Part 3: The 92 Megapixel HDR Panorama « Ingo Meckmann Photography

HDR Tutorial - Part 3: The 92 Megapixel HDR Panorama

I’ve used my Canon EF 70-200mm L IS lens set to 200mm at f/8 and ISO 160 (the preferred ISO for the Canon 5D Mark II).
When creating panoramas, I always shoot in Manual as the automatic modes like Aperture Value (AV) and Time Value (TV) will change the exposure for each shot. I also set the white-balance manually as it makes my life easier in post-processing. I relied on my camera meter (set to Center weighted Average) and didn’t do any exposure compensation. I shot 3 bracketed exposures for each of the 7 frames using following shutter speeds:

0EV: 1/400
-2EV: 1/1600
+2EV: 1/100

When I have enough time and a tripod on hand, I tend to shoot all my panorama’s bracketed as the dynamic range is getting much larger the wider you’re shooting.

: 0EV

: -2EV

: +2EV

Photomatix Settings

Step 1: HDR tonemapping

It is important to do the HDR processing before stitching the pictures in Photoshop. Therefore, I do the HDR processing of the first 3 bracketed exposures like mentioned in Part 1 of my HDR tutorial.
When I get to the second frame, I make sure to choose the “Previous” setting in the preset panel. This is important to ensure to apply the exact same settings to each of the 7 frames. Alternatively you can save the settings of the 1st frame as a new preset – I saved it as “Zug Pano” – and use that preset for the remaining ones. I repeat that for each of the additional frames so I end up with 7 TIFF files of tone-mapped HDR pictures. You can see the exact settings for the HDR processing on the right here.

Step 2: Post-processing in Lightroom

I perform my post-processing actions in Lightroom and if necessary in Photoshop. I only made some minor adjustments to add some contrast, clarity and slightly desaturate the image and therefore stayed in Lightroom. Here the details:

Lightroom Adjustments

The next step is to copy the adjustments to the other images that will be used to create the panorama. It is important to first mark the picture to which above adjustments were done and then to select the ones that should receive the modifications from the first one. Press Command-Shift-S to bring up the “Sync Settings” Dialog, make sure all boxes are checked and click OK:

Copy LR adjustments to other files

Step 3: Export to JPG’s

To save time, I always export the individual HDR TIFF files to JPG’s before opening them in Photoshop for the stitching process. That’s also the main reason why I do the post-processing in step 2. I created a Lightroom preset that I use for all panoramas (Remark: If you have a very fast computer you can certainly work with TIFF files instead but it will make the stitching process much, much longer).

LR Export Dialog to convert to JPG

This will save the JPG’s to a folder on my harddisk – I consider them temporary files that I delete after I completed the panorama.

Select Pictures for Photomerge

Step 4: Stitch them in Photoshop

Photoshop CS5 does a great job stitching files to panorama images, it can struggle with fine objects like power-lines which would need to be corrected manually but it was not the case for this image. I will cover problems like that in a future tutorial.

In Photoshop CS5, locate “Photomerge…” in “Files” -> “Automate”:

Open Photomerge Dialog in Photoshop

Click the “Browse” button and locate your files created in the previous step and open them:

Select files for Photomerge in Photoshop

I always work in the “Auto Layout” option as it gives me the best results. I also always use the “Vignette Removal” option – this is especially useful if you were shooting with a wide open Aperture resulting in some vignetting. Then click OK and grab a coffee as this might take some time depending on the CPU power of your computer.

Photomerge Dialog Photoshop

A few minutes later, Photoshop has done its magic and shows the stitched panorama with the different individual frames in the layers panel. If I’m pleased with the result, I flatten the image (Layers->Flatten Image) to reduce the file-size. I save the result to the hard-disk and close Photoshop.

Stiching Result in Photoshop

Step 5: Crop and Straighten in Lightroom

As I was not using the “Merge to Panorama in Photoshop” option in Lightroom, I have to import the file manually into the Lightroom library using the “Import Dialog”.

Lightroom Import Dialog

I do the cropping and straightening in Lightroom as I find it much more intiuitiv as in Photoshop. Pressing R starts up that tool in LR3. I didn’t like the left side and got rid of the branches on the right – I also had to do some minor straightening as it was slightly crooked.

Lightroom Crop Tool

Step 6: Split Toning & Final touches in Lightroom

I’m using one of my favorite features in Lightroom to add some warmth to the highlights of the photograph:
The “Split Toning” tool is one of the main reasons why I’m using Lightroom and not Apple’s Aperture. I’m not only using it to dual-tone black and whites but also for Color images. I generally use it in a very subtle way. See the before and after below: