[jawsy]

This is a stitch of five images taken with an FA 50mm lens on a K20D back in 2011. 4 sec@F7.1, ISO400. It was an opportunity shot and I didn't have a tripod. All I could do was hold the camera hard onto the lookout railing. Unfortunately, the movement of people on the platform vibrated the railing a little bit.

I don't have PhotoShop (yet) but I'd like to know what can be done to tweak this image as I'd like to enlarge and frame it. The original images are RAW so there's plenty to play with. Despite the lack of tripod and issues with platform movement, the image is still surprisinglly sharp.

In addition to a critique, I'd also appreciate some samples on what I could do with some post processing.

Thanks in advance.

[Miguel]

Perth looks like a good looking modern city. I'm impressed you stitched this so cleanly without Photoshop.

There are several issues with this image:

-The lack of a tripod for a 4-second exposure of multiple images pretty much seals its fate. The larger it is enlarged, the larger the flaws such as motion blur become visible. Hard to tell that on a small resolution image on a computer monitor.
-The framing could be more tight. The bottom 20% of the shot consists of dark trees and highway illumination. Dark trees don't add anything in a night shot except more darkness; highways are kind of ordinary and the lighting is unattractive. What is appealing on cityscapes at night are the buildings and the colorful illumination reflecting off the water and being projected into the sky. So I would crop off a fair chunk of the bottom highways.
-I also think the focal length used was a little too short. The crop will help, but essentially the tall buildings appear too diminished from this perspective--their power to impress is greatly lessened, and you know, buildings make cityscape shots worthwhile.
-Also the exposure is too murky. There is very little color in this shot. In software you can boost the exposure, vibrance, clarity and up the darks some. This will increase the colorful floodlights from the tallest building and bring out the purple lighted building more. Of course the noise will be higher, and in an relatively older camera this is expected. Selectively treating the more obviously noisy bits (sky in parts) will help.

Hope this helps.

M

[rayallen]

Perth is a city with a good skyline and good vantage points from which it can be captured. You have made a good start with this image but it can be improved.

You don't need Photoshop for panos but it is still worth having. I create most of my panos with Microsoft ICE: Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor (ICE)
It is a good program and it's free.

I would be tempted to go back and repeat this image with a tripod. That will make a big difference. And go at the blue hour - between sunset and dark so that you get some colour in the sky rather than complete blackness.
You will get something like this:

[jawsy]

Thanks for the feedback gents. A trip back to Perth is probably out of the question for me, but the comment about the blue hour is dead on and if I recall I actually had control over that at the time; just never realized how much of a difference it would make and took too long to drive out there. As for the tripod, I simply didn't pack it ...

Miguel: The comment regarding re-cropping piqued my interest as it never even occurred to me. I played around with the image in Picasa a bit to crop and amp up the light spots (normally I rely on the Pentax photo lab software.) How much more control over selected areas of the image does PS offer over the Pentax software?

I've included a couple of close crops so you can see the degree (or lack thereof) of sharpness. I still can't figure out if the wavy headlights were from the cars or the wobbly platform!

Thanks for the feedback.

[rayallen]

How much more control over selected areas of the image does PS offer over the Pentax software?

The answer to that is IMMENSE control.

Your location as shown gives no indication of where in Australia you come from. But I understand why a trip back to Perth could be out of the question.
Your crop of the original image has improved it and you have gotten some colour in the sky. Keep trying.