The natural weathering process of the rock has resulted in many rock art paintings becoming very faded, and sometimes not even visible to the naked eye. ACT has been using image enhancement techniques developed by Jon Harman to go back in time and reveal these lost images.
A complete site enhancement was done at the Eland Cave site in the Drakensberg Mountains. HDR digital images were taken in RAW format covering the entire site. This involved the systematic coverage of the walls, without prejudice of existing paintings. Very high resolution panorama HDR RAW images were taken of the whole site using the Nodal Ninja camera mount. Between 500 and 800 images were taken per section, these images were then stitched together to form one ultra-high resolution panorama. The images were pre-processed and enhanced before being run through the DStretch image enhancement programme. Post-processing was then performed using a range of photo editing and enhancement techniques. The panoramas were then uploaded to the web for easy viewing. Below is an example of a ‘before’ and ‘after’ panorama.
To view the entire collection, please click on the following link:http://www.gigapan.com/galleries/13397/gigapans