Darkroom Challenge Digital Darkroom #50

Stiga

Veteran
Start Date: Jun 29, 2022
End Date: Jul 6, 2022

Simple 2-image panoramas are fine for me me when I stitch them using Microsoft ICE opr Photoshop but when the number iof images is higher I run into distortion problems; this is a good example! So let's see how you tackle the problem
IMG_0825_stitch.jpg
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RAW files are here
JPEG files are here
 
Entry #1. Oooo... this was fun. Lightroom stitched the pano together with the horizon pretty straight, and then Photoshop let me crop and then warp the beach straight and content-aware fill the corners. Back to LR for just some very minor adjustments including another slight crop to get the horizon flatand then PS to clone out a few bits and put in a border.

IMG_0822-Pano-Edit-Edit.jpg
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Entry #2. A tighter crop, straightened and bumped up the blacks, whites and shadows In LR. Over to PS for warping the sand line and filling a blank bit of sky in a top corner. Used a couple of layers to change and lighten the sky colour and then blended in a photo-layer in overlay mode to brighten up the oranges for the beach.

I've gone for the ol' "Oil industry in the Bahamas" travel brochure look which I think is very under represented in this forum. :giggle:

IMG_0822-Pano-Edit-2.jpg
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Failed to get the 4 images t work in Hugin, a lot of problems with the fine detail in the towers mostly.
So I gave up and use only 2 images! :D
So 2 pictures aligned in Hugin and don't ask me how!
I started in DxO PL5 and choose one of the pictures as the master, and processed that to my liking, then I copied the changes to the other images.
Then a export of the pictures to Hugin as Tiff.
Used Hugin to make a pano, don't ask me how, it was a lot experimenting.
Entry #1
IMG_0822_DxO-2 - IMG_0831_DxO-3_DxO_Web_1.jpg
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This is not an entry, but a hugin demo.
  1. I opened all four source images in DxO PL5 with default settings and made the same minor exposure changes to all, then exported them.
  2. I loaded the images into hugin and created control points between neighboring images, mostly near the horizon. Why near the horizon? Using clouds for control points can confuse hugin, especially if the clouds are near to you and moving fast, so only use clouds that are far away and stationary. Nearby objects can also confuse hugin if you move the camera during your capture or don't rotate around the lens nodal point.
  3. I also added horizontal line control points on individual images and between neighboring images to make the horizon straight and level.
  4. I used the Panini General projection for output, using settings of compression=80 and bottoms=35.
I have posted the source images, the hugin .PTO file and the output HERE. You may download them and open the PTO file in hugin if you wish to poke around and see what I did.

IMG_0822-31 C80 B35.jpg
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I ended up using three images because I don't have the skills to adjust the distortion, and it irritated me :) However on my days off I will study the tutorial above and try again - unless I pick up a couple of shifts.

Camera RAW to convert to .dng, simply because even although I unzipped the images, whenever I attempted to add them to Lr or hugin, I could
IMG_0831-Pano-2_DxO-1.jpg
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only navigate to the zipped file. Lr to merge, then DxO PL5 to edit .
 
Entry 1

IMG_0825+31_web.jpg
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For this entry, I used images 825 and 831 only. It is very similar to what one can get from image 831 alone (see Ken's entry above), but I thought the left side platforms were a slight bit sharper in 825.

Images were developed in DxO with minimal adjustments and stitched in hugin, as in my demo above. I used slightly different settings for the two-image stitch because the angle of view was less wide. Tweaks in Gimp/Nik/G'mic.
 
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Somewhat more low tech...
Stitched all four in Adobe Camera Raw after dealing with some exposure issues. Continued developing the pano.dng.
Went into Photoshop and cleaned up some ragged joins in the water. I dealt with the curve of the beach by placing a copy of the left side of the pano on a separate layer and applying a skew. This also pulled the far shoreline down but copious brushing on a mask took care of any resulting discontinuities.

DDD050Pano-1.jpg
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Crunch time. I don't know why but I found a lot of entries to be a bit "milky" and lacking clarity. Never mind though, there are lots of images, kudos to all whoo posted in this thread.

The best for colour and clarity was kae1's post - but it wasn't a pano!

I Like BosseBe BosseBe 's coloured entry but what has happened to the 2 people"

WhidbeyLVR has the two walkers on the beach but I find the image a bit pale and milky.

I really like Rose McGill's result, it has good colour and clarity - but the beach is missing

betamax's interpretation is good and without distortion but I fear it lacks clarity and the 2 walkers are missing

WhidbeyLVR #2 - another good Hugin stitch but I wish it had the full scene + the 2 walkers

Hendrik - I like this one and admire the workflow But where are the 2 walkers!

betamax #2 - well done. The sky is a tad bluer than I remember but I like it

So, over to you, betamax, what have you got in store for us? If you cannot find anything please hand the torch to Rose McGil
 
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