Some details about the Mt. Baker panorama.

Mt. Baker is visible from RoofusWorld, but it is pretty rare that the atmosphere, let alone clouds cooperate for a crisp shot. Because opportunities don't present themselves too often, few of my attempts have been very satisfying . . . until now.

Recently I read something that mentioned the advantage of combining images to gain resolution, and that kinda connected with me. If I shot multiple telephoto images, and then combined them in Photoshop, I would generate a really large file, hopefully that would lead to lots of detail in a large print.

I had not yet tried to merge images into a panorama, but I was anxious to try. The chance recently occurred, (Jan 12th I think) when Mt. Baker was clearly visible.

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Above are the 8 individual images used for the panoramic image at the top of the page. Vertical framing was used to get some sky and water into the shots so the mountain would have some breathing room. I don't think this is a case for "filling the frame".

I opened all 8 images in Adobe Camera Raw, adjusted the 4th shot, and then synchronized those settings to the remaining shots. After synchronizing, the 8 files were opened as layers in Photoshop.

In Photoshop, the 8 layers were selected, and auto align layers was used to generate the panorama below. The faint lines show where Photoshop stitched the images together.

The screen shot at left, shows the layers panel following the alignment process.

Following auto align layers, the auto blend layers command was applied, producing the image above.

The layers panel to the right shows the masks Photoshop produced to blend the individual images together.

To fill in the blank areas (white areas at the edges) content aware fill, the healing brush, or other retouching methods can be employed. Or, just crop those areas away.

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I converted to gray scale because I felt the colors added nothing, and I think Mt. Baker commands more attention in brilliant white rather than in the red glow of the evening sun. At the time of the shot, I thought the colors would be fantastic in a photo. Perhaps the color image just doesn't live up to my memory of the actual scene.

The long dimension of my camera's files is 5184 px, the finished panorama is 10800 px wide. Divide 10800 by 36, and you can see that it will support a 36 inch wide print at 300 dots per inch. To create a similar 36" image from a single shot at 5184 px wide, would allow a print of only 144 dots per inch.

I sharpened only the mountain and foreground, and applied some blur to the sky to get rid of any crunchiness in that fairly continuous tone area.

The foreground and sky have been burned in.