3 I rarely cheat but...

[akdrone]

I do the normal exposure/sharpen/noise reduction to photos but almost never go much beyond that. The other day I failed to place a pano shot properly and the result was not good. The upper left corner is lightroom trying to fill in for my failure. I can chop off some of the left side and lose the small hill in the distance and everything to the left of it or I can replace the entire sky. Inasmuch as my audience is all of 30 or 40 people for most of my videos on youtube (making a living with youtube seems to be a problem...) I think I'm going to cheat and replace the sky. If I do it I don't know for sure which sky I will use (using photoshop to do the replacement) but thought folks might enjoy piling on some harsh words for fun. Don't use the photo at all? Cut off the left side? Here is the failed pano above and a possible replacement below. If this makes it into a short video on youtube (and linked here) ...you will know the secret cheat sauce if you see it. Pile it on. I can take it. Get creative.

 

[AlanL]

I would be inclined to lighten up the new sky a bit and cut back on the sky saturation as well to better match the light on the mountains.

 

[akdrone]

I would be inclined to lighten up the new sky a bit and cut back on the sky saturation as well to better match the light on the mountains.

Ahh...a fix for the fakery. Good suggestion!

 

[BaldyBoyBilly]

I do the normal exposure/sharpen/noise reduction to photos but almost never go much beyond that. The other day I failed to place a pano shot properly and the result was not good. The upper left corner is lightroom trying to fill in for my failure. I can chop off some of the left side and lose the small hill in the distance and everything to the left of it or I can replace the entire sky. Inasmuch as my audience is all of 30 or 40 people for most of my videos on youtube (making a living with youtube seems to be a problem...) I think I'm going to cheat and replace the sky. If I do it I don't know for sure which sky I will use (using photoshop to do the replacement) but thought folks might enjoy piling on some harsh words for fun. Don't use the photo at all? Cut off the left side? Here is the failed pano above and a possible replacement below. If this makes it into a short video on youtube (and linked here) ...you will know the secret cheat sauce if you see it. Pile it on. I can take it. Get creative.
View attachment 161770

If you have access to photoshop, give a try with “content aware fill”. It has proven to be far superior in “repairing” this type of issue for me than LR. IMHO, better to repair original than full replacement.

 

[AlanL]

If you have access to photoshop, give a try with “content aware fill”. It has proven to be far superior in “repairing” this type of issue for me than LR. IMHO, better to repair original than full replacement.

Fully agree - I use LR for a lot of my adjustments but almost never for any kind of spot (or larger) repairs. Not sure why this action is so poor in LR/ACR but it is and PS is far better for the task.

 

[Deleted member 170519]

I sometimes do cheat a little in photoshop but I try not to do very much. I try to keep the original photo in mind. Example.. I recently shot a pano on a clear day. I had a cpl on the lens. The corners of the photos showed a little darker than the center on each frame so when stitched together it looks awful. It was a cloudless day, so I ran a layer of the sky with a cloudless sky option in photoshop. The scene was almost the same as I originally saw it only the bad part of the sky was fixed. Beats throwing away all the shots and I managed to salvage what I had.

Before.

After

 

[BaldyBoyBilly]

Sometimes when I shoot panos w my M3 I get vignetting on each image. I load them into LR or PS before stitching which removes the vignette.
Might be worth a try with your CPL images.

 

[Deleted member 170519]

Sometimes when I shoot panos w my M3 I get vignetting on each image. I load them into LR or PS before stitching which removes the vignette.
Might be worth a try with your CPL images.

With my example above, I didnt set it up properly to save the raw files so the disaster stitching was from what the drone stitched together. I normally have that set, but for some reason it decided not to create a panorama folder to put the raw files in. Its just good to know that sometimes these photos can be salvaged

 

[akdrone]

I sometimes do cheat a little in photoshop but I try not to do very much. I try to keep the original photo in mind. Example.. I recently shot a pano on a clear day. I had a cpl on the lens. The corners of the photos showed a little darker than the center on each frame so when stitched together it looks awful. It was a cloudless day, so I ran a layer of the sky with a cloudless sky option in photoshop. The scene was almost the same as I originally saw it only the bad part of the sky was fixed. Beats throwing away all the shots and I managed to salvage what I had.

Before. View attachment 161776

After View attachment 161772

that looks like a 360 but if I do anything in PS to an original 360 image it's 360 quality is stripped. I found an "injection" program that can sometimes reset it as 360 but I just don't bother. Appreciate the tip.

 

[Deleted member 170519]

that looks like a 360 but if I do anything in PS to an original 360 image it's 360 quality is stripped. I found an "injection" program that can sometimes reset it as 360 but I just don't bother. Appreciate the tip.

It is a 180

 

[JavaJack]

I do the normal exposure/sharpen/noise reduction to photos but almost never go much beyond that. The other day I failed to place a pano shot properly and the result was not good. The upper left corner is lightroom trying to fill in for my failure. I can chop off some of the left side and lose the small hill in the distance and everything to the left of it or I can replace the entire sky. Inasmuch as my audience is all of 30 or 40 people for most of my videos on youtube (making a living with youtube seems to be a problem...) I think I'm going to cheat and replace the sky. If I do it I don't know for sure which sky I will use (using photoshop to do the replacement) but thought folks might enjoy piling on some harsh words for fun. Don't use the photo at all? Cut off the left side? Here is the failed pano above and a possible replacement below. If this makes it into a short video on youtube (and linked here) ...you will know the secret cheat sauce if you see it. Pile it on. I can take it. Get creative.
View attachment 161770

If you have access to photoshop, give a try with “content aware fill”. It has proven to be far superior in “repairing” this type of issue for me than LR. IMHO, better to repair original than full replacement.

I agree that Photoshop Content Aware fill is a great repair tool. Select any area to remove with the lasso tool, no feathering necessary and hit shift_delete in photoshop and select content aware remove. PS will magically fill the area with adjacent pixels and blend beautifully You can do a small area or large area. Another option is DaVinci Resolve. The new version has a sky replacement tool. You can either use a new sky photo for the replacement sky or a synthesized sky with clouds, every parameter for skies adjustable, color of sky, height if horizon, texture id clouds and scale, shape, etc. I have the paid version of Resolve but I’m pretty sure this new tool is available in the free version. Lots if Youtube tutorials how to do a sky replacement in Resolve.

 

[Dale D]

I do the normal exposure/sharpen/noise reduction to photos but almost never go much beyond that. The other day I failed to place a pano shot properly and the result was not good. The upper left corner is lightroom trying to fill in for my failure. I can chop off some of the left side and lose the small hill in the distance and everything to the left of it or I can replace the entire sky. Inasmuch as my audience is all of 30 or 40 people for most of my videos on youtube (making a living with youtube seems to be a problem...) I think I'm going to cheat and replace the sky. If I do it I don't know for sure which sky I will use (using photoshop to do the replacement) but thought folks might enjoy piling on some harsh words for fun. Don't use the photo at all? Cut off the left side? Here is the failed pano above and a possible replacement below. If this makes it into a short video on youtube (and linked here) ...you will know the secret cheat sauce if you see it. Pile it on. I can take it. Get creative.
View attachment 161770

I do the normal exposure/sharpen/noise reduction to photos but almost never go much beyond that. The other day I failed to place a pano shot properly and the result was not good. The upper left corner is lightroom trying to fill in for my failure. I can chop off some of the left side and lose the small hill in the distance and everything to the left of it or I can replace the entire sky. Inasmuch as my audience is all of 30 or 40 people for most of my videos on youtube (making a living with youtube seems to be a problem...) I think I'm going to cheat and replace the sky. If I do it I don't know for sure which sky I will use (using photoshop to do the replacement) but thought folks might enjoy piling on some harsh words for fun. Don't use the photo at all? Cut off the left side? Here is the failed pano above and a possible replacement below. If this makes it into a short video on youtube (and linked here) ...you will know the secret cheat sauce if you see it. Pile it on. I can take it. Get creative.
View attachment 161770

AKDrone:

I would never call using software on a photo "cheating." Call me whatever you want, but I retouch every single image I send out. I make heavy use of AI masking in Photoshop. It is the best thing that has ever happened to my photography. In this instance,I would do a sky replacement (you can pick nice fluffy clouds as one of the standard skies). Then, I would use masking on the sky separately from the mountains (I right click on "SKY" to get invert. which allows you to mask and retouch the mountains. Here is an exam I just did yesterday while I am here at a desert resort south of Abu Dhabi.Every single part of this image was masked and adjusted with multiple sliders.In the original.
The sun was a white blob, the dunes had no details, the sky was bland and unsharp, etc.

Your other option, I agree with above is to select the defective area with a lasso, then on top menu select "edit>content aware fill>return>command D.

Dale
Miami but writing now from United Arab Emirates ,the Empty Quarter Desert.

 

[JoelP]

I agree that Photoshop Content Aware fill is a great repair tool. Select any area to remove with the lasso tool, no feathering necessary and hit shift_delete in photoshop and select content aware remove. PS will magically fill the area with adjacent pixels and blend beautifully You can do a small area or large area. Another option is DaVinci Resolve. The new version has a sky replacement tool. You can either use a new sky photo for the replacement sky or a synthesized sky with clouds, every parameter for skies adjustable, color of sky, height if horizon, texture id clouds and scale, shape, etc. I have the paid version of Resolve but I’m pretty sure this new tool is available in the free version. Lots if Youtube tutorials how to do a sky replacement in Resolve.

I had no idea that Resolve had sky replacement and will have to check this out.

 

[JimSteadman]

Like many who have responded, I frequently use content aware fill and find that it works well..

What struck me most about the replacement image was that the clouds in the initial image were cumulus clouds, as I would expect in the initial photo, but the replacement is a cirrus cloud. Cirrus clouds, in my experience are always very high altitude clouds and would not normally appear at the altitude shown in the replacement photo. Your latitude may have something to do with this. I have been further north than you are now, but most of that time the sky was either cloudy or dark, so I don't have any real experience. But a cirrus cloud as you depicted it telegraphed to me that it was placed there by the photographer, not nature.

 

[Kolman Rosenberg]

AKDrone:

I would never call using software on a photo "cheating." Call me whatever you want, but I retouch every single image I send out. I make heavy use of AI masking in Photoshop. It is the best thing that has ever happened to my photography. In this instance,I would do a sky replacement (you can pick nice fluffy clouds as one of the standard skies). Then, I would use masking on the sky separately from the mountains (I right click on "SKY" to get invert. which allows you to mask and retouch the mountains. Here is an exam I just did yesterday while I am here at a desert resort south of Abu Dhabi.Every single part of this image was masked and adjusted with multiple sliders.In the original.
The sun was a white blob, the dunes had no details, the sky was bland and unsharp, etc.

Your other option, I agree with above is to select the defective area with a lasso, then on top menu select "edit>content aware fill>return>command D.

Dale
Miami but writing now from United Arab Emirates ,the Empty Quarter Desert.

I agree and as many here would know, improving an image is not cheating, it's art. The only time it would be "cheating" and in fact outright wrong, would be if used photojournalistically.

 

[tuxon64]

I've you're going to "cheat", go big. Plus the clouds are blown out in the original, won't be able to recover that.

 

[Robert Prior]

I prefer the original sky. The second one doesn't match the scene. Also, the mountains disappear into the sky.

I used inpainting with Affinity Photo to do this in about a minute. Could have done the same thing with clone and blur brushes but it would have taken longer.

 

[jephoto]

I would be inclined to lighten up the new sky a bit and cut back on the sky saturation as well to better match the light on the mountains.

And better separation of sky & mountain tops.

 

[New England Droning]

I do the normal exposure/sharpen/noise reduction to photos but almost never go much beyond that. The other day I failed to place a pano shot properly and the result was not good. The upper left corner is lightroom trying to fill in for my failure. I can chop off some of the left side and lose the small hill in the distance and everything to the left of it or I can replace the entire sky. Inasmuch as my audience is all of 30 or 40 people for most of my videos on youtube (making a living with youtube seems to be a problem...) I think I'm going to cheat and replace the sky. If I do it I don't know for sure which sky I will use (using photoshop to do the replacement) but thought folks might enjoy piling on some harsh words for fun. Don't use the photo at all? Cut off the left side? Here is the failed pano above and a possible replacement below. If this makes it into a short video on youtube (and linked here) ...you will know the secret cheat sauce if you see it. Pile it on. I can take it. Get creative.
View attachment 161770

I'm not going to read all the comments and don't really care, but... It is your art, simple as that and if you improve on what was there, so be it. Although I agree with one comment the light in the new sky doesn't work.
There is a reason I launch above my home whenever the skies are interesting, I now have hundreds of sky shots with different cloud formations and more importantly the light from different directions.
If the result makes you happy, then who cares what the rest think...

 

[CraigVMN]

Fixed it - No one will ever suspect that corner has been altered.