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Breaking the Gigapixel Barrier

megas writes "Max Lyons has just posted on his site what seems to be the first 1 Gigapixel picture, created from 196 separate photographs taken with a 6 megapixel digital camera, and then stitched together into one seamless composite. According to Max, he has 'been unable to find any record of a higher resolution photographic (i.e. non-scientific) digital image that has been created without resizing a smaller, lower resolution image or using an interpolated image.'"

9 of 538 comments (clear)

  1. Re:My god... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The 1gig image isn't there. It's a much smaller, more web friendly preview. The 1gig image is a 2GB TIFF file.

    We should at least buy a few poster prints from the guy considering what we are about to do to his server.

  2. Re:Why by vondo · · Score: 4, Informative
    Because he needed a static (13 minute stability) image.

    Ok, you were joking, but there is a serious answer.

  3. How do you print it? by aardwolf204 · · Score: 3, Informative
    How Do You Print It? Another good question. The short answer to this is that there appear to be a number of alternatives, but none that I've discovered that I'm completely happy with. So, I'm still thinking about it! However, I'm interested in hearing from anyone who would like to partner with me on printing this image. I think it would be an excellent match for (and an excellent demonstration of) large format printing technology. If you have an idea or a proposal, please let me know (e-mail me).

    Thats an interesting question. At 1.09 megapixels he says that it would be 11 feet long at 300ppi. The only thing I've ever experimented with was a panarama with my 2.1 megapixel camera where I stiched in photoshop and printed on 11 8.5x11 sheets of paper from a color leser printer and taped together after cutting off the margins. It didnt look all that great considering the resolution, but from a far its nice. too bad you cant get a 11'x1' frame.

    What are your ideas on how to print this thing. No, i dont think a plotter would do it.
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  4. Re:Now what is that? by AtOMiCNebula · · Score: 4, Informative

    yeah. He says on the website that you'll have to save it as a file, and open it through something else. MSPaint (please, no flaming) worked fine for me except for the right-most part of the image.

  5. This is not the first gigapixel image by Performer+Guy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Images like this are common in GIS applications, often orthorectified product stitched into a seamless continuous image map of massive areas of terrain, these images are vast, far in excess of a gigapixel.

    http://airphotousa.com/

    Some even generate even larger contiguous image sets at multiple resolutions from these data sources:

    http://www.earthviewer.com/

  6. Re:Not an image by cev · · Score: 3, Informative


    This guy need a little education about interpolation. Due to multiplexed color elements, a 6-megapixel camera is only generating a color image which is at best about half as large (i.e. 3 megapixels). The picture you get out is 6 megapixels due to interpolation.

    CV

  7. Re:Relatively static? by bobbozzo · · Score: 5, Informative
    The guy said he needed a subject that was relatively static. But shadows on a canyon wall are not static. He says it took him 13 minutes. I wonder if there was any noticeable movement in the shadows in that time?

    The sun moves (about) 180degrees/12hours = 15degrees/hour or about 3 degrees in 12 minutes.

    If taken when the angle of the shadows is relatively low (like high noon), I doubt it would be noticeable.
    However, it looks like it was taken near sunset or sunrise, in which case the change in length of the shadows would be much more dramatic.

    The math is explained here but you'd need to know the height of the canyons plus the angle of the sun or the length of the shadows to get an exact result.

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  8. Re:another large image by PurpleFloyd · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, it's not stiched, but it's not digital either. That looks like a scanned medium-format (negative size about 6x6 cm) film image. Needless to say, medium-format film can provide lots of resolution - you could probably blow up a good medium-format photo onto a wall and get great detail. The theroretical maximum of medium-format is roughly the same as the image in the article, full size - roughly 1 billion pixels of data (zoom in any farther, and you're looking at film grain, not the recorded image). The interesting thing about the linked article is showing how it's possible to take pictures with incredible resolution, without breaking the bank on a medium-format camera, good lenses, and your own darkroom. All it takes is a good digicam and a willingness to spend hours and hours in PanoramaTools and Photoshop, getting things just right.

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  9. Linux image stitching tools by mfago · · Score: 3, Informative

    PanoTools: the only (?) image stitching tool available for Linux. Looks pretty powerful, although not as automated as some.

    I believe that the author of the article used the Windows version (among other things).