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Author Topic: My First Pano, Reworked  (Read 2024 times)

Jonathan Wienke

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My First Pano, Reworked
« on: May 17, 2009, 03:38:32 pm »

This is my first attempt at shooting a stitched pano from several years ago, just after getting my 1Ds. A field of flowers near Clear Lake, California.

[attachment=13741:2003_05_...076_0091.jpg]

It is about half of the original stitched image; the most interesting 4:1 crop. At the time, I did a stitch in PS, but I was never really happy with it. Anyway I had a second go at the images with PTAssembler, and like the result better. C&C welcome...
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bill t.

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My First Pano, Reworked
« Reply #1 on: May 17, 2009, 06:35:16 pm »

Great pano!  You really caught the luminosity of the scene well, right down to the beautiful open shadows, and for those that don't know that's tough to do when you're shooting well over 100 degrees relative to the light.  I'd have been tempted to stamp the metal fence at the bottom, a nit-picking criticism if ever one was.

I've sold a few 4:1's lately to people with big empty wall spaces above cabinets, this after several years of finding it impossible to sell that wide a ratio.  After placing one, several other buyers (in the same building BTW) just had to have one!  That would look fabulous at a big size and do wonders for any space it's in.

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Jonathan Wienke

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My First Pano, Reworked
« Reply #2 on: May 17, 2009, 09:32:53 pm »

Thanks! I did most of the heavy adjustments in ACR, exported to TIFF, stitched, exported to a layered PSD file, and did the final blending by hand, airbrushing the layer masks. After stitching, I brightened it just a little with a Levels adjustment (tweaking only the setting of the middle (gamma) slider, sharpened, then did a slight hue adjustment on the yellow flowers--they had acquired a slight magenta cast somewhere. There's a trick to what I did with the shadows here. I did a local contrast enhancement using USM radius 250, amount 35, threshold 0, then faded that to 67% opacity. Adjusting a bit past the limits of good taste, and then fading by 33% keeps USM from clipping the highlights or shadows. Even if the USM adjustment itself makes the shadows or highlights block up, you get detail back when you do the fade opacity thing.

I have a couple 12x36" frames. Leaving a 2" border all around the image leaves 8x32" of image area, 4:1. But the original file I cropped this from is 29322x4108, so I could print this 24" high at just over 170PPI. I definitely wish I still had my 7600 right now...
« Last Edit: May 17, 2009, 09:33:49 pm by Jonathan Wienke »
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RSL

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My First Pano, Reworked
« Reply #3 on: May 17, 2009, 09:54:34 pm »

Jonathan, That's a lot of work, but well worth the effort, I'd say. It's a very fine pano.
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Jonathan Wienke

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My First Pano, Reworked
« Reply #4 on: May 17, 2009, 09:57:05 pm »

I have most of a day invested in it, but I agree. Thank you.
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JeffKohn

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My First Pano, Reworked
« Reply #5 on: May 17, 2009, 11:48:39 pm »

The biggest distraction is the chopped-off fence posts at the bottom of the frame. I wasn't there so can't know if it was possible, but I would have either walked up to the fence so I could shoot over it, or at least made sure the fence posts were complete. The composition also feels a bit imbalanced to me due to the distribution of the clouds.  Panos this wide rarely work me unless they have a really strong composition to tie everything together. I can see two potential crops that would make for better overall compositions IMHO; if you'd like to see them I can post them (don't want to go editing other people's work without permission).
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Jonathan Wienke

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My First Pano, Reworked
« Reply #6 on: May 20, 2009, 10:06:21 am »

I don't mind reposting as long as you refrain from claiming the image itself as your work. But you might want to wait for me to post the entire original file; what I posted is only about 50% of the original stitch.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2009, 10:07:21 am by Jonathan Wienke »
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