Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Montserrat Panorama

 
A multi-segment panoramic photo from the summit of St Jerome on Montserrat
 
Edit 3 by Diliff

Edit 1 by Fcb981

Edit 2 by Antilived

Reason
This is a interesting, high resolution panoramic image from the Summit of Saint Jerome (1236 metres / 4055 feet) on Montserrat, a mountain one hour north-west of Barcelona. It shows from left to right: the view to the valley floor below, the communications antennae, the topography of the mountain, and the steps on the approach to the summit.
Articles this image appears in
Montserrat (mountain)
Creator
Diliff
Nominator
Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs)
  • SupportDiliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 11:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support- Wow. JorcogaYell! 12:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support What else can I say but "another flawless panorama by Diliff"! --Pharaoh Hound (talk) 13:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Diliff, do you give any seminars near portland???? ;p -Fcb981 15:54, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support (edit 3), even though I think the deepest shadows are a bit too inky... Some curve and /or level adjustment could easily fix that. --Janke | Talk 16:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree with you. It didn't look that bad on my home monitor but the shadows do look a bit too deep on my work screen (which I place less faith in, but its hard to know for certain how things are going to look on various displays).. The shadows have already been somewhat lifted but it is quite difficult to get the perfect balance with such a contrasty scene (the far right was starting to face into the sun on a hazy day and was difficult to control the blowout of highlights in the sky). Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 16:10, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Well, you could try using an "adjustment level", letting the adjustments affect only the lower part of the image. I did a (too) quick test, which I won't upload, but I used two layers of your image, one in which I drastically lifted the shadows, and then an adjustment layer to selectively affect the end result. In this way, I could get the shadow contrast lowered without affecting the sky or mid-tones at all. (You might try it - you can do a lot with layers, in fact, I've "saved" almost unsalvageable underexposed 35mm slides by making two scans with different settings (one scan for highlights, one for shadows), and combining them with layers...) --Janke | Talk 17:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Janke makes a good point. What I find works for preventing blown highlighs in the sky is to place a low power negative Omni off the image where you dont want to blow the highlights then adjust levels. I did that here: [1]. I didn't spend much time on it and it became a bit over exposed so if you want you can edit yours yourself and add as an alternate. If you like mine you can do that one too. -Fcb981 17:31, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Even with the shadows, this is a stunning image. Trebor 17:40, 17 January 2007 (UTC) Support edit 3 as better. Trebor 01:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support. The shadow issue. --Tewy 00:19, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Uploaded another edit, improving shadow detail without affecting highlights (much). --antilivedT | C | G 07:19, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support original per above, however, the two edits look very hazy and lack contrast. While the shadows are a bit "inky", I think too much is lost in the edits. --Cody.Pope 08:06, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Agree with that statement... If the shadows are too dark (and everyone is probably right on that), I will re-process the RAW files and re-stitch it. Increasing shadow detail from the JPG is not quite as effective. I'll have a go tonight and see what I can come up with. Hold off on the edits guys (both of them look pretty similar to my eyes). Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 09:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support original - the edits lose the impact of the original, which is quite a stunning photo -137.222.10.67 14:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support original only cut it out with the edits. Noclip 15:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: these two edits went way too far - let's see what Diliff can do. Suggest we delete the other edits when his gets on-line... --Janke | Talk 17:41, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well, I struggled to vastly improve the shadow detail over the original as even the original raw files contained very little additional information in the shadows. However, with a lot of tweaking, I was able to come up with something in between the previous edits and the original. Its still not perfect and some may prefer the original (the tones are a bit different between versions as it was a complete re-process and re-stitch from scratch and the settings were not identical). I found it hard to create an edit that improved shadow detail significantly over the original without overcooking it and losing pleasing tones in the image. Edit 3 is my best attempt at a compromise. If I had the chance to reshoot, I would have increased the exposure slightly (I was worried about blowing highlights but instead lost shadow detail at the other end). Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 23:18, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  Support Original Only. Very good as usual! --Fir0002 23:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My vote is still for the original only --Fir0002 09:36, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:Montserrat Mountains, Catalonia, Spain - Jan 2007.jpg --KFP (talk | contribs) 13:06, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]