Thursday, December 12, 2019

How I did it -- HDR panorama of a Railroad MailCar

Here are two similar images that I created -- one in 2014 and the other in 2019. You just have to love advancements in technology, tonal range, and post-processing!! And what took me a couple of DAYS to create in 2014 took me about 20 minutes in 2019! Read the descriptions below...
2014 version (with the letters) and the 2019 version

  • 2014 version 
    • I took 105 vertical images (focal length 34mm; ISO 1000). 
    • I Merged all EACH set of HDR images (7 exposures each) one set at a time using Photomatix. 
    • I had to merge each set of 7 one at a time, then take each TIFF file and opened them in PS to create the panorama. 
    • There were significant parts "missing" due to the panoramic process (no pano head used) and the way that it was captured and the post-processing technology of the time) so the image had to be cropped.
    • Yes, the letters were there in 2014, gone in 2019.
    • See uncropped/unedited version at the bottom
    • FYI, I did add "light rays" in the 2014 version that I did not add in the 2019 version.
  • 2019 version 
    • Again, no pano head used (I do have one now but did not bring it on this trip). 
    • I took vertical 80 images (focal length 24mm; ISO 1600). 
    • I opened 80 images (5 exposures for the HDR capture since the camera has more dynamic range than the one used in 2014) in ACR (Adobe Camera RAW, comes with PS CC [and the LR develop module]) and clicked "merge to HDR panorama and it did all of the work in ONE step, creating a wonderful DNG (RAW) file for me to edit in ACR. 
    • I moved the "boundary warp" slider up and got rid of the "missing parts" without needing to crop. 
    • See screen captures below for Boundary Warp -- it is a wonderful feature of Adobe CC!




2019 edit, all images opened in ACR, merge to HDR-panorama, DNG file saved, 
then boundary warp to get rid of the jagged edges

2019 version, without boundary warp 

2019 version, with boundary warp 


2014 version, boundary warp not invented yet. I had to crop and clone significantly.



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