Experimenting with an HDR'd panaroma


I wanted to try something I hadn't done before - a panaramo processed in HDR style. Some people hate HDR processed photos - and yep, they can be over the top, but like anything in photography, it's all subjective.


The Brisbane River, just outside my window, provided an interesting scene for a panarama - now the Rivercat stops at Teneriffe Pier, there are always boats drifting about.


I took 13 sets of bracketed shots on my 5D II, and then set about experimenting in CS5.


First, I created the three panos (the under exposed layer, the correctly exposed layer and the over exposed layer) using Photoshop's Photo Merge feature. I then tried to run those (rather enormous files) through the Merge to HDR Pro feature - it said the file sizes had to be the same....

I tried to re-size the files, but fiddling with pixels all proved a bit time consuming and ultimately didn't work. Finally, I ran the Merge to HDR Pro for each of the 13 bracketed shots, and stitched them all together in PhotoMerge to create this pano.....

I need to work out how to control the colour banding a bit more effectively, but it gave me a feel for the process. I'm keen to try it again - perhaps on a tripod and at night, might make an interesting alternative. In any case, it was great to be out at that time of the day with the camera. 


The large version of the image is available on my Flickr stream.

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