Building a Panorama from 26 Frames | Creative High Speed Burst Photography
📸 This is a slightly different kind of Processing The World video.
Instead of working on a single image, this project is about building a panoramic sequence from 26 individual frames, all captured as a high-speed burst of a swallow diving into water.
🐦 I originally shared this Swallow image in a World In Focus video last year — the sister channel I run with my good friend Mark, where we focus more on camera gear and broader photography topics. After that video went live, a lot of people asked the same question:
👉 “How did you make that panorama????”
In this video, I walk through the entire process — from opening a burst of RAW files in Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw, through masking and cropping, all the way to assembling and blending the sequence in Photoshop.
This image is very much a just-for-fun project. The birds are heavily cropped (even from a 45MP file), there’s a bit of grain, and I still don’t really know where I’d hang it — but it’s a great example of how a high-speed burst doesn’t always have to end with choosing a single “best” frame.
Sometimes, the fun is in seeing what else you can build from it.
🔗 Related videos & channels
📺 World In Focus (gear & photography channel with Mark):
/ @worldinfocus_mm
🎥 Referenced video:
Canon R5 and R6 vs Canon R5 Mk II and R6 Mk II – Is it worth upgrading?
• Canon R5 and R6 vs Canon R5 Mk II and R6 M...
⏱ Chapters
00:07 – Introduction: a panorama from 26 frames
00:28 – World In Focus context & why this image exists
00:57 – Why this is a “just for fun” project
01:21 – Heavy crops, grain & setting expectations
01:40 – Opening the burst in Adobe Bridge & Camera Raw
02:03 – Global exposure and shadow recovery
02:49 – Noise inspection & sharpening setup
03:32 – Subject masking across all frames
03:52 – Duplicating & inverting masks for background
04:30 – Refining subject masks
04:58 – Blowing out the background
06:15 – Removing colour from background & water
07:12 – Cleaning masks manually
07:52 – Enhancing the bird (colour, contrast, clarity)
08:39 – Cropping for consistent panorama scale
11:57 – Loading files into Photoshop as layers
12:42 – Creating the panoramic canvas
13:31 – Positioning layers on the canvas
14:15 – Using Blend If to remove white backgrounds
17:18 – Copying Blend If across all layers
18:03 – Positioning the sequence
18:56 – Aligning birds vertically
20:51 – Layer masking between frames
22:19 – Creating a composite layer
22:58 – Colour consistency across the water
24:49 – Sharpening with Topaz
25:53 – Final panorama reveal
26:26 – Creative takeaway & viewer question
27:03 – Alternate colour version & World In Focus link
27:24 – Outro, CTAs & thanks
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Let me know in the comments if you’ve ever tried building an image like this yourself..?