DSLR Photography Forum

Two photos are the same panorama made up of a few photos taken at night from Toronto Islands. One is the B&W version of the other. Size requirements made me crop the colour version. This is my first attempt of panorama photos and the first tentative attempt to let go of Lightroom and use Photoshop instead. Frankly I do not know what I am doing. Any comments review or advice, even a not so positive one is very welcome. I will shortly get on with providing comments as well. Hello to you all. DP.

I see your intention with your composition in your picture #1 and I like the idea. It makes your picture interesting. I see a very nice work on stitching your pictures, and colors too.

In the second one the composition works nice, somehow I am missing a bit the reflection of the lights.

Thanks Irma, you are quite right. I am still learning how to do the conversions from colour to B&W and how to ballance the bright lights with much paler reflections. Thank you for commenting. DP.

I'm not particularly experienced with panoramas, so I can't really add anything on the technical level beyond saying that it looks well done to me. Compositionally it's a tough choice: I prefer the shoreline in the colour version, but that demands a dead-centre horizon; I prefer the lower horizon of the black version, but that removes the foreground interest and sense of perspective. Overall I'd pick the colour version for the sky and water, but maybe see if the bottom could be squished a bit (distorted in photoshop) to bring the horizon lower, or clone in some sky at the top.

A couple of asides: It's staggering how much the shoreline/skyline has changed over the past few years. And you're the first person I've ever heard say that they're trying to move away from Lightroom and towards photoshop. I know exactly what you mean, but most of us are still trying to catch up with Lightroom. (Version 2.0 is supposed to allow merging panoramas and HDR in photoshop directly from Lightroom. I can't wait.)

Compositionally it's a tough choice: I prefer the shoreline in the colour version, but that demands a dead-centre horizon; I prefer the lower horizon of the black version, but that removes the foreground interest and sense of perspective.

I am glad that you appreciate my dilema. It was pretty dark when I composed the photo and I could not see the foreground (although I knew it is there). I wanted to use 1/3 rule, but with the CN tower there, I could not figure out what to do. I wanted to allow for the foreground and the reflections.

I am intriqued with your idea of "squishing the bottom" I have no idea how to do it. If you could give me a pointer, I would try that. In any case, I will look for a way of doing it in CS3.

I love Lightroom, except that the index keeps on crushing. However, the local editing is not possible in Lr 1.x and limited in 2.x, sharpening and reszing is primitive and it is not possible to softproof. I think that I would never have a chance with CS3 if I did not learn how to use Lightroom. Right now I strugle with Scott Kelby's 7 point system and one other of his books. It is a strugle for me, as i was born without memory, I think.

HDR interests me greatly and I even have the software, but I feel I am terrible with post-processing and this is my main frontier right now. Thank you for thoughtful and valuable comments Mathew. I am glad I ran into a fellow Torontonian. I hope that there might be opportunity to have a beer together or perhaps do some shooting in or around Toronto even (weather and wifes permitting). Pavel

I have a confession to make: I don't always know how to do what I suggest. (I'm an 'ideas guy'.) I just tried it out, and by selecting just the bottom of the image and using the 'free transform' tool, I found I could compress the bottom by about 10-15% before it started looking odd. It's not much, but it does offset the centred horizon. There may be a better way to do it with the full-size file, or with a more sophisticated program. I'm just trying it with Photoshop Elements 3 on my laptop, rather than the CS3 that I would usually use.

I think there may be one or two others from Toronto lurking around here. We should try a small Shuttertalk gathering at some point this summer.

Thanks Mathew for trying to implement your ideas. I will look into your ideas tomorow. It would be nice if we could form a little group here in GTA. Pavel

Hmmm...Your panorama looks very similar to the one I made recently. Photos taken during the evening from Ward's Island. Yours seem a bit better,,,perhaps better exposure, better camera, better postprocessing. I look forward to seeing many more of your images. Regards.....DT

Thanks DT, I saw yours I think on that other critique site I think. I would consider reducing contrast and brightness (in Lightroom 2, if you downloaded it I would use recovery slider instead) and increase exposure. I think that would do it. Thanks for dropping by. It is a pleasant surprise. Welcome and stay around. Pavel