Panoramas of Waterfalls

[JohnRostron]

I was in North Wales recently where there are a number of famous waterfalls. This time, I only managed to get to two of them, Swallow Falls and Aber Falls. In each case, I thought I would try stitching together a panorama of images. I have been trying various free and paid-for stitchers and had settled on Autopano Pro from Kolor.

There are different schools of thought when photographing moving water. Some like the water surface smooth and blurred out. I like to maintain the rough surface with water droplets visible. This would provide a challenge to the stitcher software which, I presume, would deal with it as it would ghosts. I think that Autopano has done a pretty good job of this. What do you think?

#1 Swallow Falls. This used five images, two in the top row and three in the bottom row.


#2 and #3 Aber Falls. These used four and five images respectively, stacked vertically.




John

[NorthernFocus]

Those are really some lovely falls. Worth visiting under various conditions. The stitching looks to have worked well. Overall processing could use some work. The first and second images look a bit flat in contrast and saturation. The last one is best in that regard.

[JohnRostron]

Thanks Dan. I did minimal post processing in Lightroom, with syncing for each set. I tried to reduce the overblown highlights in#2 especially, with limited success. The only PP I did for the final panoramas was sharpening. I will revisit these to see what I can do.

John

[Shadowman]

Nice set.

[bnnrcn]

Very nice images, +1 to Dan's comment about the PP work

[Dave Humphries]

Hi John,

I am pleasantly surprised the software did so well, even in the foreground vegetation of #1.

I agree with regard to PP; the biggest issue I see is the black point is too high the further the scenery gets from the camera, there is a kind of veiling flare, especially #2 looking up. The foregrounds are OK, just the distant bits - it is probably just natural airborne spray.

I hesitate to suggest it, but wondered whether 'flavour of the month' LR/ACR haze filter might improve it?

If asked to pick a favourite, I think it would be #1, quite an unusual viewpoint that.

Cheers, Dave

[Rita]

I have nothing new to add to what the others have said but you have given me a good idea to try. There is some nice waterfalls here that I have never been able to fully capture but I am now going to give the panorama idea a try. I wouldn't have thought of doing a pano for a waterfall.

[Ziggy]

Impressive looking waterfalls.

[IzzieK]

The vertical pano works well...and your preference for the water pp treatments. I just thought it needs a little bit more foreground at the bottom. It is not that I do not like smooth waters in images -- it is the overdone ones that I do not like.

[JohnRostron]

Thanks for all your comments. I did apply the LR Haze filter to my original version to the Aber waterfall, and it did make a slight improvement. I add here revised versions of #1 and #2, using Nik Viveza to modify the saturation, contrast and structure. #2 does still suffer from the flare at the top though.

#1 (revised)


#2 (revised)


Are these better?

John

[Dave Humphries]

Are these better?

Yes, John

[bnnrcn]

The edits look better John

[John 2]

I have stood in the same footprints as you have at the Swallow Falls John, but failed miserably to capture the atmosphere in the way that you have here. Nice shots, all three of them. Not too familiar with Lightroom but if it has a Shadow and Highlight tool, used selectively on the water highlights might bring out more detail.

[jcuknz]

Taking Aber Falls 1200 as an example I found that in the jpg that it has the full range of tones so the solution was to drag the centre point down and to the right ever so slightly. This increases the contrast in the upper half of the tones and lowers it in the bottom half.
I am doing this with an adjustment layer which may not be available to you. I also clipped the highlight end to lighten the image.
Producing a result similar to John R's

[NorthernFocus]

IMO they are much improved.