Welp, I’m back from Alaska. Had a great time and got to make some very nice pictures. I ended up with only 4 shooting days out of 9 possible due to completely overcast skies and rain. That was a bit of a bummer, but allowed for a little down time that really needed.
I shot a handful of panoramas that should turn out well. One of them is 18″ by 128″. Not sure how I’m going to print that. I also shot a couple of panos in HDR, with three exposures for each stitchable image. Should be pretty nice when I actually get around to putting it together.
I’m going to buy AutoPano Pro and Photomatix tone mapping software. I was going to get Calico for the stitching, which also does a great job, but AutoPano has a boatload more features, including layered PSD export which is boss. It also has it’s share of wonkiness, including menu items not being completely localized into english. But it makes a pretty stitch. And features are being added constantly. Hopefully more robust HDR toning features are on the way.
I had to buy more ram for my G5 tower, as opening 1GB photoshop files was just crushing my machine. 4GB of RAM has helped considerably. But it all reality I should be closer to 6 to avoid swapping.
I discovered while in Alaska, that my Macbook Pro has a substantially improved driver for my epson 2200. I tried to update the driver on my G5 only to learn that the newest driver for all of Epson’s pro line of printers is available only for intel Macs. This has been a bone of contention for me for a while. Epson is terrible about updating their print drivers for Mac, and they often lag behind their PC counterparts. O-well. I guess it’s another reason to check out a Mac Pro.