Panoramas are underrated if you ask me, and I think part of the reason is because many photographers have a hard time creating them. Well, they used to have a hard time, anyway. Camera Raw 9, the latest version, now allows you to create panoramas without the need for other software.
Many photographers go to the trouble of post-processing every photo separately, without realizing that not all those changes will be imported. If you wanted to stitch all of the photos together and edit the final file, you would lose the great flexibility provided by the RAW format.
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All those troubles are now history, as Camera Raw 9 lets you merge the files into a single RAW file with multiple options for adjusting perspective and cropping. It's a simple, yet highly effective method and most importantly, it's non destructive.
Obviously, the photos you choose to stitch together are also very important, so be sure that when you are shooting, you pay careful attention to how you shift your camera for the next frame.
If you're going to use a short focal length, like 24 mm or less, it's best to use the spherical projection mode. This also applies to 360 panoramas because it will align the photos as if they're mapped to the inside of a sphere.
The auto crop function will allow Camera Raw to crop any unnecessary white areas, but keep in mind that you can also do the cropping yourself.
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Here is a great video tutorial with Adobe Evangelist Julieanne Kost demonstrating this interesting new tool that comes with Camera Raw 9.