Erie Basin Marina at Daybreak Panorama

Being outdoors is the best part of landscape photography for me. Whether it's at sunrise or sunset, day or night, summer or winter, it's always great to be there and witness whatever Mother Nature prepared for the occasion. That sentiment often leads to photos piling up on the hard drive without seeing the light of the day. So, once in a while, processing, printing, posting, sharing, or other forms of presentation are necessary. And not only necessary, it is the essential final step that allows photographers to share their vision with the rest of the world.

As far as post-processing goes, technology is wonderful and allows for things that would otherwise be pretty difficult and expensive. Digital sensors are getting better every year and capture a great deal of dynamic range in noise free high resolution in all kinds of light. And then software in post processing gives you the freedom to take the possibilities even further. HDR allows to further expand the already great dynamic range, focus stacking makes it possible to inject a depth of field otherwise possible only with view cameras or tilt-shift lenses, and finally, stitching multiple images makes it possible to capture extremely wide panoramas, like here.

This photo was created from 10 vertical photos stitched together into a 122 megapixel panorama using PTGUI. I have been using this software for years and have been extremely happy with it. A few years back, when I first bought into it, it seemed to be the only SW doing a great job automatically and also allowing for ways to manually assist the program when it did get in trouble. That's probably the reason I am still on that version, 8.3.10. It's been simply solid. I am not completely sure what additional benefits the current 9.1.7 version brings. One of them allows you to reduce the number of steps needed to do a stitched HDR panorama since the program can do it for you.

What's in the future? A stacked focus stitched HDR panorama in camera? A depth of field dial on the camera? Probably, and a lot more.

Have fun both creating and presenting your photographs!