Like Matt, I was outside last night battling some gusty winds in an attempt to generate a Moon mosaic using the Canon 40D with the Tak 1.6x Extender on the Mewlon 180 F12, giving an F19.2 system.
I had to shoot 6 panels to cover all the Lunar real estate, with very generous overlaps to give Photoshop CS4 something to work with. CS4 has amazing Auto-Align and Auto-Blend functions that made this mosaic very easy to produce.
I produced a B&W version (1600x1700) and a slightly smaller colour saturated (1516x1612) version.
Love the saturated image, Dennis. I have a mosaic to assemble myself... 15 avis collected on the DMK41 covering the whole visible moon from a couple of nights ago...
I’ve been a little jaded astronomically of late, just not motivated or willing to take on any challenging projects. It was an absolute pleasure to use the large sensor of the 40D and the automated routines in CS4 to produce the mosaic.
I think my days of labouring with 640x480 pixel panels and manually stitched mosaics may well be over!
I’ve been a little jaded astronomically of late, just not motivated or willing to take on any challenging projects. It was an absolute pleasure to use the large sensor of the 40D and the automated routines in CS4 to produce the mosaic.
I think my days of labouring with 640x480 pixel panels and manually stitched mosaics may well be over!
Cheers
Dennis
Well, we do this hobby for pleasure, so when the shine goes off a part of it, it's perfectly valid to move on to something else ... a new challenge or just something different.
Well, we do this hobby for pleasure, so when the shine goes off a part of it, it's perfectly valid to move on to something else ... a new challenge or just something different.
Love the saturated image Dennis, although the mono is really nice as well. How did you do the saturated image may I ask?
Dave
Hi David
In CS3 or CS4, I copy the Background Layer and then Saturate it around 90% then Blend it in as Saturation and I can then adjust its opacity until I obtain the desired effect. I usually have a Sharp Layer on top (Smart Sharpen, 200% at 0.5 pixels), set to Luminosity and 50% Opacity just to give the final image a bit of life.
The mosaic is made up of 6 panes with each pane itself being made up of 3 sub-frames. I shot each sub-frame at 1/30 sec at ISO200 and then used CS4 to Auto-Align and then Auto-Blend the 3 sub-frames to produce a final pane for the mosaic.
From what I observed of the process, the Auto-Blend procedure appeared to take the best/sharpest details from each of the 3 sub-frames and generate an optimised composite – quite a nice feature!
I then used the Auto-Align and Auto-Blend procedures on the 6 panes to generate the final mosaic and once again, it seems the best/sharpest areas of each pane was selected for the final image with CS4 also adjusting the tones.
