Creating Panoramic Images

How to capture and create images for panoramic display is a popular topic with many of our users.   This article discusses creating panoramic images using a standard camera and lens that are viewable without plug-in or any special client software except a standard Internet Browser. 

A panoramic display is created by first capturing and creating an image that covers the wide field that you wish to show and then displaying it by "panning" over it.  ImageMatics PE and Still Motion products provide easy to use pan effects which can accomplish this.

Most panoramic images are created from one or more still photos that are "stitched together" using the stitch function provided by many Imaging and Paint packages.  The example here was done using PhotVista which works well. The individual images where taken at 1200x1600 (a 3 mega pixel camera at least).  The resulting panorama created from the seven segments was 4117x1557. The SWF was created using PE with the image reduced to about one third the original size.

Typical panoramic displays are created by stitching together between 2 and over a dozen still images.

Below are seven images (scaled down) taken to create the panoramic room scene below.

A tripod is all you need to create panoramas up to 360-degree complete rotations.  No special lenses are needed.  A lens that is wide angled enough to capture some of the floor and ceiling is sufficient.  Mounting your camera in the vertical position is a recommended way of accomplishing this without using a very wide angled lens.  Avoiding the use of very wide angle lens eliminates concerns about “fish eye” distortion which is seen in many 360 degree “virtual tours” created with proprietary systems.

Stitched panoramic Image made from the seven images above.

Click Here for the next page and see the animated panorama.