Waimea Canyon

This image was made up of 5 photos stitched in Photoshop CS4, and then

processed in Lightroom 3. This is one of my first panoramas so let me

know what you think.

Very nice Paul.  Looks seamless from here!

Thanks Dominick.  I did this without a panorama head and was worried that each image stitched would be off too much to get a good result as I panned.  I also tried pumping the vibrance levels a bit, but backed off as it did not look natural. Take care.

Paul

I think the stitching is fine.  I once saw a demonstration in which the photographer, handholding the camera, simply shot at random and with the camera at a variety of angles, and he then let CS4 do the stitching (maybe around 20 photos).  The stitching was perfect, although of course the edges may have had a random photo sticking out.  The point was that one doesn't necessarily need expensive equipment to do stitched photos.  Finding the nodal point is probably necessary only if there are elements close to the camera as well as objects behind those nearby elements.  But for a photo like this, you probably don't even need a tripod -- the stitching program is very robust.

Hi Stephen.  Thanks again for providing good constructive comments.  Not having done many panoramas I figured use the tripod, but now you have me thinking about trying some handheld panoramas.  Take care.

Paul

Paul, even though I saw a multi-photo shot with a variety of odd angles done successfully, I personally still use a tripod, overlaps, and with sufficient room around the edges to make a good crop.  I've also been experimenting with making adjustments to the separate raw images, as long as those adjustments are applied equally to each raw image in the stitch.  I think this has the potential to produce a stitched photo that has been optimally processed and that needs very little PS processing after the stitch has been completed.  Theoretically, that should result in a photo with the best possible IQ.

Paul:  The panoramic looks good but I don't take panoramic.  I should try some.   I would have preferred more sky; the top is too close to the edge of the high plateaus.    That raises an interesting question I just thought of.  When taking panoramic, you have to think of composition differently than when you final shot can been seen in a single view.  It seems that one has to think ahead of what the final composition is going to look like when stitched together.  Anyone have any comments on their approach?  Nice shot.  Alan.

Alan, I don't find the approach is much different.  I can see a possible composition, and at the same time I can see "dead" space that I know I will not want in the final photo.  That mental image has an aspect ratio that is not "regular" (i.e., one edge is much longer than the other).  So depending on the situation, I may choose to shoot 2-3 landscape shots, or 2-3 vertical shots for a vertical photo.  Increasingly, I'm doing horizontal stitches with a series of vertical shots, simply because that gives me a lot more room to crop and more leeway to correct errors (even on a tripod, not all the shots may be lined up correctly).

In addition, I'm sometimes making RAW conversions on each shot that is destined to be stitched, but in doing so I must use the same adjustments on each photo so that the color balance, exposure, etc. remains the same across the scope of the stitch.

Stephen:  Wouldn't it be easier to stitch first and then adjust the combined shot.  As long as you're shooting with manual settings,  wouldn't they exposures be the same from picshot to shot so you can adjust all at the same time after the stitch?  Alan

Alan, when CS4 does a stitch of RAW files, the "save" options don't include a Canon RAW file with the .CR2 extension. There is an option for "Photoshop RAW," but I don't know anything about it. I always save my stitched photo as a .TIF file.

While it's true that each shot in the series will have the same settings, that setting may not be the optimal setting. Finding that optimal setting without distorting / degrading pixels is what RAW conversion is all about. If I have a choice of making some basic adjustments on a series of RAW files or those same basic adjustments on a single stitched TIFF file, I'd generally prefer to do it on the RAW files. Folks who are more experienced than I can tell me whether it really makes a difference on a large print. I'm assuming it does, so I'm often taking the longer, slower road of first making identical adjustments (e.g., exposure, levels, curves) on a series of RAW files.

Thanks for the discussion, Alan and Stephen.  In this panorama, I stitched the TIF files and then adjusted exposure etc.  Stephen, do you adjust the RAW files using a "sync" feature?  Just curious as Lightroom 3 has that feature.  All the best.

Paul