Apparently,  if you have both Adobe Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS installed, merging pictures to a panorama becomes as simple as clicking 3 times!

I’ve always just handheld my camera to quickly snap a panorama.  I do lock the exposure so that it is consistent across all parts of the panorama, but other than that it’s pretty much tucking in your elbows and spinning around.

And you can get pretty nifty results like this one:

Click and look at the largest size to see that even the freaky shrieking fast-flying birds haven’t chopped up!

For a detailed explanation, check this video here.
But really it is as simple as:

1. Select all pictures you want in the panorama in Lightroom
2. Right-click and choose “Edit in Photoshop CS 3″ -> “Merge to panorama”
3. Do your thing in Photoshop (when in doubt choose Auto merge, you can still change later)
4. When finished go to File -> Save (this will save as a .psd and add to your Lightroom catalog automatically)
5. Quit Photoshop (if like me you’re only running 2 gigs of ram which can test your patience photoshopping 30 high-res pics, and wanting to listen to iTunes and chat to your friends at the same time)
6. In Lightroom 2, open your newly baked panorama and develop to your taste

The integration only works with Adobe CS3 10.0.1 or higher.
Don’t forget you can download a trial version from the Adobe website!