Thinking of printing, need more eyes

Yep, all the above were stitched with Ms ICE. It's indeed good...but hardly perfect ;)

SnowFella - Thanks for showing the alternative crop from the bottom. I like it a LOT better but such things are very personal. I do find that once I have worked on an image for a long time and looked at the same aspect ratio, the suggestion to change it is sometimes hard to do having become so familiar with it. Maybe let it set for a couple of days and then come back to it - I usually see it differently when I do that.

Thanks for taking the time Roger!

Tested to implement some of your suggestions here, still need to take the "original" into PS to remove stitching errors so it's all temporary.
Have a feeling though that the scene and all sailboats facing the same way, tide was going out, makes it feel more distorted and out of level that what it really is. Mast's were indeed all at an angle, no sailor here but mast rake does ring a bell.

Never done a print like this so I feel alittle constrained by the 2 size options, either 8x36 or 12x36. 8x36 feels small on the vertical but matches rather well with the scene while 12x36 forces me to either crop out the sides or add an uneven border.

Anyways, here's a new version with some quickly done changes following on with your suggestions. Might be able to recover more area above the horizon through PS to lift the crop somewhat more.

Thanks.

I'm on LR 5.6, have looked into LR6 but can't really see a reason to upgrade since most of the new features are things I'd hardly ever use.

Good thought about doing a test print first! Never use this place for printing before so it would likely be worth it doing a first print at a smaller size to sus out if I need to go do any adjustments before pulling the trigger on a larger print.
I'd likely head in and get it ordered in person rather than do it online, that way I can ask the staff. Downside is that it's a regular electronics/furniture chain that also do prints so chances are small prints are handled on site while large is sent offsite, who knows if the offsite printer is calibrated the same to the onsite one?

As for crop, thought have crossed my mind but I'm kinda partial to the dark tree on the left contrasted by the lights in the marina on the right. 10 minutes later there were even more lights on but by then the horizon lights were gone.

Did use a grad when shoothing but was more concerned with keeping the highlights in the sky in check and didn't even think about the lights at the marina. Probably should of been smarter and started my panorama from the right to get the exposure right in what in the end had the brightest lights rather than start from the dark left side. Lessons learned for next time I guess.

Done a tiny little bit more today, have to say working on the file has my poor old laptop on it's knees just beggin for a coup de grace!
*Tried taming the highlights on the right hand side using a radial filter
*Slight crop from the left and straightening
*Darkened the patch of grass to the left to match the grass on the right
*Cloned out some distractions in the water
*Slight noise reduction and sharpening
*Minor adjustments to exposure and saturation

I think I like the latest HDR version the most. One thing I've noticed is that prints often come out darker than I expect. I brighten pics accordingly now before sending the files off. Have you tried a test print with your supplier?

few other thoughts....

I feel the horizon is a bit tilted - maybe rotate anticlockwise a little.

I can't make my mind up about the bright lights at the right. Have you tried cropping? I think maybe to crop the same amount from each edge to keep that boat still in the centre. You would also lose the tall tree at the left. Also, the skies at both the left and right edges aren't massively interesting so maybe an edge crop might further focus attention on the dramatic parts of the sky.

Yup, LR has plenty of horsepower though I'm not 100% confident it would deal with stitching errors as well as PS would.
I'm looking at a fair few sections of sky looking like this that would need to be sorted.


With PS I'd just import the originals as separate layers, align them to the stitched layer and use layermask's to blend over the errors. In LR the only way I know of doing something like that would be with the spot removal brush and that's hit and miss when it comes to large bits like this.

Funny thing is that every time I run the original's through MS ICE I get a slightly different result, both in size and stitching errors.

Here's the same section from the "original" stitch, above is from the +-2EV HDR Stitch


Edit: just finished running a +-1EV HDR stitch and think I might just have something to start working from.


Edited by SnowFella - 01 June 2015 at 09:42

LR is awfully powerful. I would give it a shot and see what you can do. The grad nd changed how I approach landscape PP.