How a panorama is made

Panorama mode captures many individual frames while you pan and stitches them seamlessly into one wide image. That stitching is the source of every panorama flaw: it only works if the frames overlap cleanly and nothing moving gets in the way. Understand the mechanism and you avoid the classic waves and ghosts.

The three rules for a clean pan

  1. Slow and steady. Too fast or jerky and the software can't join the frames — you get breaks. The on-screen arrow sets the pace; follow it.
  2. Stay at one height. The phone should rotate around its own axis (like a lighthouse), not drift sideways. Wobble the height and the horizon and rooflines turn wavy.
  3. Pick a calm scene. Moving objects up close (cars, people, branches in the wind) are the main cause of ghosting and cuts.

The ghost trap: people in the panorama

A special effect that often causes amusement: if a person moves in the same direction as your pan, they can appear twice or halved in the panorama — sometimes with two heads, sometimes with no legs. The reason: they're captured in several frames at different positions. Avoid it by asking people to stand still, or planning the pan so moving people stay outside it.

When waves appear anyway

  • Avoid straight lines: a panorama with many straight edges (a row of buildings) shows waves more clearly than a soft natural landscape. Pan especially carefully with architecture.
  • Pan a shorter arc: a less extreme panorama (a half turn instead of a full one) has fewer error sources.
  • Try again: a panorama takes seconds — two or three attempts almost always yield a clean one.

Panoramas are huge — what to do with them

A panorama can easily be 15,000 pixels wide and several megabytes. For on-screen viewing that's overkill. Sensible follow-up:

  • Resize to share: bring it to a manageable width with the resize tool — otherwise the huge file bogs down every chat and upload.
  • For a photo book: panoramas are ideal double-page material, where full resolution stays valuable.
  • Crop: often only part of the panorama is compelling; a tighter crop can beat the full width.

In short

  • Pan slowly, at one height, around your axis.
  • Keep moving objects out to avoid ghosts.
  • Retry — it costs seconds.
  • Resize the result before sharing; keep the original for prints.