For my panorama assignment I decided to stitch together ten portrait format images I had taken at Yangoora winery (http://www.yangooraestate.com.au/) near Lenswood in the Adelaide Hills. I also covered the same scene in 6 landscape images.
Part of the problem was there were significant exposure variations on 3 of the images. I started by doing a basic stitch with the intention of correcting the exposure on the relevant layers in the joint image. What I discovered however was that in correcting the image for the vineyards/foreground meant the sky was noticeably different, and vice versa. Therefore I loaded the 10 images into camera raw and then corrected the 3 images against the others to obtain similar exposures. I then did the stitching process again and found the images were much more balanced. The fill worked very well just leaving a basic crop. I then reduced the highlights, opened the shadows slightly and increased saturation and vibrancy a little. I could refine this image a little further if I had more time.
Over all I am pleased with the result. Taking the series of photographs in portrait format gave the image a little more height which I think improves the look. Another lesson is to spend more time calculating the exposure and shoot on manual. I did not and pay the penalty! A tripod would probably have helped but you can only use what you have.
And then I talked to the CJ and thought again! I decided to crop a little from each side and excise the cars at the winery and in the distance. I also removed other evidence of buildings and increased the colour intensity, particularly in the sky in order to bring out the beauty in the clouds more.
Part of the problem was there were significant exposure variations on 3 of the images. I started by doing a basic stitch with the intention of correcting the exposure on the relevant layers in the joint image. What I discovered however was that in correcting the image for the vineyards/foreground meant the sky was noticeably different, and vice versa. Therefore I loaded the 10 images into camera raw and then corrected the 3 images against the others to obtain similar exposures. I then did the stitching process again and found the images were much more balanced. The fill worked very well just leaving a basic crop. I then reduced the highlights, opened the shadows slightly and increased saturation and vibrancy a little. I could refine this image a little further if I had more time.
Over all I am pleased with the result. Taking the series of photographs in portrait format gave the image a little more height which I think improves the look. Another lesson is to spend more time calculating the exposure and shoot on manual. I did not and pay the penalty! A tripod would probably have helped but you can only use what you have.
And then I talked to the CJ and thought again! I decided to crop a little from each side and excise the cars at the winery and in the distance. I also removed other evidence of buildings and increased the colour intensity, particularly in the sky in order to bring out the beauty in the clouds more.
For my second image I stitched another 10 vertical images of the Brisbane River taken from a high vantage point. I also needed to blend in a couple of wide-angle landscape images for the horizon. With the setting sun I decided to increase the drama to give a somewhat surrealistic effect.
It has been very interesting exploring the possibilities of panoramic photography.In my research I discovered a free program called Hugin - Hugin - Panorama photo stitcher hugin.sourceforge.net/ I downloaded this and experimented. It actually enables you to take an amazing number of images as if you are the centre of the globe so you overlap both vertically and horizontally from your feet to the space immediately above you (zenith to nadir). I put over 50 images into the program and it came up with quite an usable image. There are many tutorials and controls to experiment with given time.
One thing it did make me wonder was what would happen if I threw the same set of images into Photoshop? I was amazed to find that it did not get indigestion and also came up with another usable image. Again, for best results you would need a tripod and to control the exposure.
Therefore, a major finding of this panorama exercise, is that you can take a number of 'rows' of images and PS can handle it! This really opens up some creative possibilities.
One thing it did make me wonder was what would happen if I threw the same set of images into Photoshop? I was amazed to find that it did not get indigestion and also came up with another usable image. Again, for best results you would need a tripod and to control the exposure.
Therefore, a major finding of this panorama exercise, is that you can take a number of 'rows' of images and PS can handle it! This really opens up some creative possibilities.
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