San Francisco Exploratorium

anonymouscuban

Stitched from 7 frames. It's not HDR by the way.



Non-Blended version - see post #9 below for explanation.

zoomer

That came out nice.
How long did that take to put together .

anonymouscuban

zoomer wrote: »

That came out nice.
How long did that take to put together .

Is that sarcasm or a real questions?

If it's a real question, not long. I stitched it in PS, which took maybe a minute. Then I adjusted curves a bit, converted a dup layer to b&w and set it below a color layer. Then set the blending mode on the color layer to "color". Imported it back to LR - that took the longest. Then cleaned up a couple dust blobbers and sharpened. VIOLA!

Question... is there a slight color cast? I'm looking at it at work on a non-calibrated monitor and it looks just a tad off. At home it looks fine though.

zoomer

Real question, I never go that in depth into anything so I just wonder how long things take....I have no patience for spending more than a couple minutes on a photo, unfortunately.

I can't tell on the color, this monitor is *&^T! It looks fine as far as I can tell.

What a great looking spot....we have nothing like that in Boise ha.

anonymouscuban

It actually like an oasis in the middle of the city. It's the first time I've seen this end of it. I've been a few times in past, when our daughter was younger, but we only went inside to where they have the science exhibits.

Doug Solis

Wow, this really is a stunningly beautiful shot. Excellent detail and clarity. It really looks like a film capture it has so much depth. One thing I dont understand..you said "converted a dup layer to b&w and set it below a color layer. Then set the blending mode on the color layer to "color". I've not heard of setting a dup layer to B/W and changing the blending mode to color, what effect does that result in? the water in your image is absolutely lifelike, did it add contrast to this???

schmoo

You have some awesome, deep blues here that really punch it up. Nice job! The water looks so... liquid (that's a good thing).

Since our foray into the Musée Mécanique I have been doing some Googling on the buildings of the World's Fair in 1915. The Palace of Fine Arts is pretty much the only one from it that's still standing!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Palace-of-fine-arts-1919.jpg

rob marshall

Good pano shot, and nice colours and reflection. I think it needs a bit of lens correction or EDIT\TRANSFORM\SKEW as the building are not perpendicular - especially on the right. That's often a problem with panos, isn't it?

anonymouscuban

Doug Solis wrote: »

One thing I dont understand..you said "converted a dup layer to b&w and set it below a color layer. Then set the blending mode on the color layer to "color". I've not heard of setting a dup layer to B/W and changing the blending mode to color, what effect does that result in? the water in your image is absolutely lifelike, did it add contrast to this???

Doug,

What the black & white layer does in add texture and contrast to the image. I find it gives more tonal range to the image. The nice thing it is really simple. The way I do is to create two duplicate layers of the image once I've done all my other processing. I then take the upper most layer and convert it to b&W the same way I would if I wanted it to end up as a monochrome image. Then I take this b&W and move it one layer down, so it's below the color layer. Last, take the color layer and change the blending mode to "color". What this does is that it only uses the color information from this layer, allowing the tones and texture of the b&W to show through. This really gives a lot of depth to photos. You can try it with almost any photo, even people but it doesn't work with all. Sometime it looks odd. One thing to also try is to adjust the opacity of the b&W layer to your liking. I do that often with people photos. Similarly, you can add a mask to the b&W layer and selectively mask in/out the effect of the b&w layer in parts of the image.

Hope that all makes sense. I added the non-blended version of this photo to the OP so you can see the difference. Again, the only change is that I removed the two layers I describe above. Still nice, just doesn't have the same depth.

Bryans12v

anonymouscuban wrote: »

Doug,

What the black & white layer does in add texture and contrast to the image. I find it gives more tonal range to the image. The nice thing it is really simple. The way I do is to create two duplicate layers of the image once I've done all my other processing. I then take the upper most layer and convert it to b&W the same way I would if I wanted it to end up as a monochrome image. Then I take this b&W and move it one layer down, so it's below the color layer. Last, take the color layer and change the blending mode to "color". What this does is that it only uses the color information from this layer, allowing the tones and texture of the b&W to show through. This really gives a lot of depth to photos. You can try it with almost any photo, even people but it doesn't work with all. Sometime it looks odd. One thing to also try is to adjust the opacity of the b&W layer to your liking. I do that often with people photos. Similarly, you can add a mask to the b&W layer and selectively mask in/out the effect of the b&w layer in parts of the image.

Hope that all makes sense. I added the non-blended version of this photo to the OP so you can see the difference. Again, the only change is that I removed the two layers I describe above. Still nice, just doesn't have the same depth.

clapthumb Awesome!

Jago-ViG

The picture is awesome (first one). Is it me or is it not quite straight though?

Sam

Alex,

I need to run out right now but wanted to say thanks for the processing tip!

Looks great and I will play with this technique later.

Sam

squirl033

actually, i like the second one a bit better. the highlights are a bit less harsh...

WillCAD

That's an awesome pano, Alex. Did you shoot hand-held or use a tripod?

anonymouscuban wrote: »

Doug,

What the black & white layer does in add texture and contrast to the image. I find it gives more tonal range to the image. The nice thing it is really simple. The way I do is to create two duplicate layers of the image once I've done all my other processing. I then take the upper most layer and convert it to b&W the same way I would if I wanted it to end up as a monochrome image. Then I take this b&W and move it one layer down, so it's below the color layer. Last, take the color layer and change the blending mode to "color". What this does is that it only uses the color information from this layer, allowing the tones and texture of the b&W to show through. This really gives a lot of depth to photos. You can try it with almost any photo, even people but it doesn't work with all. Sometime it looks odd. One thing to also try is to adjust the opacity of the b&W layer to your liking. I do that often with people photos. Similarly, you can add a mask to the b&W layer and selectively mask in/out the effect of the b&w layer in parts of the image.

Hope that all makes sense. I added the non-blended version of this photo to the OP so you can see the difference. Again, the only change is that I removed the two layers I describe above. Still nice, just doesn't have the same depth.

Thanks very much for this tutorial. I can't wait to get home from work tonight and try it out.

anonymouscuban

Is it me or is it not quite straight though?

Hmm... The horizon is straight, but the buildings are tweaked a little due to the barrel distortion of the lens. I didn't correct for this in post. I may do that.

That's an awesome pano, Alex. Did you shoot hand-held or use a tripod?

Yes. I shot this hand-held. I pretended to be a giant tripod though so maybe that helped.

torags

Very well done.

I believe that's the Palace of Fine Art, the Exploritorium is a nondescript industrial box

Excellent work.......

catspaw

torags wrote: »

Very well done.

I believe that's the Palace of Fine Art, the Exploritorium is a nondescript industrial box

Excellent work.......

Bingo. But not everyone knows where it is at. It is on the 'other' side of the Exporitorium

Doug Solis

anonymouscuban wrote: »

Doug,

What the black & white layer does in add texture and contrast to the image. I find it gives more tonal range to the image. The nice thing it is really simple. The way I do is to create two duplicate layers of the image once I've done all my other processing. I then take the upper most layer and convert it to b&W the same way I would if I wanted it to end up as a monochrome image. Then I take this b&W and move it one layer down, so it's below the color layer. Last, take the color layer and change the blending mode to "color". What this does is that it only uses the color information from this layer, allowing the tones and texture of the b&W to show through. This really gives a lot of depth to photos. You can try it with almost any photo, even people but it doesn't work with all. Sometime it looks odd. One thing to also try is to adjust the opacity of the b&W layer to your liking. I do that often with people photos. Similarly, you can add a mask to the b&W layer and selectively mask in/out the effect of the b&w layer in parts of the image.

Hope that all makes sense. I added the non-blended version of this photo to the OP so you can see the difference. Again, the only change is that I removed the two layers I describe above. Still nice, just doesn't have the same depth.

Fantastic, thanks for posting the original, I was wondering how it looked before you're B/W layer was added. I will definitely try this, thanks so much for your detailed explaination. It looks like a bunch of other folks will be given it a try too.

aktse

Excellent! And you have perfect timing! The Palace of Find Arts has been under repairs and they just completed it a few weeks ago! For the last few years, it was surrounded by scaffolding.

shniks

I really like the first one. It's very tastefully done. :ivar:ivar



Cheers,