Wilderness Panoramic

[Elmar Venter]

This is another panoramic I created on South Africa's Garden Route. It shows the long stretch of beach and the little town of Wilderness. 12 images stitched.

Canon EOS 50D
Canon 17 - 40 lens
f11

(Own nit: uneven polarization of sky)

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Elmar,
VG self assesment of the sky tones....the image does show the vastness of the pacific and all the wave lines do lead you nicely to the town but even though the most plays an important role in the mood that combined with time of day combine to give much of the LH side a washed out look. Yoou may want to try Robert's reverse S-curve adjustment and see if that gives more depth to the image.
Very nice job stitching the images.

[Robert Amoruso]

Elmar,

The reverse s-curve (mask out the land and water) would help with the posterization. Due to the lack of tonal seperation in the sky, adding contrast there just increase posterization/banding.

For the land a Local Contrast Enhancement will help there. In the repost I did the following:

1) Reverse s-curve and then masked out the water and land so as not to posterize the sky any more.
2) Local contrast enhancement on the water and land only. Really only the land needs it but I like the extra definition the water picked up. LCE is USM on a BG copy with settings at 30/50/0 in this case.

You can get specific info on the about in my tutorial here: http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20434.

[Elmar Venter]

Thanks Robert, I really appreciate your help! Your repost looks much better than mine. My post processing skills are "limited" to say the least. I will play around to see whether I can get it right myself.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Elmar, Robert's repost popped the details on a skillfully stitched image. There are times it's best not to polarize a pano...