Adventures in Panorama, Checkerboard Edition

I regaled my weekend audience with the results of my attempt to learn how to do panoramic photos using Photoshop. In a nutshell, you can take several pictures from left to right and then stitch them together horizontally or you can take several pictures from bottom to top and stitch them together vertically. But then I wondered: can I take a grid of pictures and stitch them together both horizontally and vertically? Just how smart is Photoshop, anyway?

Pretty smart! I tried it out today with a 2×6 grid of our new kitchen remodel and Photoshop breezed through it:

The red area is the best I could do with a single shot using the 24mm setting on my camera, and a wall prevented me from moving backward. The only two ways to show the whole kitchen are (a) purchasing a pro camera body and a $3,000 prime 12mm wide-angle lens or (b) using Photoshop. I think my choice was pretty obvious.

Panoramic stitching works best with, you know, panoramas. That is, scenes that are fairly distant, so that the distortion isn’t too bad to begin with and can be corrected fairly easily. Interior scenes are a whole different thing, and there’s really no way to avoid distortion entirely when objects are so close. You can see it in this picture in various places because I had to pick and choose which distortions to try and correct. I’m sure a pro could do better, but it’s not possible to correct everything. Also, I probably should have taken the picture in the morning to get truer, less ruddy lighting.

Anyway . . . green lower cabinets and cream upper cabinets. Some kind of engineered quartz stuff for the countertop, which is white with light gray flecks. New flooring throughout the entire house, a light brownish-gray that has coloring similar to old reclaimed wood. And a bunch of new appliances. Marian managed the whole operation, and my main contribution was the suggestion of green for the lower cabinets.

You love it, don’t you? You better. All negative comments will be ruthlessly deleted.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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