Ottawa Winter Panorama Take 2 - Warning Big File

[Round Tuit]

Ottawa Winter Panorama Take 2 - Warning Big File

In January 2015, as a rookie photographer, I took a panorama of Ottawa which I posted on THIS THREAD. Last Friday,I finally had the opportunity to do the re-shoot that both Manfred and Dan recommended.



Both panoramas were shot with the same camera and lens using the same settings(f/16, 60mm fl, daylight white balance and 100 ISO) using manual focus. The only difference was the focal distance. For the first one I focused on the far end of the bridge on the left; the second was focused on the tree on the right side.

I am quite pleased with this last one. It was shot one hour before sunset and the better light makes for a much better photo. I also like the composition better. It seems more balance to me with the dark cloud over the parliament buildings adding a bit of drama to the sky. The re-shoot is also much crisper than the first one thanks in part to a 5Kg weight that I hung from the centre post of the tripod and thanks to applying the sharpening principles found in the book "Real World Image Sharpening". The increased sharpness is most apparent when viewing the parliamentary library(the round building right of centre)at 100%. For some reason that I don't understand, the far left of the photo up to the pyramid shaped roof of the National Art Gallery did not improve as much if at all.

For those of you who are not familiar with the geography of Ottawa, the picture was taken from the north shore of the Ottawa river at the Museum of History. The distance from my position to the National Art Gallery is about 700 metres, the far tower of the Chateau Laurier roof(the building in the centre of the photo) is 1150 metres,and to the parliament buildings is 700 metres.

I look forward to your comments and constructive criticisms.

André

P.S. As Dave pointed out, the full version of the photo from CiC displays noticeable vertical stretching( or horizontal compression). This link, Panorama Take 2 should display correctly.

[Geoff F]

This works fine, although it needs to be viewed with the Lightbox option to see the full clarity.

[Dave Humphries]

Very good Andre, much better than I would achieve.

Is it me, or is there a possibility that it is slightly squashed horizontally? (or conversely; stretched vertically)

There are a couple of things that look (to me) a bit too tall/thin; namely the statue over on the LHS and the clock face on the tower of the parliament building, but having said that, I could believe it true of the entire image.

[Round Tuit]

This works fine, although it needs to be viewed with the Lightbox option to see the full clarity.

Thanks Geoff

[Round Tuit]

Very good Andre, much better than I would achieve.

Somehow I doubt that very much

Is it me, or is there a possibility that it is slightly squashed horizontally? (or conversely; stretched vertically)

There are a couple of things that look (to me) a bit too tall/thin; namely the statue over on the LHS and the clock face on the tower of the parliament building, but having said that, I could believe it true of the entire image.

You are right, the whole image is stretched out vertically. I will have to re-run the merge to panorama of PS and try to identify where the problem comes from.

Thanks

André

[rpcrowe]

I really like this image but, perhaps using the NIK Viveza Shadow Slider might open up the shadows a bit.

Of course, the image would be a lot sharper if the Viveza was worked on the original image rather than a snip-it from the image you posted...

[Wavelength]

Excellent image; wonderful sharpness; i magnified it and scrolled left right as well as up down and it is sharp everywhere.....

[Round Tuit]

I really like this image but, perhaps using the NIK Viveza Shadow Slider might open up the shadows a bit.

Of course, the image would be a lot sharper if the Viveza was worked on the original image rather than a snip-it from the image you posted...

Richard,
I have the NIK plug-in but so far I've only use the noise reduction filter. I feel more comfortable using Lightroom and/or PS to make tonal adjustments. Maybe someday I'll take the time to learn Viveza. In the mean time, feel free to use it on the full size version of my photo. I have added a link to it in my opening post.
Opening up the shadows provides a different interpretation of the scene. I left them dark because they acted as a natural vignette with the dark cloud above to highlight the parliamentary library.
Thanks for your interest and I am looking forward to your edits.

[Shadowman]

Nice effort, I looked at your original and there was some change regarding light but in spots very similar. I think what interested me most was zooming in to see some of the details you were able to capture.

[Dave Humphries]

Is it me, or is there a possibility that it is slightly squashed horizontally? (or conversely; stretched vertically)

There are a couple of things that look (to me) a bit too tall/thin; namely the statue over on the LHS and the clock face on the tower of the parliament building, but having said that, I could believe it true of the entire image.

Hi Andre,

Thanks for the PM, further to my reply to you, I have now done some investigation.
Your original file is 15682 x 4335 pixels, giving an Aspect Ratio (AR) of 3.6:1.

It seems that somewhere, presumably in the html5? the code that displays images on the forum, which I believe is written by vBulletin, not us, that there's a Max Size limit on images of 9999 pixels. This only affects our experience in the following circumstances;

a) we view the image in the LyteBox feature and
b) we click the box icon (or hit "F" on keyboard) to expand it to 'Full size'

It then expands beyond our screen size and allows us to pan around with a mouse (click and drag) to examine the fine detail

The aspect ratio distortion would appear to be browser dependent:

Internet Explorer 11 and FireFox (52.0) both seem to limit the width to 9999 pixels, but leave the height unaltered at 4335, giving an AR of 2.3:1
Chrome and Edge however, both seem to scale the images, reducing both height and width to preserve the original Aspect Ratio.

So that's interesting, since the problem seems to be something the browser should fix.
FireFox especially, but I doubt Microsoft will fix IE11 as they'd like us all to use Edge anyway.

That said, if the forum (or LyteBox?) code didn't have the Max Size limited to 9999, it also wouldn't be a problem.

Ditto if you hadn't produced such a large image. I'm kidding, although it is a fact

HTH, Dave

I'll draw this to the attention of the CiC site owner, as much so he understands what happens in extreme cases, but personally, I'm not expecting a fix; given that happens so rarely and that it's another of those things beyond his direct control; reliant on him persuading other bodies to fix things.

[IzzieK]

I will come back to this when I see the original pic. I saw the edited version of Richard though..

OK, so I took a look finally! What a beautiful place! Nice shot. Have to be seen in lytebox to appreciate.

[Round Tuit]

Hi Andre,

That said, if the forum (or LyteBox?) code didn't have the Max Size limited to 9999, it also wouldn't be a problem.

Ditto if you hadn't produced such a large image. I'm kidding, although it is a fact

Thank you for investigating this problem.

A third option would be to post a smaller image and a link to the large one. That should work in any browser and would not require any modification to already written code.

André

[Round Tuit]

Nice effort, I looked at your original and there was some change regarding light but in spots very similar. I think what interested me most was zooming in to see some of the details you were able to capture.

I also find scrolling around the full size image to be very interesting. If you look carefully at the architectural details of the buildings, particularly at the Peace Tower or the parliamentary library, you will notice that they are much clearer than the original. The improvements at the far left of the image, for some reason, are not so pronounced.

André

[Round Tuit]

Excellent image; wonderful sharpness; i magnified it and scrolled left right as well as up down and it is sharp everywhere.....

Thank you Nandakumar, sharpness is what I was looking for.

[skitterbug]

I went to your Panorama Take 2 link and found that it is filled with wonderful detail - sharp!

[Round Tuit]

Thanks Izzie and Sandy

[Cantab]

I went to your Panorama Take 2 link and found that it is filled with wonderful detail - sharp!

I agree about the Panorama Take 2 link, a really spectacular photo.

How many images did you merge into the panorama?

[Round Tuit]

I agree about the Panorama Take 2 link, a really spectacular photo.

How many images did you merge into the panorama?

Hi Bruce,

I started out with 17 shots in portrait orientation with each shot overlaping the previous one by 40-50%. I merged them in PS CS4 which gave me a 17 layers file. I tried to save it but it exceeded the maximun file size of 4 Gb for tiff files so I flatened it, added a level layer and a smart object layer for sharpening and local contrast enhancement. The resulting file is just over 1 Gb. I cropped about 15% off the height and close to half off the width to get the panorama that I posted.

Thanks for your interest.

André