sure the OP has found a solution by now...


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## Conrad Chavez (Jan 17, 2017)

solsang said:


> opening a photo from Lightroom into Pixelmator gives the possibility to fill the empty areas, yet when i close and return to Lightroom those areas are again cleared!


You definitely don't need Photoshop, since you can clean up the corners using the Repair tool in Pixelmator which works like the content-aware heal feature in Photoshop.

When you return to Lightroom, can you verify which version are you looking at? Because if you merged a panorama using Lightroom, it is in DNG format. When you send it to Pixelmator and repair the corners, it can no longer be saved in DNG format, therefore the original DNG in Lightroom will be unchanged. What format do you use to save the retouched panorama from Pixelmator, and is that file automatically added back to Lightroom as a second instance in that different format?

For example, if you saved the retouched panorama from Pixelmator as a TIFF image, then the version that will have the corrected corners in Lightroom will be the TIFF version, not the original DNG version. So the question is whether that new retouched version got added to Lightroom. Do you see two versions in Lightroom, or just the original DNG version? If you only see the DNG, where the corners aren't filled, then you should make sure the retouched version was imported into Lightroom.


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## Tony Jay (Jan 17, 2017)

JohanElzenga said:


> Guys, this thread is almost three months old! I'm sure the OP has found a solution by now...


Missed that!


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## Lanny Ziering (Jan 17, 2017)

I agree with everything Tony Jay said.   As others may come to this thread I will put in a few more cents worth in addition to what Tony said.  Set the camera to manual and get a meter readings of the entire scene.  Decide what is the best compromise setting based on what you most need to preserve (i.e., highlight in the sky, the shadows, etc) and set the camera to that.  Do not use auto exposure of any kind.  If it is a horizontal panorama, as most are, tilt the camera into portrait mode (vertical).  This may seem counter intuitive but it will give the best results most of the time.  Frame a bit loosely as you will have a lot of pixels when you stitch it all together and this will give you the least problems with rough edges needing to be filled or cloned.  Have a lot of overlap of the frames as you turn as this too will help with the quality  of the result when they are stitched.  Use a tripod if you can. If not, try to rotate around the axis of the sensor as you move the camera. I like to take an extra exposure at each end beyond what I'm trying to capture just for protection.  You will get the least distortion this way and can trim away what you don't want after it  is stitched.  I often use content aware, because most of my panos are spontaneous with no tripod available and it is very hard to rotate around the cameras axis.   The pano I attached in my early post was shot by hand hanging out the window of my apartment.  The distortion was part of the effect I wanted because it was a Hollywood premiere (Rogue One) and I wanted it to look a little crazy.   Probably not what I'd want if I were shooting the  Grand Canyon or Vatican Square.


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## solsang (Jan 18, 2017)

Hi, thanks for the replies,

I found the answer: *Pixelmator default saves a .TIFF, while Lightroom gives an edit copy the name .TIF*, thus when returning from Pixelmator after saving a copy as tiff, only the old edit copy shows up, which made me think it had added the white edges again, since i didnt notice the edit copy before returning, while in reality that is the untouched copy and the correct one is next to it in Finder, with the .tiff name...

*Thus returning from editing tiff in pixelmator you need to click the filename and delete one f*, which will make it overwrite the edit copy that Lightroom made, and automatically appearing correctly with the edits in Lightroom, as with other external editors!

The process i use for fixing the edges is selecting the stiched panorama in Lightroom and rightclick "Edit in... Pixelmator" and "Edit a copy.." with uncompressed tiff, then i can easily magic select the transparent areas (using shift to select mulitple) and click band aid icon to be able to select "Repair selection" from the small wheel ot the left. Closing Pixelmator it will ask to save, there tick the save a copy box, and then click the filename to be .TIF instead of .TIFF, save and click yes to replace file, and it will appear correctly in Lightroom!

I often find myself without tripod wanting to make a good panorama, and try to rotate the hand or keep the camera close to the body to preserve correct alignment, and as much manual as possible (raw with exposure set in the middle of light and dark areas) - ae/af lock works well for this, and sometimes have turned the camera sidewards too.
Lightroom seems to be good at correcting exposure differences

Three months is nothing compared to the development speed of lightroom features,
In a future Lightroom I am hoping for...

*Being able to see previews without waiting
*Being able to open a raw file in an external editor
*Being able to see star ratings while in fullscreen mode
*Being able to edit jpg files from raw+jpg (as in Aperture)
*Being able to work while HDR or Panoramas are being prepared
*Being able to view a sidewards rotated video (like Picasa has for 10 years)


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## Tony Jay (Jan 18, 2017)

Thats a fair list you have there!

Previews: I assume you are referring to viewing previews at import. There is an obligatory lag as Lightroom creates those previews. The preview that comes with the image from the camera is tiny. If you have a lag once import is complete then one needs to create larger previews. If one wants to view a preview at full size and it doesn't exist then Lightroom has to create it first before you can view it.

Raw files to external editors: With Photoshop a raw file is passed. In general pixel editor has to open a file that it can recognise. Unless a pixel editor has an adjunct app (ACR for Photoshop) that can recognise and open a raw file it will need a known file type - hence TIFF, JPEG, DNG as options.

Star ratings in fullscreen mode: Easily implementable per se, but this appears to be a design decision made by Adobe not to clutter fullscreen mode with data overlays - use Loupe mode instead for that kind of data.

Raw + JPEG: As far as I am aware it is possible to treat JPEG's as seperate from raw files. Admittedly the "as in Aperture" phrase is a mystery to me since I never used Aperture and so cannot directly comment because I don't know exactly what Aperture did.

HDR or Panorama preparation: This is an resource-intense process. Maybe Adobe could re-invent the process to allow other processes to work in parallel but I would not hold my breath on this one. Perhaps in the future when processor power is substantially increased.

Viewing sideways-rotated video: I cannot see Adobe jumping for this one.

Tony Jay


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## solsang (Jan 19, 2017)

Tony Jay said:


> Thats a fair list you have there!


_Thanks, that was just the tip of the iceberg that i remembered while writing the other text about the TIFF/TIF confusion _

Previews: I assume you are referring to viewing previews at import. There is an obligatory lag as Lightroom creates those previews. The preview that comes with the image from the camera is tiny. If you have a lag once import is complete then one needs to create larger previews. If one wants to view a preview at full size and it doesn't exist then Lightroom has to create it first before you can view it.
_
I refer to the speed of going through any kind of previews; normal, full, embedded, smart - they all are sluggish when i go fast through them to add stars or look for certain photos, unlike for example Google Picasa which shows them perfectly fast, as does the tiny ultrafast Phoenix Slides for mac (a mere 1.3mb program) _

Raw files to external editors: With Photoshop a raw file is passed. In general pixel editor has to open a file that it can recognise. Unless a pixel editor has an adjunct app (ACR for Photoshop) that can recognise and open a raw file it will need a known file type - hence TIFF, JPEG, DNG as options.
_
Most new editors handle raw; Pixelmator, Luminar, Acorn, PortraitProfessional etc - they could simply be passed the raw just like photoshop can be given it, and it makes much more sense to edit raw instead of creating heavy tiff files - the most strange thing is that i cannot even edit with a dng in an external editor!! At least for raw the problem could be that lightroom won't be able to use an external raw sidecar_

Star ratings in fullscreen mode: Easily implementable per se, but this appears to be a design decision made by Adobe not to clutter fullscreen mode with data overlays - use Loupe mode instead for that kind of data.

_Lightroom still discreetly shows stars/colours if i press a number key, so having the I button hide/show it permanently would be perfect and simple, just as in Phoenix Slides, which is blazing fast at showing full screen photos with full exif, discrete name or no overlay, it is a pain to evaluate photos when distracted, i always want full screen for this, and showing the current stars/colours would allow incrementing or decreasing the rating, which is a basic workflow, and to use Loupe mode I would have to toggle all panels and Lights to hide the menu bar, and then the status stars/colours are hidden too - Lightroom has a slideshow option to create the clutterless view anyway..._

Raw + JPEG: As far as I am aware it is possible to treat JPEG's as seperate from raw files. Admittedly the "as in Aperture" phrase is a mystery to me since I never used Aperture and so cannot directly comment because I don't know exactly what Aperture did.
_
Only on import you can select to have them separate, though then they are now even shown as stacks, and autostacking is missing any intelligent options like this (also missing panorama or exposure autostacking). Aperture simply shows the raw+jpg pairs as stacks, where you can toggle the jpg to be on top so editing is done on that, easy and simple, and since the jpg is there and stacking a part of the Lightroom system it should be totally simple to do this, since when i edit in an external editor i anyway created a tiff or jpg, why cannot it allow editing the current jpg which sits there? I have many jpgs created with filters while taking raw+jpg, thus i want to be able to use both_

HDR or Panorama preparation: This is an resource-intense process. Maybe Adobe could re-invent the process to allow other processes to work in parallel but I would not hold my breath on this one. Perhaps in the future when processor power is substantially increased.

_When importing, creating previews and exporting there is a simple meter showing progress, nothing hinders the same method to be used for HDR, having the entire interface blocked is really counter-productive, especially since there is no batch mode (which would require autostacking of exposure, just like in AuroraHDR)_

Viewing sideways-rotated video: I cannot see Adobe jumping for this one.
_
True, as every single digital camera and every single other program does this, it must be considered extremely dangerous by Adobe to add those few lines of code to play items 90 degrees rotated, especially since they already have the rotate arrows on each photo, there must be code to specifically NOT have the arrows on video, instead of allow showing the video rotated (i resort to Google Picasa again, being much faster for navigation and search too)

Also i would like lightroom to add starring/colour/tags to both raw and jpg at the same time, since it has them stacked anyway
And make a proper implementation of Face recognition, learning from Picasa, which is way more presize and fast to add names, thus it
would be truly useful to have nametags read by lightroom for the face recognition, so all names given in Picasa could be used directly
_


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## Tony Jay (Jan 19, 2017)

Thats a full reply!

The preview issue is a bit vexing to be sure.
Possibly a solution would be for Adobe to adopt a single size preview - this may help - but I can foresee some difficulties in implementing this.
Other than that there is no doubt that hardware configuration also plays a role in how rapidly or sluggishly previews load.

With respect to the various pixel editors mentioned it is still possible for one to use them - it is just that Lightroom will not send a raw image to them right now. But you can send a virgin raw image yourself and import the result at the end into Lightroom. There are still definitely ways around this.

With respect to HDR and panorama processing it is interesting that Photoshop also fully devotes itself to the the process (unless things have changed since PS 6). I have no idea if Adobe are looking at this issue with respect to Lightroom.

The video capabilities of Lightroom have been kept intentionally rudimentary. I think it is clear that Adobe feels that they have perfectly good applications for viewing and assessing and subsequently editing video already in their ecosystem. Ergo, a decision made at a business level not at a software engineering level.

Your last paragraph is full of useful suggestions. I don't use face recognition myself but I do definitely see its utility. Stacks in Lightroom probably do need some work still.


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