Montreal Again

Went downtown with the kids again and took a few pictures (412 - I wanted to experiment some more with panoramas).

I took a number of burst shots on the highway because I was curious what AutoStitch would do with them. This is 1 of 12 shots heading down Autoroute 15.
AutoStitch assembled them together in a sort of fish eye view.
This is one shot (out of 12) on Autoroute 20 heading into downtown.
This is the image retouched using GIMP (something similar to PhotoShop, but free). I straightened the image, cropped out the front of the car, eliminated some window reflections and adjusted the colours to make them brighter and more vivid. I think it came out pretty well. Total retouching time was about 30 minutes.
This is one shot (out of 34) inside the Ville-Marie Tunnel. I liked the colours and the blur.
This is a retouched version of the image (once again using GIMP). The image was straightened and cropped, the colours and contrast were adjusted and front of the car was painted out and the white lines extended. I am not happy with the white lines on the left side. It was pretty difficult to do using a mouse, as well, I could not find a 100% suitable tool for painting in the lines. I did not crop out the front of the car because I wanted the blurred orange cone on the far bottom left. Total retouching time was about 45 minutes.
This piece of art was AutoStitched together from 6 vertically panned shots. It appears AutoStitch expects panoramic shots to be horizontal, not vertical.
It was a quick fix to simply rotate the images 90 degrees clockwise and then AutoStitch them together. I then rotated the panoramic image 90 degrees counterclockwise to get the original.
This is a panned shot of a pool outside Place des Arts. I sat at the corner and clicked away (12 shots). As you can see, there is some fisheye distortion. Again, stiched together using AutoStitch.
Some graffiti for Ingrid and breal who have expressed interest in graffiti. This was stiched together from 8 images using AutoStitch.
I also took a few pictures of some of the flowers in our flower bed. A pretty tulip. Unretouched.
Some blue flowers. Unretouched.
Another pretty blue flower (also comes in pink). Unretouched.
A few days ago I tried my hand at retouching an older photo that I wished was more vibrant (I had taken it on a cloudy Autumn day). Unfortunately there is not much dynamic range in the picture so enhancing it was a bit tough. This is the original.
This is made a bit brighter, with heavy saturation of the reds and yellows. A few minutes retouching time with GIMP.
This is the same as the above, except I removed all the blues and cyans. Again, just a few minutes to retouch using GIMP.


Photo credits: Richard of Forbidden Planet.

All images were taken on the Island of Montreal.

[Update 26-May-2008 @ 21:30 - fixed some typos and grammatical errors because, clearly, I can't write.]

Comments

Travis Erwin said…
Interesting stuff. I'm gonna have to download GIMP and do some playing myself.
these are really fantastic richard. i'm really enjoying your pictures. do you have a flickr account?
Richard said…
travis: GIMP is pretty good. I have only recently started trying to use it for more than just cropping pictures. I can't compare it to PhotoShop because I have never used it. However, it seems to be pretty similar. I've been reading a bunch of PhotoShop books recently and the techniques are easily transferrable. If I get stuck I just google on the porcessing technique I am looking for and add 'GIMP' to the search terms (and sometimes 'tutorial') and uisually manage to find what I'm looking for.

A handy tool is the 'Stamp' tool (Clone in PhotoShop). It allows you to sample a region of the image and then stamp it over regions you want to eliminate (that's how I got rid of the reflections).

ingrid: thanks! Sorry, but I do not have a flickr account (though I do sometimes brwose through yours). I'm pretty much a Luddite when it comes to actually using technology. However, you can always click on the 'picture' label and find more pictures I've posted.
KayMac said…
All this is waaayyyy beyond me...I can barely click and shoot, and on occassion have cropped a photo.

The tunnel was my fav.
B said…
Ooo... I really like these. Thank you for the graffiti shot. I also really like the long exposure in the tunnel. I know I say this every time but I do want to try more of these photo techniques. That last photo is so great and it was fun to see how you punched up the colors of the trees and then changed the sky. Great stuff!
Anonymous said…
Very nice retouching work there ;D Smiled when i saw the unretouched blue flowers. The first bulbous ones are grape hyacinth, the second a standard hyacinth. Just one of the very popular imported bulb-flowers which feature where i live, only just starting to sprout their first few stalks & bound to blossom during our late winter/early spring.
Richard said…
kaymac: I think you could manage just fine. The software is a bit overwhelming at first, (I had it on my computer for over a year before doing more than just cropping images with it).

breal: I carry a camera with me almost everywhere, so I take the opportunity to take pictures. Sofia calls me "paparazzi". I even will stop the car to get out and shoot something I like.

aka r'racquel: thanks for identifying the flowers. Now I know what they are. I had forgotten from when we got tehm last year.

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