Tag: panorama

Pano Testing

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A while back I was doing some testing of new software for displaying larger panoramas on the blog here and came across a site called Momento360. Has anyone heard of this company before? I bet there are some truly spectacular photographs on display there but I’ve not uploaded enough to try to start finding others and sharing! So, in a lame attempt to see how well my photographs convert and then show up when shared, I thought I’d give it a try:

[momentopress url=https://momento360.com/e/u/88c5e3d1c5804283bd1558b79dddcde1?utm_campaign=embed&utm_source=other&utm_medium=other]

This photograph was taken a few years ago when I was down in Panama going from the one side to the other, and we hit the lake at the top between the locks. It was an amazing trip, but am not sure the photograph really conveys it well enough. That said, what I am more interested in right now is the user experience.

Did this work for you when you viewed it? If so, did you view it on a desktop computer, a laptop, or a mobile device? Were you in an app or on a browser like Safari, Chrome, or other? Let me know your experiences here…

Additionally, do you have any particular software programs that you have used for photographing and then sharing panorama photos in your social media streams? What has worked (or conversely, not worked) for you?

Colorado – Not Just Sunsets!

Jason4 Comments

While working through the material for today and next week, a friend called up and asked if I’d be interested in joining him for a stroll through downtown during sunset.  Being one to never turn down a sunset, or a photo walk, or city architecture, I readily agreed.  So, we met near downtown Denver.  Gregg and I had been talking about setting up a sunset shot of the city skyline for some time now and we’d had some ideas for a good place to scout it out.  But, tonight his motive was different. Continue reading “Colorado – Not Just Sunsets!” →

Creating HDR Panos with PTGui

Jason3 Comments

A while back I had approached a few companies about putting together an article on how to create panoramas.  One of those companies was PTGui – and I’ve finally had a chance to put together a few images through their software to take a look at the processing and stitching quality.  First impressions are good…what I especially liked is that the software has the ability to render both panoramas as well as HDR processing algorithms.  While a dedicated work flow that addresses panoramas and then a separate work flow to address HDR work may yield better results, I’ve gotta say that PTGui does an impressive job for a multi-function program: Continue reading “Creating HDR Panos with PTGui” →

The Moment it…"Oops"!

Jason5 Comments

We all know the real phrase, made famous by none other than Joe McNally, and his well-received book “The Moment it Clicks””…(and a great read, so go check it out if you haven’t already).  However, that’s just Joe… I seem to encounter more blunders than brilliance.

For instance, I was working on the photos from the weekend shoot and had a rather good set I wanted to put into a panorama shot.  Before taking the good set though, I decided to run a test on some older images on a new program that came  which came recommended to me from Alex Saunders over at Tenuous Thread called AutoPano Pro.  So, in working with the trial software, I went into Lightroom and grabbed my 12 or 13 photos to stitch together from my archives and see how it did for a test run.

Well, because the stitching of 12-13 images can take a while, I left it and came back the next day to find I had grabbed one of the wrong images.  Can you find my “oops”?

August Sunset
Here's the edited version

August Sunset (original pano stitching)
Pre-post production

So, my foibles and failures in attention to detail thrown wide for the world to see!  🙂  It can be fun though when you look at these things lightheartedly and just have a good chuckle though.  Anyone else have any stories or foibles they want to share?  Comments are open…

Not Tuesday but Moo-Day

Jason3 Comments

Tuesdays seem to be daunting days for the podcast, so I may have to adjust the schedule some…I am thinking Fridays in the future, but would welcome suggestions.  For the time being, here’s a couple shout outs and photos for your Tuesday enjoyment:

First off, thanks go out to Rob Jones of Towner Jones Photography for another nod from his blog.

I’d also like to pay special thanks to Dave Cross of NAPP fame.  I saw a pretty big blip up on the blog from about a week or two ago and when recently looking at Google Analytics, saw he had given me a mention from his blog back on Dec. 1st.  Thanks so much Dave, and although it’s been said, it’s worth saying again – my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.

Lastly, shouts to fellow NAPP member Mitzs who also gave me some link love on her blog, Pursuing Photoshop!  Thanks for that! 🙂

And now, for the POTD entries, I was able to contribute to Jason Moore’s ongoing Geographic Composition series which is featured on his blog today, so here’s that photo:

Denver Civic Center

And last but not least, since I got the 10-22mm lens (finally, after a year or so of debating which wide angle to get) on Friday, I was playing with the zoom and looking at the angle of view when my dog came right up to the lens the other day.  Instinctively, I snapped the shutter.  The aperture was wide open and the shutter speed was way to slow so the image quality is horrible, but the image itself is just hysterical.  Her name is Maggie, but we call her Moo for short.  So, in honor of her, I am closing today’s post with her:

Moo

Happy shooting, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

Denver Area Photowalk

Jason2 Comments

Meetup Pano

As some of you may recall, Scott Kelby held a worldwide photo walk a few months ago to promote his new book that was coming out on Lightroom 2.  Well, since then several smaller photo walk clubs and groups have formed and begun their own outings.  Denver was no exception and our first official photo walk this last weekend had a really good turnout of roughly 15-20 people.  About half of us even got together afterward at a local eatery to share stories and get to know one another better.  Everyone is posting shots over on the Meetup site and at the Flickr site as well, so stop in there to see some of the talents showcased in those venues.  The shot above is a pano I stitched together from the occasion.  With more photo walks to come, this definitely has some positive energy about it.

Some Friday Photos

Jason5 Comments

As promised earlier this week, I finally have some photos to share. In the middle of the drive across country from SC to CO, I stopped a few times and saw some possibilities for panorama shots. Keeping in mind a couple tips, I switched my camera from landscape mode to vertical (a.k.a. portrait) mode, and captured several scenes on my 40D. Here is the first installment of my attempts at panoramas:

So, you’ll notice that the color on these is a little off, and the exposure is a little dark. I realized that I would have issues though, if I tried to expose for such a wide scene and range of colors across the entire panorama, most especially when trying to use the Photomerge function of Photoshop. So I set my White Balance to cloudy, my exposure to one frame, and just snapped across the image.

Here’s where it gets fun…I am running CS2 on my Mac laptop which cannot read my 40D files. My CS3 was set up on my Windows desktop. The Dell only has a 2.3 Ghz Celeron processor with 1.5 GB of RAM (I never got around to adding that last 512 before the move…). Needless to say, without being set up right, I really couldn’t process 8 shots each at 10MP (that’s a grand total of 80 MP in the final pano)! Even now with the portable AC on the Dell, it was screaming along as I ran the Photomerge utility through Bridge. Once I got the photomerge done, I stamped the layers (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) and converted to a smart object.

I then double-clicked the smart object to edit in it’s own window. This image file was now at 480 MB! Needless to say, I did some layer adjustments for exposure, and curves, then saved the file. I was now back in the full pano composite. I saved the full pano as a PSD file, then flattened before making some downsizing. For the curious, the full size pano is over 8000px on the long side. For the purposes of the web, I did have to downsize it a little. Clearly downsizing to allow the blog to show it would be out of the question, so here’s links to a large sized version (1600px long side), and a xl sized (3200px long side).

Large Pano

Extra-Large Pano

So, here’s the question: was it worth it? 🙂