- Jean-François Rauzier has developed techniques for creating "Hyperphotos"–panoramas that can be printed some 30′ x 10′. "When looking at a Hyperphoto," says his press release, "at first you think you’re
looking at an enlargement of a panoramic photograph.
Not quite. Look more closely and you absorb a strange
atmosphere that distances the viewer from the real world
and sucks you into a universe of dizzying amplitude.
Each Hyperphoto is a gigantic hyper-realist puzzle,
created by assembling hundreds of close-up shots
taken with a telephoto lens."Jean-François reports that although he tried other software, Photoshop was the only tool capable of handling his 30-40GB images. He displays them on his site using Flash, though for sheer scale I’d love to see one in person. More info (in French) on his process is here and here.
- Rob Galbraith has the story of HAL9000, an Italian team that has created a whopping 8.6 gigapixel stitched photograph of an Italian fresco. They won’t go into the details of how they stitched 1,145 Nikon D2X frames into a 96,679 x 89,000 behemoth, but it looks like they use the excellent Zoomify technology to make the results visible (a la Google Maps) via Flash. Check out the results on their site.
Hmm–using Photoshop and Flash together to make sharing high-res imagery a snap; seems like something the Grand Unified Adobe might want to consider… [pulling chin thoughtfully]
WOW!
The 8.6 gigapixel image is incredible. It is great to be able to zoom in to see individual brush strokes.
Thanks for the link.
You could put a whole bunch of image-server vendors out of business — scene7, etc.
Maybe something to do with the FlashPix format?
the Jean-François story makes me wonder how well Live Picture would do with images that large…
Hello,
Pardon my intrusion. I’m a long time Zoomify user. They used to be quite responsive, but I’ve run into some technical issues using it with Flash 8 and when I email them now, I get no response. Does anyone know if they are still in business? Or has anyone using Zoomify experienced problems with the latest versions of Flash?
thanks!
kevin
[Zoomify is very much still in business, and I’ll pass your name and contact info along to them. –J.]
John,
I recently upgraded to CS3 Premium and got a copy of Flash CS3 with it. I have been asked by one of my clients to create a shot documentary (opera) slide show but to also use the Ken Burns effects (panning slowly across a large image, zooming in slowly) while narration and music plays ….
I did a quick search and found a couple of commercial tools that do this (amara) and it appears one can do this with Adobe Premier but it is not clear if this can be easily done in Flash. I would like to use this as a flash learning project.
Any pointers. I’ve searched the Adobe site.
[Steve, Flash can absolutely do this, though I don’t know of any source code offhand. Sites like FlashKit and Ultrashock historically have offered this kind of thing, but I’m not deeply in the loop with them anymore. Maybe you could post an inquiry on a Flash forum or a mailing list like Flashcoders. In any case it’s a good suggestion for a feature to add to a future Lightroom/Photoshop/Bridge gallery. –J.]
The Brain Maps API is a lightweight multiresolution image viewer that lets you view Zoomify images. It has been designed to be small and fast, and to consume very little memory, yet still be very functional and extensible. Future versions will enable you to add overlays to multiresolution images (including markers and polylines) and to display clickable labels. The Brain Maps API is a free service, available for any web site that is free to consumers. Available at http://brainmaps.org/index.php?p=brain-maps-api
[Cool–thanks for the tip. –J.]
Zoomify works pretty good from within Photoshop as an export.
I wanted more features so I bought Zoomify Design for $29. Guess what? It can hardly be called software. There is nil user interface. You have to sort thru the files it generates, edit them, etc.