Atlantic sunrise panorama

[PeterAit]

One of my favorite panos, taken just before sunrise on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This was a bear to process, with the low contrast and details PTGui just couldn't stitch it properly, even with a lot of manual help. I turned to the often-maligned Photoshop stitcher and it worked beautifully, requiring only minor manual adjustments to the final image. Nikon D-600 with Sigma 24-105mm f/4, 12 handheld frames, final image 32,500 x 5700 pixels.

[BernardLanguillier]

Nice image, thanks for sharing.

This would work nicely as a huge canvas print.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

One of my favorite panos, taken just before sunrise on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This was a bear to process, with the low contrast and details PTGui just couldn't stitch it properly, even with a lot of manual help. I turned to the often-maligned Photoshop stitcher and it worked beautifully, requiring only minor manual adjustments to the final image. Nikon D-600 with Sigma 24-105mm f/4, 12 handheld frames, final image 32,500 x 5700 pixels.

Hi Peter,

Nice pano. I normally don't like very stretched views (because they must be viewed at a very large size to convey the feeling of space), but this one I do like.

As for your low contrast stitching issue, allow me to give you a tip (because the interpolation quality of PTGUI is so much better than that of Photoshop). When the lack of contrast is indeed the thing that causes problems, just feed the control point generator higher contrast versions of the actual files that need to be stitched in the end. Then after control point generation/optimization and before actually stitching, replace the high contrast files with the originals. If you match the file names, you can just copy the originals to be used over their temporary high contrast versions (can be simple 8-bit/ch versions), and the project file needs no editing.

For very large projects, one can also consider using JPEG duplicates (they will load faster from disk) with the same names and dimensions as the later TIFF source files for control point generation, but then edit the project file with a text editor and replace the '.jpg' extentions with '.tif' before the actual stitching.

Cheers,
Bart

[BernardLanguillier]

Another option is to use Autopano pro that overall does a much better job when stitching images missing recognizable features.

Cheers,
Bernard

[PeterAit]

Thanks for the comments and tips. I would love to make a large print out of this, probably a 4-panel assemblage, and will likely do so if I am approved for my "Photos of the NC Coast" exhibition in the spring.

[wolfnowl]

Great clouds, Peter!

To counterbalance your east coast sunrise, here's a west coast sunset. This was made from a collection of cell phone images so the quality is no hell; the best part for me is that this is about 200m from my front door.