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Here’s the first pano I’ve stitched together since I upgraded to Photoshop CS4, consisting of 9 images I took from the 20th floor balcony at the Hyatt Maui Regency last September. While the process for PhotoMerge in CS4 isn’t that much different, what few new options they do have and whatever improvements they might have made behind the scenes seem to have worked better than what I was used to in CS3.

Having a newly installed OS certainly helped the speed of it, too.

The source images for this set were taken a little later in the morning, which meant the sky was more blown out than I had hoped. A few minutes after capturing these images, I dropped the frame down taking out the sky and filling the frame with just the resort areas below. I used those captures for this HDR shot instead, which I was really happy with.

Photo: Looking down from the 20th floor at the Hyatt Maui Regency early in the morning.

Not only have my “get it right in camera” skills come a long way in the last year or so, but I continue to get creative and pick up new skills here and there in Photoshop.

The above image is a creative work of the source image down below. It was taken early in the morning on the grounds of the Hyatt Regency Maui during our stay there for the Maui Photo Festival last month.

Honestly, I can’t say that I pre-visualized the above result when I took the source image, which was one of the keynote sessions from Scott Bourne at Photo Focus at the festival. It is a case, however, of not settling for or ignoring an otherwise mundane shot and being a little creative with it. Not something I do all the time, since I typically try to “get it right” first, but it’s still fun from time to time.

Source Image

A shy little penguin that lives in a habitat set up in the main atrium at the Hyatt Regency Maui.  Yes, penguins in Maui, I know.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get tired or shooting the night skies when I visit Maui, or anywhere other than our home near Chicago with decent visibility.

About 2 years ago, I started reading more about Astrophotography, and not only did that help me pick up a few pointers on how to make these images come out better, but it also gave me a sense of what’s next if I want to continue down that path.

I’m referring to is shooting the skies and deep space with the aide of a telescope. Now, since I’m only about 15 minutes from downtown Chicago, I haven’t decided to spend the money on a decent telescope for this seeing as clear skies here show about 2% of what you see above.

Should the time come where we take up a more permanent residence elsewhere, like say Maui, it will definitely be something I want to look into more.