Tiger-Heron pano redo

[Dan Brown]

I posted this several years ago and have reworked it. A 5 image stitch of captures made in Costa Rica on Greg Basco and Doug Brown's workshop in 2009. C&C welcome.

[Roman Kurywczak]

I really like the progression here Dan! I do think it could go a bit lighter? Nice sequence of flight!

[Steve Bein]

I like the sequence. well done and I would like to learn this technique since I do stitched pans also. How did you get the layers done?

[denise ippolito]

Dan, Nice job with the stitched pano. Any way of getting some more separation between the middle birds. Never saw a Tiger Heron before. Great idea to present these captures together. Love it!

[Indranil Sircar]

Tiger heron is new to me... Love the progressing. Agree with Denise on a bit of separation of the middle birds.

[Dan Brown]

Thanks all! This is a juvenile Bare-throated Tiger-Heron, hence the different look. As for seperating the birds, it could be done but with much PS work! As it is, this was mostly done by hand after the initial production of the five layers in PS photomerge. In photomerge, I use "interactive only" or "reposition only" and un-check "blend images together". Then, open in PS and reduce the opacity of each layer one at a time, erasing only the areas above to expose the bird below. Then, return the opacities to 100 %, crop, add canvas and clone here and there if needed! Lots of work but I like the results. With this series of captures, I suppose I could "stretch" it but TOO MUCH WORK at this point!!! Also, I think stretching this would make such a big piece that for web presentation, the birds diminish alot! Maybe I will revisit this and see someday:eek:

[Andrew McLachlan]

Very nicely done Dan, love it as presented!

[Dan Brown]

Thanks Andrew!
BTW, I forgot to mention that when I compressed this image for posting, it really lost alot of saturation and sharpness. Here's a link to a bigger version that is a little brighter and saturated.

http://naturestoc.smugmug.com/Birds/...py3smg3-X2.jpg