The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor

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I'm in the process of getting back into photography which will mean a new camera, more on that in a later post. But the first step for me was a new computer, one with the horsepower to handle a modern day camera and its RAW files. Along with the computer comes a new 4K monitor. 4K is great for media consumption, right? Your characters on your favorite show or movie really look detailed and realistic. Scenery looks wonderful. Everything looks great, right? Wrong. You know what doesn't look great? That photo I took in 2012 that I thought was sharp but is very much not. I transferred over my past catalogs of photos over to Lightroom Classic and eagerly began opening up some of my favorite photos. At first I was happy with how the colors looked and how the scene was composed. Then I noticed it was a little soft. Well I had just gotten a new contacts prescription so that must be it. Changed to my glasses and the photos were even blurrier! I went through photo after photo and most ca

Beach Grass Redux (Photocentric)

I was looking over my library on Aperture, in the mood to process some HDRs, when I came across the source photos of my earlier Beach Grass post. I really enjoyed this panorama and then I noticed I had shot it with RAWs and JPEGs using the camera's Panorama Assist function. I realized I could scratch two things off my photography to do list: a) process an HDR shot using one photo, and b) create an HDR panorama. So I got settled in to start the process.

First was deciding on the process. Should I HDR each source shot first, then merge into a panorama? That didn't seem a good idea as I couldn't guarantee the panorama would look uniform at the end. Plus I didn't really want to process 6 separate shots. So after adjusting the exposure in Aperture for +2, 0, and -2 I went to Photoshop to make 3 panoramas. I was nervous that Photoshop would render each one differently, but got lucky that, as far as I could tell, they were the same. Then I brought the 3 source panoramas into Photomatix and finished it off in Topaz Adjust.

I really like the finished photo. It brings a lot of detail out from the clouds that was missing in the previous version, and gives the photo a sense of drama to it. I hope you like it.

Beach Grass Redux

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The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor