washington, dc area Jefferson Memorial Panorama - please view "larger"

Taken about the same time as the B&W of the Jefferson in this same folder (a couple of pics back). I am enjoying playing with the "align" and "blend" features in cs3, but am finding that the "blend" command crashes photoshop quite often. Does anyone else have this problem? Is it a lack of memory problem?

 

Anyway - I am rather annoyed by the hot spot in the cloud in the very middle. Besides that, though, I am quite pleased. Your thoughts??

Any comments or ratings are appreciated! :-)

Can you straighten the horizontal? Otherwise, nice shot.

Yes, the hot spot is quite noticeable. Best to spot meter the brightest areas.

 

I imagine it would be difficult to straighten the shoreline when it might in fact be angular lines from an aerial view. Nevertheless it does appear slightly tilted but might also be an optical illusion.

i know it would be cheating, but how about cloning out the hot spot? you could clone from another part of the cloud and use the tool at a low opacity if that makes sense.

That's a great idea, Linda! There's no such thing (in my opinion) as cheating - once you admit to having photoshopped an image, it's been altered. The other possibility is that maybe I could use the history brush, lightly, on that part of the cloud - because I remembered looking back at the image immediately after stitching/blending, and there was no hot spot. But after tweaking the rest of the image, the hot spot was there. It was more about the balance. Maybe that's why I have to learn curves........

You have blended these images expertly and you can't even tell where the images are stitched together. When I work on a photograph I always use layers and I always keep a duplicate of the image I'm working on that way if I screw up I can go back to the drawing board. In this case you can duplicate this one and make adjustments in levels for the cloud in question on the bottom copy then go back to your top copy and using the eraser tool ( you can adjust the opacity if needed) erase the part of the cloud you are trying to adjust and voila, the one on the bottom layer appears and if you see too big a difference and it doesn't blend properly you can go back and adjust the opacity once again. Linda's idea was good too. There are often many solutions in PS. Good luck! with it!

Thanks, Kim - good ideas. By the way, really - photoshop does ALL of the stitching and blending. I feel like I don't need to do anything at all except to put the separate photos into layers...... :-)

I feel like I'm living in the dark ages. I am using Photostitch from the camera software and since I got the Canon XT , I have a hard time due to the different exposures and lighting situations and this program doesn't help you correct exposures. I am finding that I have to try correcting while shooting and then do some manual adjustments in levels and other fine tuning all with The Gimp photo editor. The last one I did took me an hour to get it just right. Anyway, thanks for sharing that info. I learned something today :-)

Kim - what version of PS are you using? I've got cs3, and I can't remember what stitching features are available in cs2 or earlier. A hint about getting even exposures for stitching purposes: when I know that I am going to take a few photos with the intention of stitching them together later, I still want to achieve the closest exposure across the board for each image as possible. Here's the process that I take: I meter several places along the area to be shot - the other image I recently posted was shot at dawn and has a great range of exposure needs. I try to find something in the middle. I let the camera suggest meterings, but then I use those setting in manual mode. For example, if at f/8 the bright places say 1/200" and the darker places say 1/80", I might try for 1/125". Then I shoot the whole scene with the same exact settings (always in RAW). THEN, using ACR (Adobe Camera Raw software) I choose the middle image and play with the exposure, white balance, etc. settings - and then copy those same settings to each of the other photos.

 

Even after all of that I still find that the images don't have matching color tones or exposures. Thus, the auto-blend comes in mighty handy - and does ALL the work for me! :-)

I looks as though you have quite a bit of experience with these panoramas and I appreciate all the info you have provided me, especially how you go about taking the shots. I am currently using "The Gimp" for my photo editing. It is free software downloaded from the net. I should look into CS3, perhaps it will provide me with better tools for the future. I also did some research today and found that The Gimp has a plug in for stitching photos and well I may start with that. It should be a whole lot faster that what I have been doing manually. Thanks again! Kim

My pleasure, Kim. If you're using Gimp, freeware, try to stick with that ... cs3 will give you serious sticker shock!! And, really - I'm only a beginner with stitching. Still learning ... like about this horizon. :-)