Photoshop Speed Art Video: “Node 4D”

This is one early example of a 4D composite I took in Albany, NY in 2013. I returned to this location at least 4 or 5 times to capture the scene in different lighting conditions. The final shot is the result of combining hundreds of exposures. The panoramic stitching is made up of about three stacked vertical rows and eight horizontal frames from a 24mm lens. Doing this enables the final shot to be extremely high resolution, in this case almost 15,000 horizontal pixels, which would enable it to be printed over 17 feet wide (at 72ppi) without losing quality. The only downside of creating such massive blends is the amount of data it consumes. My Photoshop file was over 25gb large which made it very slow to work on at times.

This time-lapse video shows my 30-hour editing process condensed into 4 minutes. The video only shows about 25% of my actual process, I slimmed out some of the fat so you can only see the adjustments that contributed to the final result. There is a lot of experimentation and trial & error that leads to a 4D composite. I wrote a few subtitles at the bottom that describe each stage of the process in simple terms. Enjoy watching me work in fast forward!

Albany, NY. 2013.