Its 8 months since I first used a dSLR, wandered in the world of photography, and this perhaps marks my first post on photography. Part of digital photography work flow is to “process” photos, something which requires equally or more skill, effort and work than the shooting itself.
360 degrees panorama of my neighborhood.
One of 1st photoshop techniques was blending, and I learned through doing back then when I knew little about photography. The task was to stitch a series of photography to create a panorama. (If anyone remembered seeing that panorama, it was the 360 degrees panorama of our YF youths standing around the camera in a full circle at Cameron Highlands). Then I had only access to Photoshop 7 and doing a panorama stitch meant a digital hand stitching using layers, masks and maybe lots of brushing.
These days at present, whole wide variety does panoramic stitching for us at ease. Photoshop CS especially the latest versions have simple but powerful stitching features. The free, open source Hugin Tools has all the advance feature that meets the extreme panoramic needs. The latest Windows Live Photo Gallery (free with windows) makes panoramas easy. Most software shipped with camera have panoramic stitchers and some point and shoot cameras even does panoramic stitching in camera.
Speaking of in camera processing and computation, the new compact Ricoh CX1 does High Dynamic Range (or HDR for capturing a wider range of shadows and highlights) in the camera.
With all the technology, we sometimes forget that a simple way of creating a panorama years back was just overlapping photos one on top of another. The way I see it, technology can be enabling but crippling. We might create better drawings with a computer, but not draw better if we only trust technology to do drawings for us.
My first “fake” HDR 360 degrees panorama and stereographic/planetary projection.
Not recommending ignorance to technology, I think what is important is striking a balance with technology and creativity. These days I find HDR much the hype and hassle, but constantly trying new creative ways to see and design like creating Vertorama (maybe just a buzz term now but) brings the fun to photography and learning.
