Magix Panoramastudio Manual

Manual

ii

c 2005-2008 Tobias Huellmandel, Tobias Huellmandel Software

MAGIX PanoramaStudio Manual

Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation. Apple and QuickTime are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Overview on MAGIX PanoramaStudio . . . . . . . . 1.2 System requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Program features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 How do I activate MAGIX PanoramaStudio powered

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2 Quickstart - Creating your first panorama

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3 Shooting the individual input images 3.1 Using either a digital or an analog camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 What to take into account while shooting the photos? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 Workflow Creation of a panorama 4.1 How to create a panorama project . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 How to import images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 How to edit images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Setting parameters for the stitching process . . . . . . 4.4.1 How to adjust the horizon . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.2 How to adjust the focal length . . . . . . . . . 4.4.3 More settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.4 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Creating wide angle or 360 degree panoramas . . . . . 4.6 Applying manual adjustments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.1 Which correction is to apply for which defect? 4.6.2 Adjust focal length and horizon . . . . . . . . . 4.6.3 Change image overlaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.4 Detail adjustments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.5 Control blending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.6 Adjust exposure correction . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 Cropping the panorama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.8 Finishing the panorama - Resizing and optimizing . . 4.9 Inserting hotspots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.10 Saving and printing the panorama . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 The user interface 5.1 The action toolbar . . . . . . . . 5.2 Other toolbars . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.1 The project toolbar . . . 5.2.2 The view toolbar . . . . . 5.2.3 The arrangement toolbar 5.2.4 The overview . . . . . . . 5.2.5 The task type bar . . . . 5.3 The menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.1 File menu . . . . . . . . . 5.3.2 View menu . . . . . . . . 5.3.3 Input images menu . . . .

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iv

CONTENTS

5.4

5.5 6 The 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9

5.3.4 Panorama menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.5 Window menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.6 Help menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The dialog boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.1 The Rotate image dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.2 The Resize images dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.3 The Image information dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.4 The Panorama properties dialog box . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.5 Perspective (rectilinear) projection of an image section 5.4.6 The Resize panorama dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.7 Filters for optimizing image quality . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.8 Print preview dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.9 The Save as QTVR Panorama dialog box . . . . . . . 5.4.10 The Save as Flash or Java panorama dialog box . . . 5.4.11 Advanced settings for the PanoramaStudio Viewer . . 5.4.12 The Save As Screensaver/.EXE dialog box . . . . . . 5.4.13 The Edit camera settings dialog box . . . . . . . . . . Keyboard shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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adjustment and editing modes The input images mode . . . . . . The horizon and focal length mode The image overlap mode . . . . . . The detail adjustments mode . . . The blending mode . . . . . . . . . The exposure mode . . . . . . . . . The crop mode . . . . . . . . . . . The hotspot mode . . . . . . . . . The panorama mode . . . . . . . .

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7 Configuring PanoramaStudio

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Index

59

Chapter 1

Introduction 1.1

Overview on MAGIX PanoramaStudio

PanoramaStudio enables you to generate wide angle panoramas as well as 360 degree panoramas. A sequence of ordinary overlapping images shot with a generic digital or analog camera is all you need to achieve outstanding results. The input images will be assembled seamlessly into a great panorama. Hence, panoramic photography isn’t an expensive privilege to professionals with high-end equipment anymore! PanoramaStudio focuses on best possible comfort with the automatic generation of high-quality panoramas. And still, full control of all steps throughout the entire stitching process will be maintained by offering exhaustive post-processing tools.

Figure 1.1: Automatically generated wide angle panorama The output options include the most common image file formats, interactive Java, Flash, and QuickTimeVR panoramas as well as screensavers and self-running panoramas. The integrated poster printing function allows you to print a panorama over multiple pages.

1

2

Introduction

1.2

System requirements

• supported systems: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista • free hard-disk space: 10MB for the program, at least 500MB temporary disk space for processing • main memory (RAM): 512 MB of RAM, (1 GB of RAM recommended) • CPU: min. 1 GHz Pentium III/IV and AMD Athlon respectively • graphics: resolution of at least 800x600 pixels at hi or true color • optional (for QuickTimeVR export functionality): Apple QuickTime Player, version 4.0 or later • optional (for Java export functionality): Java Runtime Environment (JRE), version 1.1 or later • optional (for playing Flash panoramas): Adobe Flash Player version 9 or higher

1.3

Program features

PanoramaStudio distinguishes itself by the following features: • seamlessly assemble individual images into wide angle or 360 degree panoramas • images may come from any ordinary camera - no high-end equipment necessary for panoramas • no tripod required necessarily for the shot • automatic stitching of the images • full 16 bit workflow for 16 bit images • functionality for printing posters (spanning several pages) • functionality for exporting QuickTimeVR panoramas • functionality for exporting Java panoramas • functionality for exporting Flash panoramas • functionality for exporting panoramas as screensaver or self-running program • supported image file formats (export): JPG, TIFF, PSD, BMP, PNG, PCX, RAS and TGA • supported image file formats (import): JPG, TIFF, PSD, BMP, PNG, PCX, RAS, IFF and TGA • support for numerous RAW file formats: DNG, CRW, NEF, CR2, RAW, MRW, DCR, ORF, ARW, PEF, ... • thumbnail previews while importing images • automatic detection of more than 1000 digital cameras based on their Exif information • automatic detection of Exif focal length for supported cameras • support for focal lengths from 13-400mm (35mm equivalent) • automatic focal length detection if required • automatic barrel/pincushion correction for wide angle lenses • automatic vignetting correction • possibility to completely edit and adjust all steps of the stitching after the automatic assembly of the panorama • exposure adjustment of the input images • automatic exposure correction of the panorama

1.4 Installation

3

• allows arbitrary position of the horizon →perspective correction • supports arbitrary rotating, scaling, and cropping of the input images • hotspot editing for QuickTimeVR, Flash, and Java panoramas →this allows links to other panoramas and websites • filters for post-processing image colors and sharpness of the created panoramic images • export of panoramic images as layered Photoshop file, as row of TIFFs, or as a Multipage TIFF

1.4

Installation

PanoramaStudio needs to be installed to your hard-disk. To start the installation procedure, execute the file PanoStudioSetupEn.exe and follow the instructions on your screen.

1.5

How do I activate MAGIX PanoramaStudio powered by TSHSoft.com trial version?

You can test MAGIX PanoramaStudio for 30 days without any limitations to the program. After this period a license for the program will need to be acquired or it will need to be deinstalled. When you purchase a license you will receive your personal activation code for MAGIX PanoramaStudio to unlock the full version of the program.

Along with the activation code you will receive: • The right to use PanoramaStudio without any time limit • Registration for all subsequent 1.x versions • Program functionality without shareware reminders • No more watermarks on exported panorama images • Free help with questions and problems

Order an activation code The activation code can be comfortably and above all securely ordered online from MAGIX. Navigate via the ”Create panorama...” function in the MAGIX software to ”More options...” to call up the product’s order page. Delivery of the personal activation code which proves that you are a registered user usually happens within 24 hours by email after payment.

Support If you experience any problems with your software, please get in touch with our support team: Support website: http://support.magix.net This website will lead you to the MAGIX user service page, which, among other things, contains the following free offers: • FAQs (frequently asked questions) and general tricks and tips. In most cases you’ll find the solution to your problem here. If not, use the Email support form: • E-mail support form. Via the special form you inform our support staff about your system. This information is used to solve your problems quickly and competently. Simply fill out and send with a mouse-click! • Support forum: You are not alone. Perhaps other users had a similar problem and can help you solve yours. Our support staff are also regular contributors.

4

Introduction

• Download section: Updates, improvements and patches are likewise offered free of charge via download Many problems you may experience are well-known to us, and which can be solved by downloading the latest patch. Besides patches, there are also wizards for checking and optimizing your system • Links: In the links list you will find the contact addresses of all the most important hardware manufacturers. You can also reach our support team by telephone:

UK:

0905 118 0888 (25p/min) (open Monday to Friday 9:00 - 16:00 GMT)

Denmark:

077345695 (open Monday to Friday 10:00 - 17:00 CET)

Finland:

0942597819 (open Monday to Friday 10:00 - 17:00 CET)

Norway:

021543223 (open Monday to Friday 10:00 - 17:00 CET)

Sweden:

0852507027 (open Monday to Friday 10:00 - 17:00 CET)

Email: mailto:[email protected] Please have the following information at hand: • Program version • Configuration details (operating system, processor, memory, hard drive...) • Soundcard configuration (type, driver) • Information regarding other audio software installed

MAGIX on the Internet Visit us at http://support.magix.com Here you will find all the information and special offers on MAGIX products. There are also: • MAGIX Online Services • MAGIX Premium Club • MAGIX web publishing area • MAGIX TV • Full Support & Workshops • Latest News & Information and plenty more as well. It’s worth looking into ...

Chapter 2

Quickstart - Creating your first panorama This chapter will quickly enable you to create your first panoramas based on your own shots by guiding you briefly through all steps necessary. Detailed information on advanced options (e.g. manual adjustments) will be presented to you in subsequent chapters. Chapter 4 illustrates the versatile processing capabilities in detail. The graphical user interface of PanoramaStudio is described in chapter 5. There are only a few simple steps for you to have your first panorama on your screen. Let’s start with the shooting of your images: • Taking photos of the scene (chap. 3, p.7) Having found a nice scene for a panorama, please take notice of the following rules. The final panorama will be an assembly of a series of individual images. For the software to be able to automatically stitch the images without loss of information, adjacent images must overlap. Arrange the images so that they overlap each other by approximately 30 percent. In order to achieve a correct panorama, the camera had to be exactly in the center of the panoramic scene. Thus, try to rotate the camera while shooting your pictures rather than turn your camera around you. Holding your camera quite close to you will be a good approximation for a correct positioning in most cases. Try to keep the horizon consistently at the same height within all images. You may use a tripod for optimal performance. Even better is the use of an additional panoramic head for the tripod. Anyway, just following the rules given above for shooting the images will enable you to shoot panoramas with your ordinary digital or analog camera anytime at any place even without tripod. In order to cover the highest viewing angle possible, hold the camera in portrait format rather than landscape. • Importing your images (chap. 4.2, p.10) Your first processing step with PanoramaStudio will be importing the images. Open an empty project and click on the Import... button. For a sequence of images you may select several images in the import dialog box for importing multiple images at once. It is possible to import directly from your digital camera if it is mounted as mass storage device to your system. If not, you have to manually copy the images to your computer with the vendors software for your camera. For analog cameras, the images need to be digitized with a scan software. • Arranging and rotating your images (chap. 4.3, p.10) Sometimes images are not ordered correctly or they need to be rotated. You will find the commands for rotating in steps of 90 degrees as well as for reverting the image arrangement in the Input images menu. Alternatively, you may use the corresponding buttons on the arrangement toolbar. • Parameters (chap. 4.4, p.12) You now may set some parameters which enhance speed and quality of the rendering process. Click on the Parameters button to open the dialog for setting focal length and horizon. You have to specify the focal length you used for the shots as well as the location of the horizon. You may adjust the horizon simply by moving the red marker line around. If your camera is recognized by the program, you may also just activate the Use focal length from EXIF switch. If not, you may still estimate the focal length by yourself or let PanoramaStudio determine it for you. Focal length is always given in 35 mm equivalent for digital cameras. 5

6

Quickstart - Creating your first panorama

• Stitch - start building the panorama (chap. 4.5, p.14) Once the parameters are set, you may start the assembly of the panorama, which we will call stitching. After clicking the Stitch button, you may choose between Panorama and 360 degree panorama. Building with the 360 degree panorama option will result in a panorama with seamlessly fitting margins on the left and on the right. You just have to make sure, that the first and the last image also overlap one another for about one third to two thirds. • Cropping, saving, and printing Your panorama is done when the stitching process has finished. If you still want to carry out manual adjustments, please refer to the chapter Manual Adjustments (chap. 4.6, p.14). Besides from that, post-processing starts with removing irregular margins. Click on the Crop button to switch to cropping mode. Now, you may adjust the red marker lines proposed by PanoramaStudio. When done, click OK. Now, the panorama is ready to be saved either as an image file, as an interactive QuickTimeVR panorama, or as a Java panorama. Furthermore, the print preview window offers you to print the panorama as a poster across multiple pages with crop marks and glue margins. Thus, you may create really large and impressive panoramas.

Chapter 3

Shooting the individual input images 3.1

Using either a digital or an analog camera

Actually, it doesn’t make a difference if your input images come from a digital or an analog camera. However, analog images need to be fed into the computer using scanning software before they may be processed by PanoramaStudio. For digital cameras, this step is obsolete. Most cameras will be detected and mounted to your system as external mass storage device just like a CD-ROM drive. In this case, your camera will show up in the file chooser dialog as storage device after clicking Import.... Therefore you will be able to load your images directly. In some cases drivers for your camera need to be installed, and your camera needs to be connected to your computer. If the computer isn’t able to mount your camera to the system as storage device, you will have to use the vendors software of your camera in order to transfer your images to your hard-disk.

3.2

What to take into account while shooting the photos?

Panoramas generated by PanoramaStudio are based on a series of individual images. PanoramaStudio is designed to produce panoramas from images shot with an ordinary camera without special equipment. One major advantage is for example the independence from any tripod. Whenever you happen to experience any stunning landscape e.g. on your holiday trip which isn’t possible to capture with only one single shot you may just use your regular camera, take several images and assemble them to a panorama later at home. However, the use of a tripod results in better input images which can be more easily processed by PanoramaStudio than freehand shoots. For both cases, please take notice of the following tips to obtain the best results possible without need for exhaustive post processing.

Let your images overlap To stitch the images, they have to overlap. Shoot your images with approximately 30 percent overlap for best results. It might be helpful to memorize one object in the right third of your viewfinder while taking the first image. For the next image, you just aim the camera so that this object occurs within the left third of your viewfinder. Going on like this clockwise for each image will guarantee best results later for PanoramaStudio to assemble the images. For 360 degree panoramas with a seamless transition from the last to the first image, you should make sure, that the last and the first image also overlap one another in the same way than the others do. In case of doubts, don’t hesitate to take an extra image just to play it safe. Redundant images may later still be removed easily. Because the overlap amount is hard to guess just with the viewfinder, the software will tolerate some degree of uncertainty. But still, you should allow at least 20 percent overlap so that mapping won’t be affected disproportionately. Having more than 70 percent will just increase rendering time and the disk usage for no reason. Anyway, in case you have a lot of images with big overlapping areas, you may decide to exclude selected images from import into a panaroma project, if the others still overlap properly. 7

8

Shooting the individual input images

Shooting clockwise PanoramaStudio allows you to import multiple images at one time. In this case, the input images will be arranged alphabetically and numerically respectively in ascending order. Since a series of images taken with a digital camera is also numbered serially in ascending order, shooting your scene clockwise is recommended. Thus, you may save time reverting the series.

Maximum vertical coverage, zoom In order to get maximum coverage of the scene, you should zoom out to wide angle position (shortest focal length) if your camera is equipped with an optical zoom lens. If you like to use a long focal length for higher detail, please use optical zoom. Digital zoom should be avoided whenever possible.

Avoid zooming during shooting a series! It is critically important not to alter the focal length (zoom setting) during shooting a set of images for a panorama!

Keep the horizon at constant altitude in your viewfinder To achieve only minor clipping, you should try to aim your camera in a way that the horizon is always located at constant altitude in the images especially when shooting without tripod. Because of this, always try to shoot approximately in a constant angle relative to the horizon - upwards, downwards or straight ahead. Otherwise, the images would show up with a cascaded skew to one another after assembling. Moreover, parts of the images would have to be removed during the cropping step. The series of images will be assembled to a panorama such that they are projected either onto the surface of a cylinder or of a sphere. In general, other programs assume the horizon is vertically centered for this projection. However, PanoramaStudio takes the actual position of the horizon into account in order to produce properly adjusted projections with the right perspective. Therefore, you are not forced to arrange the images with the horizon vertically centered. Especially when capturing a landscape from an elevated viewpoint, aiming the camera downwards to the objects of interest rather than ‘waisting’ more than half of the canvas with blue sky is recommended. You are also able to produce panoramas aiming upwards at high buildings in a city. The adjusted perspective will also be reproduced correctly in interactive panoramas in QuickTimeVR format, so that the effect of ‘looking up’ or ‘looking down’ as experienced at the original shooting will be conserved.

How to turn around when shooting whitout a tripod Most important for the quality of your panorama is to turn around yourself and the camera properly. Basically, the camera needs to be as close as possible to the center of the scene. For this reason, try to turn around the camera rather than turning around yourself, so that the camera is the center. Holding the camera as close as possible to your body will be helpful. This is necessary anyway since you should also use the viewfinder to keep control of the overlap of the images as discussed earlier. Therefore, you might want to locate a turning point on the ground which you can use to verify the position of your camera before each image. Between any two images, this will help you to guarantee to turn around your camera properly rather than around yourself. PanoramaStudio tries to minimize the remaining inaccuratenesses refering to that kind of shooting technique beetwen any two images as good as possible. Significant deviation from the optimal center of rotation will cause differences to consecutive images which PanoramaStudio won’t be able to defeat. The reason for this is pretty easy to understand. If the camera was not centered correctly to the scene, it would suffer a displacement when turned between two images. For two objects, their relative positions in the image would vary according to their distance to the camera and its displacement. The resulting effect is called parallax. Thus, increased attention to this effect is recommended for scenes with very close objects.

How to turn around when shooting with a tripod If you try to stick to the recommendations for shooting without a tripod as given above, PanoramaStudio will be able to create high quality panoramas. The accurate but more intricate way of course is to use a tripod. As for overlap and horizon, the same rules as given above apply. If you have a tripod available, it’s possible to perform the shooting with the camera centered to the scene almost perfectly. But still, a small parallax may remain. This is based on the fact, that actually, the focal point which is situated somewhere inside the lenses, needs to match with center of rotation. In this case, a special panoramic

3.2 What to take into account while shooting the photos?

9

head for your tripod might help you out. To point it out once again: tripods and corresponding special equipment might help to improve the quality of panoramas, but this type of equipment is explicitly not obligatory.

Problems concerning exposure Inhomogeneous lighting in the scene might cause problems. Especially the sun often causes signifant differences to the exposures of the images. Anyway, using automatic exposure control of the camera still is recommended. PanoramaStudio equalizes a different brightness between the images. If you try to use a fixed exposure setting throughout all images, you would run the risk to over- or underexposure areas in many images. Details which could have been restored otherwise using digital brightness adjustments would be lost.

Moving objects Moving objects are a problem for panoramas spanning multiple images taken at different times, because they will appear at different locations in the scene. It’s always best to wait until no person or no car moves anymore before you start shooting. This can be infeasible sometimes. Serious problems only arise, when a moving object appears in the overlapping area of two images. Thus, if movements cannot be avoided, try to shoot the images so that the moving objects are centered in the images not striking the overlap areas. The closer the movements affect the left or right margin, the harder the differences beetwen two overlapping images are to eliminate.

Hint: use panel/portrait format In order to achieve maximum vertical coverage of the scene, of course, zooming out to the shortest focal length (wide angle) will be helpful. Further on, you still can gain even better results by holding the camera in portrait orientation.

Chapter 4

Workflow Creation of a panorama 4.1

How to create a panorama project

Every panorama is managed within a project which may be saved to disk and loaded again for further processing. The program always starts up with an empty project. This is indicated by a blank work space. You may create a new project by clicking on the New project icon in the toolbar or by choosing File→New project from the menu.

4.2

How to import images

For a new panorama, the first step will always be to import the required individual input images into the project. You may read in image files by clicking on the Import... symbol in the toolbar. Additionally, the same function is available in the menu at File →Import images... . Moreover, you may drag&drop images with your mouse directly from the Windows user interface into the panorama project. When using the file chooser dialog box for importing, a thumbnail preview helps you to navigate easily through your images for your convenience. You may choose multiple images at one time arbitrarily with the mouse from the file chooser dialog box by holding the Ctrl key. With the Shift key, you may choose multiple successive images. Thus, all images required for one panorama can be imported easily in just one step. However, the images must be present on your computer as files. This is the case, if your camera automatically shows up as an external storage device when being connected. If not, you have to copy the images manually to your computer with the camera specific software. If you use an analog camera, you have to scan the images with appropriate scanning software and store them as image files on hard-disk. In addition to the conventional image formats, PanoramaStudio can open images in RAW format for a large number of cameras. This feature shall just provide a simple option to import RAW images quickly into PanoramaStudio. Advanced features for fine tuning the RAW files in the conversion process are not available and should be made with a RAW converter software. However, PanoramaStudio offers some basic settings for importing RAW files. If you select a RAW file in the file open dialog box, you can open with the RAW parameters button a dialog box for this settings. The dialog box offers settings for the brightness, the white balance, and the color depth (8 or 16 bit) which are applied in the conversion process.

4.3

How to edit images

Once the images are imported into the panorama project, it may be necessary to edit them. The most frequent operations are: arranging and rotating the images.

10

4.3 How to edit images

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Reverse order and re-arranging If multiple images are imported at the same time, PanoramaStudio arranges them in lexicographical order by their filenames. In general, images shot with a digital camera are numbered consecutively. Thus, the images will appear in correct order, if they were taken clockwise. In any other cases, it may be necessary to alter the arrangement of the images in the project. The menu item Input images→Reverse order as well as the corresponding button in the arrangement toolbar (chap. 5.2.3, p.21) enables you to reverse the order of the images. If only some separate images were selected with the mouse, the arrangement will be reversed only for this images. Moreover, the position of the images may be altered via drag&drop. It’s recommended to switch to the overview mode (see also chap. 5.2.2 (→ p.21)) and dragging the images to the desired position holding the left mouse key.

How to rotate images To rotate images in steps of 90 degrees, use the menu items Input images →Rotate right, Rotate left, and Rotate 180 degrees. As an example, you may want to rotate images from a series shot in portrait format back to the right orientation by clicking either Input images →Rotate right or Input images →Rotate left. Since these operations are used quite frequently, they may be also performed by clicking on the corresponding buttons in the arrangement toolbar (chap. 5.2.3, p.21). These operations apply to either all images at a time, or just to the selected images, if an active selection exists.

How to select and rearrange individual images To select either one or multiple images, just click on the corresponding image. Your selection will be visualized by a red borderline. In order to gain better usability, you might want to switch to Overview mode provided by the menu View. In this case, images will be displayed down-scaled in favor of a high number of visible images at a time. You can include several images into your selection by holding the Ctrl key when clicking on the desired images. In order to select a contiguous sequence of images, hold the Shift key. Selected images can be rearranged by moving them around via drag&drop. Just move the images to the desired position while holding the mouse button. While moving around, a blue vertical line will show the resulting position of your selection.

How to rotate arbitrarily If the horizon slopes away in some images, it may be helpful to align just these images as horizontally as possible. First, select the image which you want to adjust. For this operation, you may just select one of the images. Now, choose Rotate current image arbitrarily ... from the Input images menu to open the Rotate image dialog box (chap. 5.4.1, p.28). This dialog box enables you to enter any desired angle for your rotation.

How to crop the image Scanned images for example may need to be cropped. Again, before calling the command Input images →Crop current image, the corresponding image has to be selected. The program automatically switches to the crop mode for this image. Now, you can specify the cropping region by moving around the red lines. In order to rotate the red rectangle, click in one of the corners and move your mouse. By pressing the OK button from the cropping dialog box, you confirm and apply the specified cropping.

How to change the size of the images Since panoramas are composed out of several images, they are likely to become huge and consume tremendous amounts of disk space. To reduce the amount of data prior to the stitching process, you may scale down the individual images. In order to preserve proportions, image sizes must never be changed independently. Therefore, image size may only be altered for all images simultaneously. This can be done by opening the dialog box Resize images from the menu Input images →Change sizes of all images(chap. 5.4.2, p.28). The dialog expects the desired re-scaled size to be expressed as a percentage relating to the original size.

How to remove images from the project It may happen that your project contains unnecessary images - e.g. if you shot a part of the scene twice, or if you did a 360 degree panorama where the first image might be identical to the last one. If you

Workflow Creation of a panorama

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want to remove such images from your project, just select the desired images and press the Del key. Alternatively, you may choose Input images →Remove selected images from the menu.

How to restore the original images If you like to undo resizing, rotating, or cropping operations of input images, PanoramaStudio offers you to restore all images by reloading the original ones from disk. Clicking Input images →Restore original images causes the program to re-import the original images.

4.4

Setting parameters for the stitching process

Do parameters have to be declared? PanoramaStudio is able to automatically generate panoramas without any custom parameters specified by the user. However, specifying optional parameters may increase speed and quality of the stitching process. There are two important parameters: the focal length setting while having shot the images and the position of the horizon.

How to open the dialog box for focal length and horizon By clicking the Parameters button, you switch to the mode for setting focal length and horizon. Therefore, the corresponding tool window will be opened (chap. 6.2, p.44). You may set the focal length and the position of the horizon in this dialog box.

4.4.1

How to adjust the horizon

To adjust the horizon, you either click to the red line in the work space and move it around, or you directly enter it expressed as a percentage in the dialog box. Please note, that hills or mountains may be misleading since the actual horizon which is the line between sky and flat countryside resides slightly beneath them. In case of buildings hiding the line of sight to the horizon you still may give an estimation. If the camera didn’t always point to the same vertical angle while shooting, the position of the horizon may vary throughout several images. It is best to estimate the horizon so that it corresponds to the middle of the horizons of all input images.

4.4.2

How to adjust the focal length

A vital parameter for the computation is the focal length. If the imported images are shot by a digital camera, they might already provide information about the used focal length. According to the fact, that the images are taken by a digital camera or not and that the digital camera is known by PanoramaStudio, either one of the following cases applies:

Known digital camera If the images come from a digital camera which is present in the database of PanoramaStudio, you may simply activate the Use focal length from EXIF option. Focal length will be taken from the so called Exif focal length included in the image files. However, Exif focal length information might be corrupted if you used an additional lens or converter lens mounted on top of the original one because the camera won’t take the modified focal length into account. In this case, select the option Accessory lens used and specify the corresponding conversion factor added by your accessory lens in the field Wide angle or tele converter .

Unknown digital camera If the digital camera cannot be recognized automatically on the base of the image files, but Exif information is still available, PanoramaStudio offers you to add this camera to its database. In this case, you will find a button labeled New camera ... in the box Camera type (see also chap. 5.4.13 (→ p.41). As soon as you add the camera to the database, the camera will be detected afterwards, and image data will be evaluated properly.

Different camera If the cases mentioned above don’t apply, you can specify the type of the camera with Camera type as well as the type of the film. If you cannot specify the focal length, just leave the setting for the focal length at Focal length unknown (automatic). Apart from that, you can give either the exact value or an

4.4 Setting parameters for the stitching process

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estimation for the focal length in the input field focal length. In the latter case, you will also have to specify a percentage for the maximum deviation from the estimated value.

4.4.3

More settings

Projection You can specify the type of projection used for presentation of the panorama in the box Projection. It can be chosen either Cylindrical projection or Spherical projection. Cylindrical projection causes the program to transform the images so that they fit to the surface of a cylinder when being assembled. QuickTimeVR for example expects this projection to be able to properly reconstruct the environment for interactive viewing. Thus, you should select cylindrical projection if you like to export your project to a QuickTimeVR panorama. If you want the images to be projected on the surface of a sphere, choose spherical projection in order to transform the images properly. This type of projection causes the appearance of the upper and lower parts of the panorama compressed/smaller for higher vertical angles when viewed on a flat canvas. The cylindrical projection in contrary extends the appearance of the upper and lower parts of the images. It is up to you to decide which type of projection better suits your taste for further processing and printing.

Barrel/pincushion correction Especially for very short focal lengths covering a very high viewing angle and thus a large field-of-view, barrel or pincushion distortions are very likely. This effect offen occurs when using a wide angle converter lens. Straight lines get bended convex (or concave for pincushion distortion). As soon as this effect becomes visible, an additional correction may increase the image quality. For that purpose you find in Lens correction the settings for the Barrel/pincushion correction. There you should initially activate the Automatic box. If the result isn’t satisfying, the automatically computed correction value may be adjusted manually in a postprocessing step. Positive values up to 100 correct pincushion distortion and negative values up to 100 correct barrel distortions. To avoid waisting computation time, you should activate the automatic correction only if such distortions are visible.

Vignetting correction The so called vignetting means a brightness falloff in the image corners. This flaw can often be seen in wide angle shoots. In an assembled panorama the vignetting appears as dark and disturbing regions in the overlap regions of the images. The existence of vignetting may be clearly visible if the images overlap just by a small amount. But there is an adjustment function in the Lens correction dialog box, too. The vignetting correction brightens the image corners by an adjustable amount and thus elimates the vignetting. It’s recommended to use the Automatic mode initially. But you can also set the values manually. There you can adjust the effect of correction with the parameters Amount and Radius.

4.4.4

Glossary

What is the focal length? The focal length specifies the distance from the focal point of the lens to the projection layer. The projection layer is either the film or the CCD sensor. By taking the size of the film or the size of CCD sensor into account, the focal length allows to compute the covered visible angle of the image. In order to process a panorama, the focal length needs to be given as precise as possible. As for analog cameras, the shortest adjustable focal length usually is in the range of 28 to 45mm.

What is 35mm film? The type of film which is used by most analog cameras - SLR or viewfinder - (so called 35mm cameras) is called 35mm film. A negative film has the dimensions of 24mm x 36mm. The APS format is another analog film format with different dimensions.

What does 35mm equivalent mean? Since all analog 35mm cameras have the same film dimensions, they allow to directly compute the covering angle of the image just with the given focal length. For digital cameras with their big variety of different CCD sensor dimensions, things are not that easy. The focal length itself is not that expressive or comparable. The specific CCD sensor dimensions would

Workflow Creation of a panorama

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have to be known. To achieve better comparability throughout different camera models, reference values are given expressed in focal lengths of corresponding 35mm cameras. PanoramaStudio uses this reference value, namely the 35mm equivalent as focal length for digital cameras.

Exif data Most digital cameras include additional information in their image files. This tagged information complies with the so called Exif Standard. The exif data contains values for date of shooting, exposure, aperture, focal length, focus and numerous other information. PanoramaStudio uses the information about focal length and camera model. Therefore, the exif data is used to detect a digital camera model automatically with the image files. Such images from cameras known by PanoramaStudio can processed faster.

4.5

Creating wide angle or 360 degree panoramas

After having imported and arranged the images, and specified the according parameters comprising focal length and horizon, PanoramaStudio is able to start the automatic process of building a panorama. You can create a wide angle panorama with the the Create panorama command. The Create 360 degree panorama command triggers the generation of a 360 degree panorama. Both commands appear when you click on the Stitch button in the action toolbar. They can also be reached from the Panorama menu. Take into account that the first and the last image have to overlap for about 20 to 70 percent for 360 degree panoramas. Check if the first or the last image may be removed from the project due to exhaustive overlapping. Given these prerequisites, a 360 degree panorama with seamlessly matching edges to the right and to the left can be build. A progress bar with status monitor will provide information about the course throughout the stitching process. Depending on the number and size of the images, the rendering process may take up to several minutes.

4.6

Applying manual adjustments

PanoramaStudio is designed to gain the best results possible for creating panoramas. However, if defects or faults still occur in a generated panorama, you are free to manipulate every single processing step in order to correct them. As a matter of fact, the harder the input images are to process, the more defects and faults will occur. Therefore, it is always best to take care for optimal input images in advance when shooting the scene. Please refer to the advices given in chap. 3.2 (→ p.7).

4.6.1

Which correction is to apply for which defect?

The most frequent defects and problems occuring in generated panoramas are listed in the following.

Moving objects appear twice Please refer to Control blending in chap. 4.6.5 (→ p.16).

Two input images don’t match in the overlapping area Please refer to Change image overlaps in chap. 4.6.3 (→ p.15).

Ghosting in images - parts of images which appear twice in parallel Please refer to Detail adjustments in chap. 4.6.4 (→ p.15).

Brightness differs between two images Please refer to Adjust brightness correction in chap. 4.6.6 (→ p.16).

The entire panorama is too dark or too bright Please refer to Adjust brightness correction in chap. 4.6.6 (→ p.16).

4.6 Applying manual adjustments

15

Lines between two images are not continuous Please refer to Adjust focal length and horizon in chap. 4.6.2 (→ p.15).

Lines between two images appear undulated Please refer to Adjust focal length and horizon in chap. 4.6.2 (→ p.15).

The assembled images don’t seem to fit properly Please refer to Adjust focal length and horizon in chap. 4.6.2 (→ p.15).

4.6.2

Adjust focal length and horizon

The correct determination of focal length and horizon is critical for the quality of the panorama. Whereas the horizon usually can be set easily from the Parameters dialog box (chap. 4.4, p.12), specifying the correct focal length might turn out to be quite sophisticated. If no data is available, automatic determination of the focal length will be exact mostly. However, there might be exceptions occasionally. Symptoms caused by an incorrect focal length are (see also figure 4.1): • Straight lines get bended so that they form waves. • Even moving the image overlaps around manually doesn’t yield a proper overlap at all. • Lines spanning multiple images bend differently.

Figure 4.1: Left: too much bending caused by a focal length set too short; right: insufficient bending caused by a too long focal length Vertical lines, which appear arcuated in a panorama are cues for wrong barrel/pincushion correction. Either more correction is necessary, or the applied correction is overdone. To read about correction of focal length and horizon in more detail, please refer to chap. 6.2 (→ p.44).

4.6.3

Change image overlaps

Image overlap depends on the position of two adjoining images relative to each other. If the relative position of two images cannot be determined properly by PanoramaStudio , several reasons are possible. If the image hosts only very view detail, automatic determination will become very difficult. But even a wrong focal length may lead to wrong overlappings. However, overlapping between two images may be adjusted manually. Therefore, call the command Panorama→Adjust→Change image overlaps. Further information for this adjustment mode is given in chap. 6.3 (→ p.47).

4.6.4

Detail adjustments

Since in practice even for exact processing and correct assembling two images never really match on a pixel-by-pixel basis, the overlappings additionally will be subdivided into small tiles and adjusted locally. But it’s still possible, that no correction may be found automatically, or a tile will be processed faultily. A lack of details in the image can lead to faulty automatic detail adjustments for example. Visible ghosting - parts of images which show up twice and translucent like ghosts in the panorama are an indication for a detail adjustment failure. The effect comes from two corresponding parts from

Workflow Creation of a panorama

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adjoining images which don’t match. Thus, the same part of the scene appears semi-transparent at different locations. Great deviations even might lead to deformations of the panorama for parts of the image. Such faults can be defeated by manually adjusting details. The detail adjustment mode allows you to manually move around image tiles relative to each other in order to match them together. The detail adjustment mode can be reached by clicking Panorama→Adjust→Change detail adjustments. The use is explained in more detail in chap. 6.4 (→ p.48).

4.6.5

Control blending

The default procedure for blending two images will always blend throughout the entire overlapping area for seamlessly assembling the images. However, defects or faults may occur in the panorama which cannot be defeated by the processing steps before. The most frequently occuring defect is caused by moving objects inside the overlapping area. Due to blending, these objects appear twice like a ghost image. In the blending mode, you can modify the areas for blending so that problematic spots will be blinded out, as long as they don’t span the entire overlapping area. You can enter the blending mode by clicking Panorama→Adjust→Change blendings. For further details, please refer to chap. 6.5 (→ p.50).

4.6.6

Adjust exposure correction

Adjusting the automatic exposure correction is the last step of the adjustment options. You may improve the overall brightness of the entire panorama, or the brightness of individual input images. In case of a significantly differing brightness between two images, manual adjustments are recommended to compensate the differences between adjoining images. Problems concerning the overall brightness of the panorama may be tackled by either affecting the strength of automatic exposure correction, or by controlling the brightness manually. Please refer to chap. 6.6 (→ p.51) for more details.

4.7

Cropping the panorama

When the stitching process with its optional adjustments is done, it is still necessary to crop the panorama in order to remove irregular borders caused by the stitching. Therefore, choose either Crop from the action toolbar, or Panorama→Crop from the menu. A red rectangle indicating the edges of the cropping region will appear. The initial rectangle is a suggestion from PanoramaStudio , which will cover as much area as possible without leaving blank areas from the work space inside the image area. Again, you may adjust the edges of the rectangle by dragging them with the mouse. By clicking into a corner of the rectangle, you may rotate the cropping area. This will be indicated by a circular mouse pointer. As for 360 degree panoramas, rotating the cropping rectangle is not possible, since its position is determined by the seamless integration of the first with the last image. The left and the right borders of the cropping area cannot be altered independently for the same reason. However, by moving around either the left or the right border, the position of the joint between the first and the last image may be altered. Thus, the position of the edges of the panorama may be altered. Since the single images will be deformed several times during the stitching and cropping steps, image sharpness will suffer due to interpolation in each step. To avoid this, the option Recalculation in high quality is available. When selected, this option causes PanoramaStudio to integrate all previous steps into one single step. Thus, there will be just one interpolation step at the very end which yields a better sharpness. Additionally, the option Bicubic interpolation allows to gain further improvements through activating a more complex interpolation procedure. At the cropping of the panorama it’s absolutely possible to select some region outside the panorama. Thus you can accept small undefined gaps to minimize the clipping region. Now, the remaining gaps can either be filled with a color or the small gaps can be filled with a simple edge completion function matching the surrounding region. Select the Add color box to fill the gaps with a color and choose the color with the color selection button or select the Simple edge completion box to fill the gaps with content similar to the surrounding regions.

4.8 Finishing the panorama - Resizing and optimizing

17

The selection may be confirmed by clicking the OK button. (chap. 6.7, p.53)

4.8

Finishing the panorama - Resizing and optimizing

Resizing: Changing pixel dimensions To change the size of the panorama, you may either select Panorama→Resize or click the Resize button from the action toolbar. A dialog box will appear where you can enter the new desired size either given in pixel dimensions or as percentage. Please refer to Resize Panorama chap. 5.4.6 (→ p.32) for further details.

Optimizing image sharpness and colors If you want to optimize sharpness or coloring of the created panorama, you will find a range of filters either at the menu Panorama→Optimize or at the Optimize button on the action toolbar. More information about the use of the individual filters is given in chap. 5.4.7 (→ p.32). This is only a short summary of their functionalities: • Sharpen - standard sharpening with several levels of intensity • Unsharp mask - advanced sharpening • Brightness/Contrast - adjust brightness, contrast and gamma correction • Tone curves - arbitrarily adjusting tonal values • Levels - adjusting the brightness intervals and gamma correction • Color balance - adjusting colors for different brightness values seperately

4.9

Inserting hotspots

What are hotspots? A hotspots comprises an abitrary image area with a certain action attached to it. PanoramaStudio supports hotspots containing URLs - links to websites. A URL may point to arbitrary destinations. These destinations usually contain other panoramas, or may provide additional information about the marked area of the particular hotspot. Currently, PanoramaStudio embeds hotspots into interactive QuickTimeVRs or into Java and Flash panoramas which are played with the PanoramaStudio Viewer. This format either presents the hotspot by altering the mouse pointer when hovering over the marked areas, or simply by showing these areas. Clicking on the hotspot will open the corresponding website. Thus, you may generate virtual tours just by linking several panoramas together with hotspots. The user may switch to other panoramas by clicking on the hotspots. Further details about how to embed a QuickTimeVR panorama into a website are given in chap. 5.4.9 (→ p.35). For information about how to generate a panorama for the PanoramaStudio Viewer please refer to chap. 5.4.10 (→ p.37).

Inserting and editing hotspots To switch to the hotspot mode for inserting and editing hotspots, just click on Hotspots in the action toolbar or select Panorama →Hotspots from the menu. The corresponding hotspot dialog box will appear. Existing hotspots will show up when switching to hotspot mode. To select and move hotspots around, just click on them. The marks allow you to modify their shape and size. With the dialog box, you may insert new hotspots or delete existing ones. The URL for a marked hotspot may be entered as well as a short description. Further details about editing hotspots are given in chap. 6.8 (→ p.53).

Workflow Creation of a panorama

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4.10

Saving and printing the panorama

Save the project To save the current project, select File→Save project or File→Save project as .... Additionally, you may click Save from the action toolbar and choose Save project as.... The project may be saved at any time - regardless of the editing step you are currently working on except the adjustment modes. All necessary instructions will be saved into a project file, so that the current editing state with all its adjustments may be restored when loading the project again. To avoid huge files, the input images will not be embedded into the project files. Therefore, the original input images will have to reside in the same directory as they were when saving the project file. However, to be able to pass on the project to other computers, just save the project file in the same directory where the input images are. The project file and the input images may be copied arbitrarily as long as they reside in the same directory.

Save as image To export the panorama to the image file format of your choice, select Save as image ... from the File menu or from the Save button in the action toolbar. You may choose from the formats JPG, TIFF, BMP, PNG, TGA, PCX, PSD and RAS. As for JPG, you may specify additional options concerning type of compression, file size and image quality.

Save as QuickTimeVR You may also export the panorama to the interactive QuickTimeVR file format. This format enables the user to navigate through the panorama and also to zoom in and out. To save and view this file format, the QuickTime Player needs to be installed on your computer. To export a panorama to the QuickTimeVR file format, either select File→Save as QTVR panorama ... or click on the corresponding command below the Save button in the action toolbar. Please refer to chap. 5.4.9 (→ p.35) for further information on the QuickTimeVR file format.

Save as Flash or Java Panorama The PanoramaStudio Viewer is a Java or Flash applet which can be embedded into ordinary websites in order to achieve interactive viewing of panoramas created with PanoramaStudio. Your browser needs an installed Java or Flash plugin to show this type of panoramas. To export your panorama to this file format, select File →Save as Flash or Java panorama... or click on the corresponding command from the Save button in the action toolbar. Please refer to chap. 5.4.10 (→ p.37) for further information on the PanoramaStudio Viewer.

Save As Screensaver/.EXE Panoramas can also be saved as screensavers or self-running Windows programs. This type of interactive panoramas can be viewed on all Windows computers without additional plugins. Call the File→Save As Screensaver/.EXE... command or use the same command from the Save button in the action toolbar. Please refer to chap. 5.4.12 (→ p.40) for further information on saving panoramas in this file format.

Print the panorama The printing functionality of PanoramaStudio provides special features to support the requirements for wide format panoramas. Thus, the panorama may be printed as an extra large image spanning multiple pages. The size may be specified exactly. To generate an image without margins like a photographic paper, the margins need to be cropped manually after printing the panorama. Printing crop marks will be helpful for this purpose. Additionally, gluing marks maybe printed to assist you when assembling the sheets. When selecting File→Print from the menu or Print from the action toolbar, the Print preview dialog box shows up. The preview sticks to the “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” paradigm by presenting the pages exactly as they will be printed.

Creating, saving, and printing a perspective projection To extract perspective projections from the panorama, call Perspective projection from the menu Panorama. Please refer to chap. 5.4.5 (→ p.30) for further information on perspective projections.

Chapter 5

The user interface 5.1

The action toolbar

Figure 5.1: The action toolbar The buttons of the action toolbar correspond to the processing steps needed for creating and editing a panorama. Viewed from left to right, they represent the consecutive order of processing steps. Thus, you find every function needed starting from importing the images in order to create a panorama and to export it to different file formats or to print it. The buttons of the action toolbar viewed from left to right are...

Import... Opens the Import images dialog box. This dialog box enables you to load the input images into your project. See also chap. 4.2 (→ p.10).

Input images Opens a pop-up menu which is identical to the menu Input images from the menu bar. This pop-up menu provides all commands necessary for preparing the input images prior to the stitching step. This involves e.g. changing the arrangement of the sequence, rotating, scaling and cropping. Please refer to chap. 5.3.3 (→ p.24) for an overview on the particular commands.

Parameters Click on Parameters to enter the mode for specifying focal length and horizon. Whenever possible, specifying focal length and horizon prior to the stitching process is recommended (chap. 6.2, p.44).

Stitch Use Stitch to start the automatic assembly of the panorama, the so called Stitch process. After clicking on Stitch a pop-up menu will appear to choose between wide angle panorama or 360 degree panorama. If you initially selected the task type Merge document, you can start the stitching process for the document mode here. More on this in chap. 5.2.5 (→ p.22).

Adjust Opens a menu to choose from different correction modes. To gather more information about which type of 19

20

The user interface

correction should be applied for an observed defect or fault, please refer to Applying manual adjustments, (chap. 4.6, p.14). The particular correction modes are explained in chap. 6 (→ p.44).

Crop This command helps to crop the irregular image borders of the panorama. For that purpose, it switches to the Crop image mode. See also chap. 6.7 (→ p.53).

Resize Use the command Resize to alter the pixel dimensions of the panorama. The dialog box Resize panorama will open to specify the new dimensions (chap. 5.4.6, p.32).

Optimize This pull-down menu offers you a selection of different image filters for improving sharpness and coloring (chap. 5.4.7, p.32).

Hotspots By clicking Hotspots, you may enter the hotspots mode which enables you to insert and edit hotspots. See also chap. 6.8 (→ p.53).

Save This menu item provides different options for saving your work. You may save a project, an image, a Java/Flash panorama, or a QuickTimeVR panorama.

Print The Print command will open the print preview. The print preview enables you to spread your panorama over an arbitrary number of pages in any size and print it. Further details are given in Print preview dialog box (chap. 5.4.8, p.33).

5.2 5.2.1

Other toolbars The project toolbar

Figure 5.2: The project toolbar

New Project Creates a new empty panorama project.

Open project Opens an existing project from disk. The project will be restored to the state when stored the last time. The imported images are not embedded into the project file, so that they have to reside in the folder where they were originally imported from.

Save project Stores an existing project with its current filename. If the project was never saved before, the dialog box Save project as... will be opened.

Properties of current image/Panorama properties Depending whether the project still consists of individual images or a panorama already exists, a dialog box providing image properties corresponding to the current image or to the existing panorama will appear.

Help topics Opens the help system.

5.2 Other toolbars

5.2.2

21

The view toolbar

Figure 5.3: The view toolbar

Choosing the zoom level A drop-down list offers a selection of different zoom scales for displaying the current project.

Zoom in Increases the displayed image size for the current project.

Zoom out Decreases the displayed image size for the current project.

View in original size Matches the pixel resolution of screen and image. Each image pixel covers a pixel on the screen.

5.2.3

The arrangement toolbar

Figure 5.4: The arrangement toolbar

Reverse order The command Reverse order reverses the arrangement of the images in the project. If no images are selected, the order of all images will be reversed. If two or more images are selected, only the order of the selected images will be reversed.

Rotate right Rotate right applies a clockwise rotation by 90 degrees to the selected input images. If no images are selected, all images of the project will be rotated.

Rotate 180 degrees Rotate 180 degrees rotates either all images or if images are selected, just the selected ones by 180 degrees.

Rotate left Rotate left applies a counter-clockwise rotation by 90 degrees to either all images or if images are selected, just the selected ones.

5.2.4

The overview

Figure 5.5: The overview The overview toolbar provides a thumbnail display of the entire project. The currently visible area of the project is indicated by a red rectangle. You may navigate through the project by clicking with the mouse to the area of your interest. Holding down the mousebutton and moving it around enables you to

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The user interface

scroll through the entire project canvas. A large overview window can be opened by double-clicking or right-clicking the small overview.

5.2.5

The task type bar

Figure 5.6: The task type bar In an empty project you can set the task type with the selection in the task type bar. Besides the default task type, the panorama mode, PanoramaStudio provides here a mode for merging overlapping partial images of a large document. Therefore set the mode in the task type bar to Merge document. You can now import a row of partial images into the project and merge them in the same way as panoramic images. However, all panorama-specific settings and processing steps will be omitted in the document mode. You can use this document function i.e. to capture with your letter size scanner even tabloid size pages. This would require three overlapping scans which could be merged in this mode.

5.3

The menu

5.3.1

File menu

Figure 5.7: The File menu

• New project Creates a new empty panorama project. • Open project Opens an existing project from disk. The project will be restored to the state when stored the last time. The imported images are not embedded into the project file, so that they have to reside in the folder where they where originally imported from.

5.3 The menu

23

• Save project Stores an existing project with its current filename. If the project was never saved before, the dialog box Save project as... will be opened. • Save project as Opens the Save project as... dialog box to store the current project with a new filename. • Close Closes the current project. • Import images Opens the Import images dialog box. This dialog enables you to load the input images into your project. See also chap. 4.2 (→ p.10). • Save as image To export the panorama to the image file format of your choice, select Save as image ... from the File menu or from the Save button in the action toolbar. You may choose from the formats JPG, TIFF, BMP, PNG, TGA, PCX, PSD and RAS. For JPG, you may specify additional options concerning the type of compression, file size and image quality. • Save as QTVR panorama Opens the dialog box Save QTVR Panorama as.... Here, you may save the current project as interactive QuicktimeVR panorama including hotspots. Please refer to chap. 5.4.9 (→ p.35) for further information on the QuickTimeVR file format. • Save as Flash or Java panorama Opens the dialog box to save the panorama for playing it with the PanoramaStudio Viewer. Here, you may save the current panorama as interactive Flash or Java panorama including hotspots. This file format can be viewed in any internet browser with installed Java or Flash plugin. Please refer to the section Save for PanoramaStudio Viewer dialog box (chap. 5.4.10, p.37) for further details. • Save as Screensaver/.EXE Opens the dialog box for saving the current panorama as a screensaver or self-running Windows program. A detailed description of the functionality can be found in the section Save as Screensaver/.EXE dialog box (chap. 5.4.12, p.40). • Import/Export This menu item comprises the various possibilities to either import existing panoramas or export the current panorama project into a series of individual images for further processing. – Export individual images This function allows you to export the transformed images after the stitching process for further editing with external professional image editing software. The function Export individual images will save the images separately so that they can be assembled later to the panorama as computed by PanoramaStudio. Three different image file formats are supported. You may specify for each of these three file formats whether you like to embed the blending information within the alpha channel or not (Blendings in alpha channel ). These image file formats are available: ∗ Photoshop PSD format. Each image will be stored in a separate layer of a photoshop image file. ∗ Series of TIFF files. A numbered series of tiff files will be generated. Each file will contain one transformed input image of the panorama. ∗ Multipage TIFF. A multipage TIFF image file will be generated. Every page will contain one transformed input image of the panorama. – Import panoramic image This item serves to import an already existing panoramic image. After loading the desired panoramic image, a dialog box for setting parameters for further processing will open. These parameters are necessary for converting the panorama correctly into an interactive QuickTimeVR or Java panorama since no information about the type of panorama as well as the covered viewing angle is provided with the image file. However, these parameters are critical for correctly projecting the panorama with interactive viewers.

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The user interface

These parameters should be set as accurate as possible. As for 360 degree panoramas, the adjustable parameters are restricted to the projection type (cylindrical or spherical ) and the position of the horizon. If the panorama doesn’t cover 360 degrees, the Horizontal field-of-view should be guessed as accurate as possible. • Print panorama Opens the print preview. Here, the panorama can be spread over multiple pages in an arbitrary size. It then can be printed as poster with glue margins and crop marks. As a matter of fact, printing to just one page is possible as well. See also Print preview dialog box (chap. 5.4.8, p.33). • Settings... Opens the Settings dialog box for program configuration and administration of the camera database. Please refer to section Configuring PanoramaStudio (chap. 7, p.56) for further details. • Exit Closes all open panorama projects and exits PanoramaStudio.

5.3.2

View menu

Figure 5.8: The View menu

• Zoom in Use Zoom in, if you want to display the images or the panorama at a higher zoom level. • Zoom out Use Zoom out, if you want to display the images or the panorama at a lower zoom level. • Original size Use Original size to match the pixel resolution of the screen and the images. Each image pixel covers a pixel on the screen. • Overview Use Overview to fit the display size of the images or the panorama to the current window size.

5.3.3

Input images menu

• Select all Use Select all to select all images. • Deselect all Use Deselect all to deselect all images. • Reverse order The command Reverse order reverses the arrangement of the images in the project. If no images are selected, the order of all images will be reversed. If two or more images are selected, only the order of the selected images will be reversed. • Rotate right Rotate right applies a clockwise rotation by 90 degrees to the selected input images. If no images are selected, all images of the project will be rotated.

5.3 The menu

25

Figure 5.9: The Input images menu • Rotate 180 degrees Rotate 180 degrees rotates either all images or if images are selected, just the selected ones by 180 degrees. • Rotate left Rotate left applies a counter-clockwise rotation by 90 degrees to either all images or if images are selected, just the selected ones. • Rotate current image arbitrarily This function is available for input images as long as just one image is selected. The Rotate image dialog box allows to specify an arbitrary rotation angle (chap. 5.4.1, p.28). • Crop current image This function is also available for input images as long as just one image is selected. PanoramaStudio switches into Crop image mode (chap. 6.7, p.53). • Change size of all images Use this command to change the pixel dimensions of all images at once. The Resize images dialog box for specifying the new dimensions will appear (chap. 5.4.2, p.28). • Properites of current image Opens the Image information dialog box with in-depth information about the selected image if a single image is selected (chap. 5.4.3, p.30). • Restore original images Reloads the images from disk to reset them to their original state from the very beginning. • Remove select images Removes the select images from the project. The image files on disk won’t be affected.

5.3.4

Panorama menu

• Parameters By clicking Parameters a dialog box opens for specifying the focal length and setting the position of the horizon. These parameters have to be set prior to the stitching process → p.44. • Create panorama Initiates the stitching process for a wide angle panorama assembled from the input images in the project.

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The user interface

Figure 5.10: The Panorama menu • Create 360 degree panorama Initiates the stitching process for a 360 degree panorama assembled from the input images in the project. • Merge document You can start the stitching process for the document mode with Merge document here, if you initially set the task type for the project to Merge document. More on this in chap. 5.2.5 (→ p.22). • Adjust Opens a menu to choose from different correction modes. To gather more information which type of correction should be applied for an observed defect or fault, please refer to Applying manual adjustments, (chap. 4.6, p.14). The particular correction modes are explained in chap. 6 (→ p.44). • Crop This command helps to crop the irregular image borders of the panorama. Therefore, it switches to the Crop image mode. See also chap. 6.7 (→ p.53). • Resize Use the command Resize to alter the pixel dimensions of the panorama. The dialog box Resize panorama will open to specify the new dimensions (chap. 5.4.6, p.32). • Optimize This pull-down menu offers you a selection of different image-processing filters for improving sharpness and coloring (chap. 5.4.7, p.32). • Hotspots By clicking Hotspots, you may enter the hotspots mode which enables you to insert and edit hotspots. See also chap. 6.8 (→ p.53). • Perspective projection Use Perspective projection to show, save, or print certain sections of a panorama in perspective correct manner. For further information about the corresponding dialog window, please refer to chap. 5.4.5 (→ p.30). • Reset completely Use Reset completely to discard all settings and adjustments for the panorama project and to restore the input images to their original state. • Panorama properties Opens the Panorama properties dialog box which provides information about the panorama in the current state (chap. 5.4.4, p.30).

5.3 The menu

Figure 5.11: The Window menu

5.3.5

Window menu

• Cascade Arranges the project windows so that they overlap. • Tile horizontally Arranges the project windows horizontally in a non-overlapping style. • Tile vertically Arranges the project windows vertically in a non-overlapping style. • Minimize all Minimizes all project windows. • Arrange icons Rearranges the icons of the project windows automatically.

5.3.6

Help menu

Figure 5.12: The Help menu • Help topics Starts the help system of PanoramaStudio . • How to register PanoramaStudio Provides information on how to purchase PanoramaStudio . • Enter license key Opens a dialog box to enter the license key you obtained for PanoramaStudio . • About Shows program information.

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28

5.4 5.4.1

The user interface

The dialog boxes The Rotate image dialog box

Figure 5.13: The Rotate image dialog box The Rotate image dialog box allows you to rotate an image by an arbitrary angle very precisely. Therefore, even subtly misaligned shoots may be corrected so that the horizon will match horizontally again. This is critical for assembling the images, because adjacent images can only be merged correctly when all images are in line with each other. The option auto-crop borders automatically crops the undefined areas caused by rotating the image. A grid can be displayed by clicking Show grid for better orientation while rotating.

5.4.2

The Resize images dialog box

Figure 5.14: The Resize images dialog box The Resize images dialog box allows to uniformly rescale the pixel dimensions of all input images of the project.

5.4 The dialog boxes

29

Width, height This input boxes expect the new width and height of the images given as percentage. Absolute values are not applicable, since images may have different pixel dimensions. However, image sizes should generally not deviate too much, since automatic panorama creation may cause problems otherwise.

Keep aspect ratio If checked, this box causes width and height such that the original aspect ratio remains.

Defaults... Provides a list of standard sizes for the images.

New image sizes This list shows the resulting image dimensions as if the selected resizing parameters were applied already.

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5.4.3

The user interface

The Image information dialog box

Figure 5.15: The Image information dialog box This dialog box provides information about the selected image in the current project. This information comprises location on the storage device, file type and image dimensions. If available, existing Exif information will be displayed as well. This includes focal length, exposure, ISO setting, aperture, etc.

5.4.4

The Panorama properties dialog box

Figure 5.16: The Panorama properties dialog box The Panorama properties dialog box displays information on the created panorama, especially the pixel dimensions, the corresponding size expressed in megapixels, the applied focal length and the resulting covering angle of the entire panorama.

5.4.5

Perspective (rectilinear) projection of an image section

The completed panorama is either represented by a cylindrical or a spherical projection. Such images get bended when displayed on a flat surface rather than a cylinder or a sphere. Horizontal, straight lines

5.4 The dialog boxes

31

Figure 5.17: The Perspective (rectilinear) projection of an image section dialog box

turn into curves. On the other hand, a flat surface may not display a 360 degree panorama otherwise. However, it is possible to extract sections of the image for flat presentation so that they actually look like being taken with an ordinary camera. This is the purpose of perspective or rectilinear projection. The dialog box for perspective projection enables you to extract views from the panorama with a covering angle of up to 160 degrees. Thus, it is possible to artificially create images which actually would have required a super wide angle lens under real world conditions. For this purpose, the dialog box provides a preview as it can be seen in figure 5.17. It shows a certain section of the panorama. With the left mouse button pressed, you can scroll left, right, up, and down. A mousewheel - if present - may be used to zoom in or out. The section may also be set explicitly by specifying numerical values in the Parameters box. The input boxes Horizontal direction and Vertical direction are to specify the viewing direction. Possible values for horizontal direction range from 0 degrees to 360 degrees depending on the panorama. The vertical direction theoretically may vary between -90 degrees and +90 degrees whereas negative values symbolize viewing downwards and positive values symbolize viewing upwards. The Horizontal field-of-view (HFOV) expresses the angle which covers the visible image area along a horizontal line. This value directly corresponds to the focal length or zoom level the image was actually shot with the camera. When activated, the option Bicubic interpolation causes PanoramaStudio to render the image with high quality. This will result in higher image sharpness. To specify the pixel dimensions of the new image, enter the desired values in the Destination size box. Defaults provides some frequently used standard values. Max. width and Max. height allows to specify custom values. For example, a pixel dimension of 4000 x 1800 pixels corresponds to the resolution of a five-megapixel digital camera which is far sufficient for printing on letter format. Note that the Destination size box specifies only maximum values. The actual image dimensions can be smaller in case of unsufficient width or height of the original panorama. The resulting dimensions are displayed in the Result line. The preview area shows the actual resulting display window. Further on, image quality of the perspective projection depends on the size of the panorama. Thus, the line Initial size in the Parameters box displays the size of the underlying panorama. The initial size gives an idea for reasonable dimensions for the projected image. Destination sizes unreasonably exceeding the initial sizes will cause blurred image details due to extensive magnification. The same applies for projections with high zoom settings - blurring will be clearly identifiable with the preview in such cases. To assist you selecting reasonable projection parameters, PanoramaStudio rates your current settings at Quality of image resolution for the selected window size. This rating comprises destination size, display detail and initial pixel dimensions. Finally, the Render button triggers the generation of the projected image as displayed in the preview

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The user interface

area with the specified dimensions. When done, the dialog box switches to the Result tab to show the rendered image. This tab allows you to save the image (Save as...) or to print it via the build-in poster printing feature of PanoramaStudio (Print...).

5.4.6

The Resize panorama dialog box

Figure 5.18: The Resize panorama dialog box The Resize Panorama dialog box allows you to alter the pixel dimensions of the created panorama.

Height, width Change width and height of the panorama. Specify new pixel sizes for width and height either directly, or expressed as percentage. Changing a value automatically causes the corresponding value to be updated.

Keep aspect ratio When selected, this checkbox causes width and height to be updated so that the original aspect ratio always remains constant.

Real-world dimensions Computes the real-world image dimensions for the panorama assuming it was printed or displayed at the given resolution. You may choose from mm, cm and inches. The Assuming resolution textbox allows you to enter an arbitrary resolution given as Dpi (pixels/inch) as input to this computation. The resolution of a 17-inch CRT monitor with 1024x768 pixels per inch for example roughly corresponds to 80 dpi.

5.4.7

Filters for optimizing image quality

All filter dialog boxes comprise a preview. The two buttons beneath the preview allow to switch between a split and a regular view. With the split view, you may directly compare the original image with the filtered one whereas the regular view only displays the latter. All filter dialog boxes can be closed without any effect by clicking Cancel. Reset restores the settings when the dialog box was opened.

Sharpen Sharpen offers simple sharpening with three levels of intensity to choose from.

5.4 The dialog boxes

33

Unsharp mask Contrary to how it sounds, this filter provides a high-quality sharpening. The name stems from the fact, that the image will be compared with a blurred copy and the differences will be used to increase contrast. With the Radius box you can adjust the radius where sharpening information for a pixel will be searched. Threshold determines the minimum brightness difference to the original pixel sufficient to replace it.

Brightness/Contrast Adjusts contrast and brightness of an image. Additionally, Gamma correction can be applied to brighten or darken the midtones of an image. In general, the latter method performs better since light and dark areas remain unchanged.

Tone curves The Tone curve dialog box enables you to redistribute the levels of luminances. It provides a histogramm illustrating the luminance distribution by clustering the pixels according to their gray value for your convenience. Initially, the dialog box starts up with no changes to the luminance distribution which is represented by a straight line from the lower left to the upper right corner of the graph. Each point of this tone curve corresponds to a distinct original luminance value and some destination luminance value. The original value can be found in the horizontal gray scale beneath its corresponding point, and the destination value is displayed by the vertical gray scale to the left at the vertical position of the point. Moving or bending the tone curve upwards for example would brighten the image. Additionally, this redistribution can be applied to single color channels specified by the Channel listbox in the same way. The Mode listbox offers three manipulation procedures for the tone curve: • Manual: The course of the tone curve can be modified by redrawing it with the mouse. Applying the Smooth button will smooth the curve. • Curve: Set anchors by clicking with the mouse and move them around to the desired position. Pulling one anchor very close to another one removes it. These anchors specify the tone curve which is automatically interpolated through all of them. • Linear: Anchors are to be set and moved around like in Curve mode. In contrast to the previous mode, this mode generates the tone curve by directly connecting the anchors with straight lines. Load and Save enables you to save your custom redistribution settings for later use.

Levels The Levels dialog box serves to adjust the luminance distribution of the image. The ruler for the Input values limits the input luminance range. This range will be stretched to the range given in Output values. To enhance contrast for example, limit the input range, but leave the output range maximal. While light and dark areas will collapse, the contrast for the midtones will increase. To make the image look foggy, leave the input range maximal but compress the output range. The entire image will loose contrast. Very light and very dark areas turn foggy. Additionally, the Gamma ruler enables you to apply a gamma correction to the result of the levels transformation. All operations may be applied either to all colors at once (grey channel), or to each color channel, namely red, green and blue, at once.

Color balance The Color balance control enables you to perform color correction in selected light, mid or dark areas of the picture. Incorrectly balanced colors in a picture can be corrected by adjusting the balance between red-cyan, green-magenta and blue-yellow.

5.4.8

Print preview dialog box

You can adjust the size and position of the image to be printed, and configure your printer using the Print preview dialog box. A panorama can be printed on a single sheet of paper, or in poster size on any number of sheets. Additionally, you can print crop marks and glue edges.

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The user interface

Figure 5.19: The Print preview dialog box

The preview window The chosen position and arrangement of the panorama picture on the poster pages can be viewed in the preview window. Particular problems, for example low ink levels, can occur when printing a poster on more than one page, sometimes making it necessary to re-print some pages. For this reason, each page in the print preview has a checkbox. If every page is checked, the entire poster will be printed. To re-print individual pages you should open the pop-up menu by a right-click. There, you can call Deselect all and mark just the desired pages again.

The toolbar • Print - Starts the printing process • Setup... - Opens the System dialog, so you can select and configure the printer (e.g. page orientation) • Fit poster - Fits all pages of the displayed poster into the preview window. • Zoom in - Increases the size of the previewed image • Zoom out - Decreases the size of the previewed image • Quit - Closes the Print Preview

Image • Width, Height - Here you can define the exact size of the image to be printed, in millimeters or inches • -10%, +10% - Increases or decreases the present size of the image in 10 percent increments. • Fit to page width, Fit to page height - increases the size of the panorama image so that the width or height corresponds to the width or height of the allocated page. • Position - Here you can determine the position of the panorama on the paper.

5.4 The dialog boxes

35

Settings • Page Borders - This is used to specify the page margin, again in mm or inches. • Markers: Crop marks and glue edges - Mark these fields when you want to print crop marks or glue edges with your picture. The glue edges indicate where to apply the adhesive used to stick the individual pages together. Crop marks show you where to trim the pages in order to obtain a borderless poster. • Trapping - One of the difficulties encountered while joining the individual pages is the accurate cutting of page edges. The slightest inaccuracy can lead to white edges showing between glued sheets. This can be avoided by using the trapping tool, which enables you to print an overlap of up to 2 mm, at the left and upper page edges. This means you don’t have to cut the sheet edge quite so precisely, and you can also avoid gaps when gluing the sheets together.

5.4.9

The Save as QTVR Panorama dialog box

Figure 5.20: The Save as QTVR Panorama dialog box This dialog box allows you to save your panorama in the interactive QuickTimeVR format. This enables you to navigate within your saved panorama using the mouse, and to zoom in or out of the picture.

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The user interface

Window size The window size is the size, in pixels, that QuickTime will use upon opening your panorama. This will also be the size of your panorama as it would appear on the web.

Output size Ideally, internet data should be kept relatively small. In this case, the size of the panorama picture is a factor. When saving the panorama, you can use the Output size pull-down menu to reduce it to one of the available sizes in the list. Reducing the size to 70% decreases the size of the file by almost half, and a reduction of 50% decreases it to a quarter. It’s necessary to strike a balance between picture size and available memory.

Compression Compression is the second way of regulating the size of your output data. The higher the Quality setting, the larger the file, and the less ”lossy“ the picture will be. You can choose between various types of compression using the Compression type pull-down menu. The preset JPEG is usually a safe choice, though PNG is another relatively loss-free process. However, it achieves only a small amount of compression.

Website (HTML) When you tick the field Create equal-named .HTML file, you not only create a QuickTime VR file with the file extension .mov, you also create a HTML page of the same name, with the file extension .html. The QuickTime VR data is embedded in this file, in order that the QuickTime plug-in can show the panorama in the browser. Initially, the generated HTML page contains only the panorama. You may then edit the data using a HTML editor of your choice. In order to make your panorama accessible to your Internet guests, all you need to do is copy each file to the same target folder when uploading. Then the panorama can be viewed interactively on any computer with Apple’s QuickTime player.

Display • Auto play settings - PanoramaStudio offers, as well as for Java panoramas, the optional automatic playback of a QuickTime panorama. With no user input, a camera automatically sweeps through the panorama. You can activate this option by clicking the Auto play settings button. Entering the desired values in the Auto pan rate and Auto tilt rate boxes sets the direction of travel. The first defines the horizontal movement of the camera, and the second defines the point of view’s vertical tilt. Each time the pan shot reaches the edge of the panorama, the direction of movement is reversed. The auto zoom behaves in a similar way, and is defined in the Auto zoom rate field. A value of 1.0 has no effect. Values lower than 1.0 effect a “zoom in”, values higher than 1.0 effect a “zoom out”. • Field-of-view settings - This is where you can set the viewing direction and field-of-view for the start of playback. The easiest way to set the viewing direction is the use of the graphical preview with Set in preview mode. It opens another dialog box showing a view similar to the initial display of the saved file. There you can set the position and the field-of-view with the mouse and the mouse wheel, respectively. You can also set viewing direction numerically with the parameters Pan and Tilt. They respectively determine the position of horizontal sweep and vertical tilt of the field-of-view. The extent of the initial field-of-view can be adjusted by setting the HFov (horizontal field-of-view). In the Min and Max fields you can set the smallest and largest field-of-view. Usually, the use of a low resolution means there’s no advantage in setting a very low value here, as zooming in too tightly merely reveals a lack of detail. In this case, it is useful to limit yourself to a reasonably large minimum field-of-view. • Display in high quality while moving - With this feature activated, QuickTime shows the panorama in the highest picture quality during the navigation of the scene. However, this setting requires more computer performance, causing jerky playback on weaker machines or using larger screen

5.4 The dialog boxes

37

sizes. Depending on your own objectives, you must decide which attribute is the most important. Modern computers should be able to play back at high quality settings without any juddering. Ideally you should carry out a short test of both options. • Insert additional information - Here you can store additional information in the QuickTime panorama like the name of the author or details about the scene. The fields Copyright, Panorama information, and Complete name are available for this purpose.

5.4.10

The Save as Flash or Java panorama dialog box

Figure 5.21: The Save for PanoramaStudio Viewer dialog box This dialog box lets you save your panorama as an interactive Flash or Java applet. Therefore, PanoramaStudio provides its own viewer, called the PanoramaStudio Viewer. This is a stand-alone software application contained within the PanoramaStudio installation. In this dialog box you can configure all parameters of the PanoramaStudio Viewer, and on saving, all associated data is automatically generated. The saved panorama can be viewed in any internet browser with Java or Flash capability. The user can use the mouse to pan and zoom in such an interactive panorama. When you save the panorama for the Viewer, a number of files are generated in the target folder. The main file is a HTML file, to be shown in your internet browser. Furthermore, a JPEG file of the panorama image is added, the Java or Flash applet is copied to the target folder, and a hotspot file is generated, if hotspots are used. With the selection at Choose display type you can select if the panorama is played with the Java or Flash version of the viewer. With the setting Embed both types it is also possible to create a webpage where the user can switch between both versions.

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The user interface

Settings In the Settings field you’ll find the most important parameters for the configuration of the panorama and the Viewer respectively. The panorama image itself is saved as a JPEG. Under JPEG options you can set the desired image compression just as you normally do when saving an image. The Display quality of the Viewer can be adjusted at five levels. The lowest level demands the least computing power, but the picture quality will be low. The higher levels improve picture quality, so that the best picture quality is applied, respectively, in freeze frame, autoplay, and finally, at the highest setting, while the user is interactively navigating the viewer. The viewer window size and available computer performance determine whether the picture will judder during playback. A solution providing the optimum playback performance at all times, regardless of processor power, is the setting dynamic (adaptive). The dynamic display quality setting reacts to a deficiency in computer power by accordingly reducing playback quality, reverting to high quality playback wherever possible. The Advanced settings button opens a further dialog, in which many more parameters for the configuration of the Viewer and the panorama playback can be adjusted. You can find a description of these functions in the section Advanced settings for the Viewer a thorough list of parameters. The Field-of-view... button opens a small dialog box for the adjustment of the field-of-view parameters. The easiest way to set the viewing direction is the use of the graphical preview with Set in preview mode. It opens another dialog box showing a view similar to the initial display of the saved file. There you can set the position and the field-of-view with the mouse and the mouse wheel, respectively. You can also set viewing direction numerically with the parameters Pan and Tilt. They respectively determine the position of horizontal sweep and vertical tilt of the field-of-view. You can adjust the extent of the initial field-of-view by setting the HFov (horizontal field-of-view). In the Min and Max fields you can set the smallest and largest field-of-view. Usually, using a low resolution means there’s no reason to set a very low value here, as zooming in too tightly merely reveals a lack of detail. In this case, it is useful to limit yourself to a relatively large minimum field of view.

Window size The Window size is the size in pixels of the Viewer window. This will be the size of your panorama window as it appears in the browser.

Panorama output size It’s often beneficial to keep internet data relatively small. With this in mind, the size of the panorama picture is an important factor. When saving the panorama, you can use the Output size pull-down menu to reduce it to one of the available sizes in the list. Setting the size at 70% reduces the size of the file by almost half, and a reduction of 50% reduces it to a quarter. At this point, a limiting factor for the size of a panorama image is the memory which will be available to the applet. Current internet browsers limit the available memory for java applets to 96 MB. Consequently, only 10 to 15 megapixels remain available for the panorama image and other data. Pictures that don’t fit in the memory are reduced before the viewer is displayed. It’s vital to avoid saving images of an unnecessarily large size, as these just constitute excessively large data, causing slow load times. Therefore the dialog box will let you know when an image is likely to be too big for processing.

Calculate file sizes With a click on the Calculate file sizes button, PanoramaStudio calculates the size of the data to be shown in conjunction with the viewer. This enables you to see whether the current compression and size settings are appropriate for use, for example, on the internet, before you save the data.

License information Here attention is drawn to the need for a separate license for the Viewer, if you wish to use the PanoramaStudio Viewer as part of a commercial internet site. When you have acquired a license key for this purpose, you can enter it here. You find more information and the current version of the Viewer on our website: http://www.tshsoft.com

5.4.11

Advanced settings for the PanoramaStudio Viewer

At the Advanced settings... button you will find a dialog box with all remaining parameters for configuring the PanoramaStudio Viewer.

5.4 The dialog boxes

39

Figure 5.22: The dialog box Settings for the PanoramaStudio Viewer

General You can enter a name for your panorama in the field Title. This name will later appear in the applet’s status bar. The Language setting allows to set the Viewer texts to english, french, and german. You can choose the color and shadow color of the embedded text by clicking the Text color and Shadow color buttons. Furthermore, registered Viewers allow to feature your own logo, in place of the PanoramaStudio logo. You can do this in the Own logo field, using JPEG, GIF, or PNG files. The URL field can be used to provide your logo with a URL link. If the Visible hotspots field is selected, the hotspots will be visible at the start of the Viewer, otherwise they remain invisible and are indicated by the shape of the mouse cursor.

Toolbar Among other things, the Viewer offers the option of a toolbar with buttons for navigation and for showing or hiding hotspots. If you wish to show this toolbar within the Viewer, please activate the Show toolbar box. By clicking on the Configure toolbar... button, you can modify the appearance of the toolbar in an additional dialog box.

Toolbar Settings: General In the General box you’ll find the settings for the layout, color scheme, button type and position of the toolbar. Layout offers you a viewable choice of button configurations. You can choose the color of the buttons in the Color scheme drop down menu.

Toolbar Settings: Button settings With Button settings, you can set the size and opacity of the buttons. Any opacity value lower than the maximum of 255 will cause some transparency of the buttons. A value of 0 makes the buttons invisible. A button counts here as an Active button if the mouse cursor is hovering over it. In case of enabled Auto play the toolbar will contain a Play button, if the Show Play button field is marked.

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The user interface

Toolbar: Toolbar background The toolbar buttons can be given an optional background. You can also make this background opaque.

Border You have the option of accentuating your Viewer with a narrow border. Tick the Show border box to do this. The color of the field can be chosen by clicking the Border color button.

Controls In Controls, you can adjust the mouse attributes. The sensitivity of the mouse can be set by entering a value in the Mouse sensitivity field. The greater the value entered, the faster the resultant movement of the mouse when navigating the Viewer. Mouse inertia can be assigned in the Mouse mass field, which sets the rate of acceleration and deceleration of the mouse during navigation of the Viewer. This leads to softer and less abrupt movements within the panorama. Once again, the greater the value entered here, the more pronounced the effect.

Waiting screen The waiting screen is shown during the loading of the panorama’s image data. It features an explanatory text and an additional progress bar, representing the current status. You can alter the colors of the waiting screen using the Foreground color and Background color buttons. The text you wish to appear during image loading can be altered in the Waiting text field. Additionally, if you want to include your logo in the waiting screen, you can again assign a JPEG, GIF or PNG file in the Waiting screen logo field.

Auto Play Auto Play allows you to set the parameters for the automatic playback of your panorama. Auto play is active when the Activate auto play box is ticked. User interaction with the Viewer stops auto play. It then restarts after the amount of time which is set in the field Restart after user interaction is elapsed. The direction of movement can be set by entering the desired values in the Auto pan rate and Auto tilt rate boxes. The first defines the horizontal movement of the camera, and the second defines the vertical movement. Each time the viewing direction reaches the edge of the panorama, the direction of movement is reversed. The auto zoom behaves in a similar manner, and is set in the Auto zoom rate field. A value of 1.0 has no effect. Values lower than 1.0 effect a “zoom in”, values higher than 1.0 effect a “zoom out” of the scene.

Settings All settings can be saved for future use by clicking the Save button.

5.4.12

The Save As Screensaver/.EXE dialog box

This dialog box allows you to save the panorama as screensaver or self-running Windows program. In the self-running panoramas you can navigate and zoom with the mouse. A panorama as screensaver is limited to the auto play. By saving a panorama for this type of file the current panorama will be integrated into a self-running file. Links to other panoramas with hotspots or virtual tours are not possible for this type.

Window size The window size is the size in pixels that the initial display window will have. If Fullscreen is set, the panorama opens in fullscreen mode. This setting is not valid for screensavers, since these will always be displayed full screen.

Panorama output size Very large panoramas with a size of hundred or more megapixels may badly affect the system performce while displaying. Therefore it’s often reasonable to scale down a panorama with the Panorama output size parameter. In the case of a very large panorama PanoramaStudio already shows a notice and proposes an suitable size.

5.4 The dialog boxes

41

Figure 5.23: The dialog box Save As Screensaver/.EXE

Settings The basic parameters for configuring the panorama are located in the Settings box. The panoramic image itself will be embedded as a JPEG image into the output file. Therefore, you can set the compression factor with JPEG options... just like saving the panorama as an image. The Display quality of the panorama while showing can be set at five levels. The lowest level demands the least computing power, but the picture quality will be low. The higher levels improve picture quality, so that the best picture quality is applied, respectively, in freeze frame, autoplay, and finally, at the highest setting, while the user is interactively navigating the panorama. The window size and available computer performance determine whether the picture will judder during playback. A solution providing the optimum playback performance at all times, regardless of processor power, is the setting dynamic (adaptive). The dynamic display quality setting reacts to a deficiency in computer power by accordingly reducing playback quality, reverting to high quality playback wherever possible. With Advanced settings... you can open a dialog box for configuring various parameters for adjusting the display of the panorama. The parameters refering to Auto Play and Controls are just like the parameters for saving as Java applet. Further details on them can be found in section chap. 5.4.11 (→ p.38). In addition there is the parameter Display. Here you can choose if the panorama is displayed in the full window, or with a black border, or in 16:9 mode. The functionality of the Field-of-view settings... is again just the same as for Java applets and can be found in section chap. 5.4.10 (→ p.37). It’s recommended to enable the Use Direct3D box, because this mode uses hardware acceleration for the three-dimensional display of the panorama and results in higher quality and frame rates.

5.4.13

The Edit camera settings dialog box

In this dialog box you can enter data for digital cameras which are identifiable by their EXIF information. The technical data for the focal length of the digital cameras as well as their EXIF identifier are required:

Name In the Name box, you can enter the camera maker and model, as you wish them to appear in the program.

42

The user interface

Entering the camera specifications using the specification via 35mm equivalent focal length or focal length multiplier The camera or lens attributes can be entered in the 35mm equivalent focal length or focal length multiplier fields. The 35mm equivalent focal length is the more commonly used in compact digital cameras and describes the focal length required to produce results equivalent to those achieved by an analog camera loaded with 35mm film, whereas a focal length multiplier is common in digital SLR cameras with interchangeable lenses. The factor is identical to the size of the camera’s digital image sensor relative to a 35mm film negative.

Entering data via 35mm equivalent focal length 35mm equivalent focal length Here, you can enter the focal length in a form identical to that of a 35mm analog camera. The focal length equivalent to 35mm camera can usually be found in the manufacturer’s technical data. Enter the minimum and maximum focal lengths in the corresponding fields. If your camera has a fixed focal length, in other words, no optical zoom, enter the same value in both fields. For more information on focal length read chap. 4.4 (→ p.12). Effective focal length of digital camera In this box you can enter the effective minimum and maximum focal lengths. These are usually smaller than the 35mm equivalent focal lengths. Again, the information can usually be found in the manual. For fixed focal length cameras, with no optical zoom, it’s once again necessary to enter the same value in both field.

Entering the data via the focal length multiplier When entering the data via the focal length multiplier, you need to enter only this single value. Digital SLR camera users can often find this multiplier in the camera’s technical data. Otherwise, it’s possible to calculate it by working out the size of a 35mm negative (36x24mm) in relation to the digital CCD or CMOS camera sensor. Common values are 1.5 or 1.6.

EXIF ID of the camera If you insert a new camera manually, you can enter the identifier by which the camera is to be recognized through its image files. To identify the camera, the MAKE and MODEL tags are evaluated. Therefore, you have to enter here exactly the respective values. We recommend using the Focal length and horizon dialog box for adding a new camera. There, you can switch to this Settings dialog box with the New camera... button, if the camera is not already found in the database, but contains nevertheless the necessary EXIF information to be recognized here. In this case PanoramaStudio will already have completed the fields for the EXIF ID.

5.5 Keyboard shortcuts

5.5

43

Keyboard shortcuts

Here is a list of commands for which shortcuts are available in PanoramaStudio. Command New project Open project Save project Save project as... Import images... Save as image... Print panorama... Zoom in Zoom out Original size Overview Select all Deselect all Reverse order Rotate right Rotate 180 degrees Rotate left Remove selected images Parameters Create panorama Create 360 degree panorama Crop Resize Hotspots Help topics

Shortcut Ctrl+N Ctrl+O Ctrl+S Ctrl+U Ctrl+I Ctrl+J Ctrl+P Num+ NumF8 F10 Ctrl+A Ctrl+B Ctrl+T Ctrl+W Ctrl+E Ctrl+R Del F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F1

Chapter 6

The adjustment and editing modes 6.1

The input images mode

In the input images mode - before starting the stitching of the panorama - all input images are arranged in the project as series of individual images. This images can be selected with the mouse. To select several images, hold the ctrl key at the same time. To select a continuous series of images, hold the shift key simultaneously. You can rearrange selected pictures via drag&drop.

6.2

The horizon and focal length mode

You can enter the horizon and focal length mode either before the stitching of the panorama, just click on the menu item Panorama→Parameters, or afterwards with the menu item Panorama→Adjust→Adjust focal length.

The work space In this mode, a red line indicates the current position of the horizon. To move this line, just drag and drop it with the mouse.

The tool window You can specify or adjust the focal length, the position of the horizon and the projection type of the stitching in the tool window.

The options Focal length unknown, estimated and exactly known Depending on what you know about the focal length of your photos, select one of the three entries. If you don’t know anything about the focal length of your photos, mark Focal length unknown (automatic). Then PanoramaStudio tries to find a matching focal length. If you can roughly estimate the focal length, mark Focal length estimated. If you know the focal length exactly, mark Focal length exactly known.

Focal length value, deviation If you know the focal length exactly, enter the corresponding value given in millimeters in the input box Focal length. In the case you previously selected Focal length estimated, this input box is to give an estimate which needs to be restricted by a maximum deviation given as a percentage in the input box right next to it. For digital cameras use the equivalent to the 35mm film instead of the effective focal length. For all analog cameras, especially the different APS picture ratios, use the actual focal length.

Use focal length from EXIF If you have used a digital camera, that embeds EXIF information into the images and PanoramaStudio recognizes this, it is possible to transfer the focal length via Use focal length from EXIF as an estimated value. 44

6.2 The horizon and focal length mode

45

Figure 6.1: Set focal length and horizon

List of different camera types The used type of camera can be chosen out of the following list. • Digital camera - A digital camera was used. • 35mm analog film - An analog camera with a 35mm film was used. • APS panorama - Images are a scans of an APS shoot in panorama format. • APS HD - Images are scans from an APS shoot in the HD format. • APS classic - Images are scans from an APS shoot in the Classic format. • Other film size - Images are scans from a film of an unknown format. You can enter the dimensions of the film in the associated input boxes.

New camera... If the button New camera... is visible, PanoramaStudio has detected a new camera which provides focal length information within its EXIF data. However, that camera was not yet added to the database. When clicking this button, a dialog box for adding this camera to the database appears. Just enter the data about focal length provided by the camera manual. For further details see chap. 5.4.13 (→ p.41).

Accessory lens used This field is only relevant if the EXIF focal length is used. If this is the case and an accessory lens is used the actual focal length from EXIF may differ from the real focal length which is modified by the additional lens. Check Accessory lens used in this case.

46

The adjustment and editing modes

Wide angle or tele converter After checking Accessory lens used, this input box turns active and allows you to specify the factor of your accessory lens. The actual focal length will be computed by PanoramaStudio from the EXIF focal length multiplied by the specified factor.

Projection: Cylindrical or Spherical Selection of the panorama projection. Please refer to Projection in chap. 4.4.3 (→ p.13) for further details.

Position of the horizon Enter the position of the horizon as a percentage of the image height.

Lens correction The Lens correction contains the correction for barrel/pincushion distortions as well as the vignetting correction. Barrel/Pincushion correction This section is only relevant in case of recognizable distortions caused by your lens, such as clearly bent and originally straight lines. You can either enter the correction value for the lens correction in the input box Amount or check the Automatic box for automatic determination of a correction value. Correction values up to 100 minimize the pincushion distortions, correction values down to -100 minimize barrel distortions. Vignetting correction Vignetting is a flaw where photos have a brightness falloff to the image corners. You should use the Vignetting correction if the image overlap regions look darker than the overall panorama. This correction brightens the corners of the input images in an adequate way. With Automatic PanoramaStudio tries to detect a suitable correction automatically. But you can also set the Amount and Radius of the vignetting correction manually.

Figure 6.2: Barrel distortion

Load and save settings You can save the various settings which can be adjusted in the Parameters dialog box for a later re-use. The current settings can be saved by a click on the disc symbol. With the folder symbol you can choose a setting out of a list of the previously saved settings.

6.3 The image overlap mode

47

Figure 6.3: Pincushion distortion

6.3

The image overlap mode

For a processed panorama, you can enter the image overlap mode from the menu item Panorama→Adjust→Change image overlaps. This mode allows you to adjust the image overlaps by altering the positions of two overlapping images relative to each other. Pressing the Done! button leaves this mode applying your changes. The Reset button restores the overlaps to their initial state.

The work space On the work space, all picture overlaps are marked by red frames. The overlap framed in dark red color is the active one. The non-active frames are dashed. After having activated an overlap by mouse click, you can change the position of the two images relative to each other to manually adjust stitching faults.

Figure 6.4: Adjust an image overlap by mouse

48

The adjustment and editing modes

The tool window You can set the position of two overlapping images relative to each other by specifying pixel values.

Horizontal overlap Specify the number of horizontally overlapping pixels.

Vertical offset Specify the vertical offset between the two images of the current overlap in pixels. A negative value indicates that the right image is located higher than the left one. A positive value has to be interpreted the other way round.

Figure 6.5: The Edit image overlaps tool window

6.4

The detail adjustments mode

For a stitched panorama, you can enter the detail adjustments mode from the menu at Panorama→Adjust→Change detail adjustments . This mode allows you to adjust small regions within the overlapping area. Thus, it is possible to fix problems concerning only parts of the image in an overlapping area. Pressing the Done! button leaves this mode applying your changes. The Reset button restores the overlaps as they were when entering detail adjustment mode.

The work space The work space displays the active overlapping area split up into small tiles. Each tile represents one detail overlap of the active overlap for which the relative positon of the two overlapping images may be set individually by drag and drop with the mouse. Hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple tiles. This allows to edit areas consisting of multiple tiles in one step. To assist you finding the right position, each image is displayed semi-transparently. You found the best position, when both image tiles match and look like just one image. To move the focus from the active overlap to another, just click with the mouse on the desired overlap to activate it.

The tool window The corresponding tool window of the detail adjustments mode enables you to specify the pixel offsets for each tile of the the overlapping images individually.

6.4 The detail adjustments mode

49

Figure 6.6: Edit details

Figure 6.7: The Detail adjustments tool window

50

The adjustment and editing modes

Arrow buttons for the tile position A click on an arrow of the arrow button field increments or decrements the relative position for a pair of tiles by one pixel. Thus, you may adjust the relative positions for each tile precisely in both dimensions - horizontally and vertically. Clicking on the X in the middle of the arrows resets your changes to the original position.

Previous tile, next tile Moves the focus to the previous, or the next tile in the active overlap.

All tiles to 0/0 Resets all tiles to the zero position and consequently discards all correction values determined in the automatic alignment as well as all manual changes.

Reset tiles Resets all changes on details made since entering the adjustment mode.

Show difference-view Switches to alternative kind of view while working on tiles. Rather then blending the two overlapping images, this view shows their differences with mid gray indicating no difference. in some cases, this view allows better judgement of the detail adjustment success.

6.5

The blending mode

Merged images are continuously blended inside the image overlaps. Width and position of the blending area can be individually adjusted in blending mode for every individual overlap. For a processed panorama, you can switch to blending mode by calling Panorama→Adjust→Change blendings.... Clicking the Done! button causes PanoramaStudio to apply your changes and exits the blending mode. Clicking the Reset button restores the original values when entering blending mode.

The work space Width and position of the blending area are displayed on the work space in a dark red color. The active

Figure 6.8: Removing doubles of moving objects by reducing the blending area area appears in red - the others are dashed. To activate an area, just click with the mouse on it. You can drag the marker lines now to the desired position. Thus, you can hide e.g. duplicates deriving from moving cars or walking persons. Doubles - so called ghosts objects or ghosting - are problems often occuring when blending images. They are caused by moving objects which occur at different positions in adjacent images. Thus, they often appear twice in the panorama in a semi-transparent way. There are two ways to diminish such effects.

6.6 The exposure mode

51

First, you can apply the complex multiband blending which can be enabled by clicking Use multiband blending in the blending dialog. A second way to deal with this problem is just to properly set the overlapping areas by moving and resizing them so that the ghosting vanishes.

The tool window You can adjust width and position of the active blending area in the corresponding blending tool window via sliders. Furthermore, the blending method can be selected.

Figure 6.9: The tool window Edit blendings

Width of blending region This slider controls the width of the blending.

Position of the blending region This slider controls the position of the blending area inside an overlap. As the blending area must be part of the overlap area, this slider only allows positions inside the overlap.

Use multiband blending Multiband blending is a special blending operation to diminish possible differences between adjacent images. This method is recommended to avoid ghostings in scenes with moving objects.

6.6

The exposure mode

For a processed panorama, you can switch to exposure mode by calling Panorama→Adjust→Adjust exposure correction.. . In this mode it is possible to change the automatic exposure adjustments made by PanoramaStudio. You can adjust both, the brightness of the whole panorama as well as the brightness of each individual image. You can leave this mode via the Done! button or reset all changes made in this mode by clicking the Reset button.

The work space Select an individual image with the mouse to adjust its brightness parameters in the exposure adjustments dialog box. The active image is framed in dark red colour, the other images are dashed.

52

The adjustment and editing modes

The tool window

Figure 6.10: Tool window for exposure adjustments

Automatic correction If you have Automatic correction enabled, PanoramStudio uses the computed exposure adjustments.

Correction amount of the panorama You can control the intensity of the automatic correction in steps from 0 to 100 percent, if automatic correction is enabled.

Overall brightness You can adjust the brightness of the panorama in addition to the automatic correction via the slider Overall brightness.

Automatic adjustment of the input images If you enable the automatic adjustment, the brightness of adjacent input images will be adjusted automatically.

Correction amount for the input images If automatic adjustment of input images is enabled, you can regulate the intensity of this effect via slider. This setting has an impact on the correction of all input images.

Brightness of an input image This slider lets you adjust the brightness of the currently selected input image.

6.7 The crop mode

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Hide image borders You can hide the red input image borders via Hide image borders. This makes it easier to control the effect of the brightness adjustments, without being disturbed by the markers.

6.7

The crop mode

For an already stitched panorama, you can switch to the Crop mode by calling Panorama→Crop... . Alternatively, you can call Input images→Crop current image to crop an input image prior to the stitching.

The work space Initially, when entering the crop mode, PanoramaStudio proposes a rectangle-shaped cropping area indicated by a red rectangle. To change the size of this area, just drag the lines of that rectangle. Since 360 degree panoramas need to match exactly with their lateral borders, the vertical markers may not be moved independendly. Moving them only relocates the joint position of the lateral border so that it will in all cases result in an image with matching vertical edges. Furthermore, for non-360 degree panoramas, the cropping area may be rotated via dragging the corners of the red rectangle. Your mouse cursor indicates the rotation option when hovering over a corner.

Figure 6.11: Rotating the cropping area

The tool window After having finished your work on on the cropping area, just confirm your adjustments via the OK button to apply your settings.

Recalculation in high quality For cropping your panorama, you can use the option Recalculation in high quality. When activated, all processing steps of the entire stitching process are combined and performed again. This will result in better details with higher sharpness due to the fact that several lossy steps are replaced by just one interpolation on the input images.

Bicubic interpolation Another possibility to achieve better image quality is the Bicubic interpolation, a more complex interpolation operation.

6.8

The hotspot mode

To edit hotspots in your panorama, you can switch to Hotspot mode by calling Panorama→Hotspots or via the Hotspots button in the toolbar (chap. 4.9, p.17).

54

The adjustment and editing modes

The work space All hotspots contained in the panorama are displayed in this mode. Hotspots can be selected and moved with the mouse. Furthermore, size and shape can be modified with the anchors displayed around them. The anchors can be moved by dragging them with the mouse.

Figure 6.12: Edit hotspots

The tool window The tool window for editing hotspots can be used for adding, editing and deleting hotspots.

New hotspot When inserting a new hotspot, you may choose from a list of five default shapes and one arbitrary shaped polygon hotspot. For the latter, use double click to finish your drawing.

Delete hotspot Deletes the active hotspot.

Shape Displays the shape of the active hotspot. When clicking, a list of alternative shapes appears. To change the current shape, just select a new one.

URL Enter a link to a website where this hotspot should refer to. Furthermore, the PanoramaStudio Viewer offers the option to refer directly to another panorama and open this in the same Viewer window. All properties of a panorama which you may have saved before i.e. as Panorama1.html, were stored in the file Panorama1.xml. If the hotspot URL refers to such a XML file together with the keyword myself in the HTML target field the referred panorama will be opened in the same Viewer window.

6.9 The panorama mode

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Description Enter a short description of the hotspot.

HTML target Like for regular HTML pages, this field allows to specify a target frame for the link. When the user clicks on the link, the new URL will appear in the specified frame. If you like to create an interactive tour as QuickTimeVR or Java panorama for example, PanoramaStudio will create the corresponding HTML pages for you when saving. In case these pages are integrated in a frameset, the HTML target field is to specify the target frame which will display the corresponding link. The usage is conform to HTML. Giving ’ blank’ as HTML target will open a new frame for displaying the link. As described above the keyword myself is a special case which allows to open other panoramas in the same Viewer window. For more information about this issue please read also the PanoramaStudio Viewer documentation.

Hotspot color You can associate a color to every hotspot. This color is used for the hotspot area, if hotspots are visible. This option is only available for Java and Flash panoramas, QuickTimeVR doesn’t support this feature.

6.9

The panorama mode

A project is in panorama mode after the stitching process is finished and when no adjustment or correction modes are active. This mode allows to directly navigate through the panorama by dragging the panorama on the work space with the mouse. The panorama mode is indicated by a hand-shaped mouse cursor.

Chapter 7

Configuring PanoramaStudio The preferences allow you to set the parameters needed for processing the panorama, the display mode for the monitor, the use of temporary disk space as well as to edit the information about digital cameras provided by the database of PanoramaStudio. The Settings dialog box can be opened through the menu File→Settings.

Adjusting gamma correction for the screen Select the Monitor gamma tab from the Settings dialog to adjust the color management for the screen. Gamma correction is a nonlinear alteration of the luminance gradation to optimize color reproduction for displaying with a CRT. If Enable gamma correction is checked, the colors displayed in the preview can be adjusted with the sliders. You should set them so that the luminances of all outer color fields match with the corresponding inner color fields. Pressing the OK button applies your changes.

Assigning a drive for temporary data The tab Folders/Import allows you to specify a hard-disk drive for storing temporary data which occurs during the stitching process. To give an example, the data demand for a 360 degree panorama comprising about 16 to 18 images coming from a 3 megapixel camera may easily exceed 500MB of temporary disk space. This disk space is only needed during the stitching process - it will be released automatically later. However, it might be possible, that the available disk space runs short for the predefined hard disk drive. In such cases, PanoramaStudio indicates that problem and asks you to specify an alternative drive if available. The default setting is the Windows-Temp folder. This applies when Use Windows temp folder is checked. To select a different folder, check Use other folder and enter the desired folder in the corresponding input field or press Folder... to open a dialog box for selecting the folder. Temporary data will be stored in a subfolder of the specified folder and automatically deleted when not used anymore.

Auto rotate according to EXIF orientation Some modern digital cameras capture the orientation of the camera when shooting. Thus, it is possible for PanoramaStudio to automatically detect whether a photo was made in portrait or landscape format. If Auto rotate according to EXIF orientation from the Folders/Import tab is ticked, PanoramaStudio automatically rotates the images when importing them into a project if the corresponding information is available.

Transfer EXIF data into panorama This option allows you to add the EXIF data of one input image to the panorama image at saving. So it’s possible that the panoramic image also carries information added by the camera like the shooting date. However, this function is in the current version only available for JPEG images.

Suggest source folder when saving When activated, this field causes PanoramaStudio to always suggest the import folder as folder for saving the panorama project. This setting is recommended in case you want to store your projects in the same folder where your input images are. 56

57

Suggest panorama name based on input image If you activate this option PanoramaStudio suggests a file name based on the file name of the first input image of your panorama at the first time you save a panorama. This shall help to achieve a better assignment of panoramas to their individual input images.

Changing parameters for the stitching process The tab Stitch parameters allows you to set parameters for the stitching process. Minimal overlap and Maximal overlap defines the range for valid overlaps. The automatic overlap search algorithm only searches withing this range. Manual adjustments are also limited to this area. You may extend these overlap regions if needed. Diminishing the overlaps will result in slightly reduced computation time for the stitching process. This can be helpful, if the overlaps of your panorama are all quite small. The same applies to the slider for Max. vertical offset which restricts the accepted vertical displacement. Both parameters of the Detail adjustments between images section may influence the quality of the stitching process considerably. The most important setting is the Number of iterations. The greater the value, the finer the detail adjustments in the overlaps. Computation time will rise roughly with the desired quality. As the Number of iterations decreases, the overlap matching will become more and more coarse. The parameter for Minimal tile size defines a lower bound for the fragmentation into tiles for detail adjustments. This value is to be specified as number of pixels. The box Blending and exposure correction allows to set preferences concerning exposure correction as well as blending mode. When marked, the field Match the input images causes PanoramaStudio to automatically defeat differences in exposure along the series of input images. Mark Exposure correction of the panorama to activate an automatic exposure adjustment for the entire panorama after the stitching process. Finally, Use multiband blending enables a more complex and thus more powerful blending procedure which usually yields better results for problematic images. These preferences initially apply to every new panorama project. However, they maybe individually changed for every panorama later. With ’Use focal length from EXIF’ as default you can enable that the corresponding button in the parameters dialog box is always pre-selected.

Editing digital cameras of the built-in database The Cameras tab provides a list of all digital cameras which will be recognized through their EXIF data for further processing by PanoramaStudio . You may edit camera information, add new cameras or remove existing ones. However, adding a camera can be done more comfortably via the focal length/horizon dialog box. Please refer to New camera... from section chap. 6.2 (→ p.44) and chap. 5.4.13 (→ p.41).

Index edit camera settings, 40 image information, 29 panorama properties, 29 perspective projection, 29 print preview, 32 resize images, 27 resize panorama, 31 rotate image, 27 save as Java applet, 36 save as QTVR panorama, 34 save as screensaver/.EXE, 39 difference-view, 49 digital camera, 11, 44 disk space, 55 disk usage, 2 distortions, 45 doubles, 49 drag&drop, 10, 43

35mm analog film, 44 35mm equivalent, 12 35mm film, 12 360 degree panorama, 5, 13 accessory lens, 11 action toolbar, 18 adjustment mode, 43 APS Classic, 44 APS film, 44 APS format, 12 APS HD, 44 APS Panorama, 44 arrangement toolbar, 20 arrow buttons, 49 automatic adjustment, 51 automatic correction, 51 automatic exposure correction, 56 barrel/pincushion correction, 12, 45 bicubic interpolation, 52 blending, 13, 49 blending mode, 49 blind out, 15 BMP, 2 brightness correction, 13 brightness falloff, 45 brightness/contrast, 32

editing mode, 43 equivalent focal length, 41 EXIF data, 56 Exif focal length, 4 EXIF ID, 41 EXIF rotation, 55 Exif standard, 13 exposure, 8 exposure correction, 50 exposure mode, 50 external mass storage device, 6

camera model, 13 camera type, 11, 44 camera vendor software, 6 CCD sensor, 12 color balance, 32 color management, 55 compression, 34 converter lens, 11 costumer support, 3 CPU, 2 crop marks, 32 crop mode, 52 cropping, 5, 10, 15 cropping rectangle, 15 cylinder, 12 cylindrical projection, 12, 45

faults, 13 file menu, 21 film type, 11 filter, 31 fixed focal length, 41 focal length, 4, 11, 43 conversion factor, 11 deviation, 43 multiplier, 41 focal point, 12 gamma correction, 32 ghosting, 49 glue edges, 32 graphics, 2

database, 11, 56 defects, 13 detail adjustments, 13 detail adjustments mode, 47 dialog box

help menu, 26 horizon, 4, 7, 11, 43 horizon and focal length mode, 43 horizontal overlap, 47 59

60

hotspot, 16 color, 54 delete, 53 description, 53 HTML target, 54 mode, 52 shape, 53 URL, 53 HTML, 34 IFF, 2 image data, 11 image file, 9 image overlap mode, 46 image overlaps, 13 images change sizes, 10 ordering, 10 rearrange, 10 rotate, 10 rotate arbitrarily, 10 select, 10 import, 4, 9 input images menu, 23 input images mode, 43 introduction, 1 Java, 36 Java applet, 36 JPG, 2 keyboard shortcuts, 42 landscape, 11 levels, 32 license key, 3 lighting, 8 main memory, 2 manual adjustments, 13 minimal tile size, 56 monitor gamma, 55 moving objects, 15 multiband blending, 50 number of iterations, 56 operating systems, 2 optimization, 31 ordering, 3 output size, 34 overall brightness, 50 overlap, 6 maximal, 56 minimal, 56 overview, 20 panel/portrait format, 8 panorama menu, 24 panorama mode, 54

INDEX

panorama project, 9 parallax, 7 parameters, 4, 11, 43 PCX, 2 perspective, 7, 29 perspective projection, 17 photos arrange, 4 rotate, 4 pixel dimensions, 15 PNG, 2 print, 17, 32 printing, 5 printing poster, 32 project toolbar, 19 projection, 43, 45 projection layer, 12 PSD, 2 quality, 11 quickstart, 4 QuickTimeVR, 16, 34 RAS, 2 recalculation, 52 rectilinear, 29 reference values, 12 registration, 3 resizing, 15 restore, 11 reverse order, 10 save as image, 17 save Project, 16 saving, 5 scanning software, 6 screensaver, 39 selecting, 43 settings, 55 shareware, 3 sharpen, 31 sharpness, 16 shooting, 4 signifcantly differing brightness, 15 single lens reflex, 12 speed, 11 spherical projection, 45 stitch, 5, 13 stitch parameters, 56 stitching, 5 system requirements, 2 Task type bar, 21 tele converter, 45 tele converter lens, 11 temporary data, 55 TGA, 2 TIFF, 2 tone curves, 32 tool window

INDEX

blending mode, 50 crop mode, 52 detail adjustments, 47 edit image overlaps, 47 exposure adjustments, 51 horizon and focal length, 43 hotspots, 53 unsharp mask, 32 URL, 16 user interface, 18 vertical offset, 47 view menu, 23 view toolbar, 20 viewfinder camera, 12 vignetting, 45 vignetting correction, 12, 45 watermark, 3 wavelike, 13 wide angle converter, 45 wide angle converter lens, 11 wide angle panorama, 13 window menu, 26 windows, 2 zoom, 7

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