Wednesday Landscapes, 26 July 2023

[Leslie Reid]

You are invited to upload one or more of your landscape photos and, if you’d like, to accompany your image with some commentary: challenges you faced in making the image? your intent for the image? settings? post-processing decisions? why you did what you did? the place and time? or an aspect you’d like feedback on? And please feel free to ask questions of others who have posted images or to join the discussion. If you don’t feel like using words, that’s OK too—unaccompanied images (or unaccompanied words, for that matter) are also very much welcomed. As for the technicalities, the usual forum guidelines apply: files < 1 MB; image size <1000 px maximum dimension.

It turns out that it's impossible not to take photos of backlit pampas grass.

[luis triguez]

Nikkor AI 24 on D700

[Gerald Cafferty]

[Mike Marcotte]

[allancobb]

Douglas Falls, near Thomas, West Virginia

 

[Glenn McCreery]

[Jon Eckman]

[Mark Keefer]

This is the Bixby Bridge on California Highway 1 shot today. I had to do some climbing for this vantage point. This is a composite of 14 images shot at 38mm making an 84.5-megapixel image over 13,000 pixels wide reduced here to 2000 pixels wide and probably compressed some more here.

[Jon Eckman]

Nice work Mark, how were you able to reduce the width by that amount (85% +/-) and still retain such clarity?

[Mark Keefer]

Thanks, John.

Skill and mastering my craft in photography and post editing mastered over decades of practice. Well, that helps. Lol. I am using great tools. What I did: I start with a good full frame camera body and sharp lens stopped down to most usable f-stop before defraction sets in. In this case the Canon 5D Mark IV (I know it's not an amazing new body with all the new bells and whistles but it is a good camera) and the Canon 17-40mm f/4 L at f/11 at 38mm focal length, so my initial 14 images are pretty darn sharp. (Never hurts starting out with good shots)

Now the post editing magic, I use Lightroom, I only set the sharpness to 62, get all my setting to my preference, select my images, 14 images in this case and use the merge photos cylindrical panorama. I am not at my computer so Lightroom's wording may be slightly different. This is where a good fast computer with lots of memory using a solid state drives helps speed the process, still takes about a minute, I sip on some coffee and watch the progress slider. 

Once finished I zoom into the photo marveling at all the magic detail, look at the faces of the people in the cars and standing on the other side of the bridge. ( Just kidding, this was at 38mm, I do that with the 600mm) Next I choose edit in External Editor, Photoshop where I did a sharpen edges, I unlock the photo layer and do an add 5 pixel black stroke through blending just to give the image a thin black border. I add my watermark here with a custom paint brush. 

I save the image, the images goes back to lightroom. I export the image resizing for the website it is going to. I set the Save for screen setting in the export dialog box. And I choose maximum quality. 

That was my entire process. Thanks for asking.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Mark Keefer

[Robin Smith]

Did you need to go through Photoshop? LR enables panoramas to be generated directly within the application. Select photos, then under Photo > Photo Merge > Panorama). Perhaps I am missing something?

[Mark Keefer]

4 hours ago, Robin Smith said:

Did you need to go through Photoshop? LR enables panoramas to be generated directly within the application. Select photos, then under Photo > Photo Merge > Panorama). Perhaps I am missing something?

No you don't, LR does all heavy lifting. I do prefer PS healing tool if needed and I like edge sharpen but need to be careful I don't over sharpen in  LR. I also prefer using the paint brush for watermarking though I have transparent PNGs with my watermark on LR. Oh  and adding the blend stroke in PS to put the thin edge border on images is just my preference. But PS is not necessary.

[Wayne Melia]

4 hours ago, Mark Keefer said:

No you don't, LR does all heavy lifting. I do prefer PS healing tool if needed and I like edge sharpen but need to be careful I don't over sharpen in  LR. I also prefer using the paint brush for watermarking though I have transparent PNGs with my watermark on LR. Oh  and adding the blend stroke in PS to put the thin edge border on images is just my preference. But PS is not necessary.

@Mark: can the thin edge border be done in LR?

[JDMvW]

Serengeti

(Photoshop Merge)

[david_henderson]

Mark.  Given that you're editing to some extent anyway, did you consider 

 

a Losing the contrails

b.  Removing the yellow lines from the road.  For me the strident yellow lines verge on making this a photo of a road.  Without them, more of a landscape containing a road.  

[Mark Keefer]

On 7/31/2023 at 7:41 PM, Wayne Melia said:

@Mark: can the thin edge border be done in LR?

I have not found a way. So not too difficult to just edit in External Editor. > Photoshop, I used ti use Paintshop Pro on my other computer as my second External editor and then by using a Picture Frame, put I gave not installed Paintshop Pro on my new computer and have gotten pretty good at using Photoshop to achieve most of the things I did in Paintshop Pro. Maybe that is something I should suggest in next LR survey, but I think that may be considered beyond what Adobe considers Lightroom's scope.

[Wayne Melia]

Thanks Mark. I agree that it probably should remain outside LR's scope from a puritanical perspective that it is more a graphic design featue as opposed to an image processing feature. I do like the effect in some situations as a separation of the image from the background.