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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.'"
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?
(using freecache to not toast my own webserver)
Harald
That's relatively nifty. I wish s/he would have put up a little more on the actual process for stitching so many images together. I can't imagine the amount of RAM (well, I can) necessary...
mix_master_mike
vafrous
Quoth: Final image file size: 2,068,654,055 bytes
How big would that be as a JPEG?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
That depends on how you answer the age old question: "If a tree falls in a forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?" Personally I think it does, so I also think something can be a website even if was never viewed.
He specifically mentions scientific purposes - I'm sure he had orthophotos, other aerial photography, and satellite images in mind when he mentioned "scientific purposes".
This, on the other hand, was for photographic purposes.
He sure would have saved himself some work had he just gotten his hands on a copy of ERDAS, though. And that compressed JPG would look a hell of a lot better as a MrSID image. But I digress.
I still think it's clever. Maybe not groundbreaking or earthshattering, but clever, and neat.
This is a bit of a plug, but it's on topic. I put together an image serving website that could handle images up to about 70 "Gigipixels" We were using images from a microscope. http://www.neuroinformatica.com/
-Jim
Celebrate Excellence!
What I don't understand is the voting system on his website. It looks like you can vote for each photo on a scale of 1 to 10. However, many of the photos (of say Washington, DC) score only 3,4, or 5. Who are grading these things?
The image Max Lyons is discussing was (in part) assembled using the panotools back-end. Max also wrote the PTAssembler front-end which helps to set up the alignments and other features. It's still a HELL of a manual job. For Linux, see the Hugin project which is an Open Source tool now in fully-functional beta.
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The author mentions large-format cameras. Here is a link to a lowcost large-format camera project, built by cannibalizing a 1200dpi scanner to make a 122 megapixel camera.
I signed up and downloaded the files (300 MB each, as TIF with LZW Compression, Eastern and Western Hemisphere). I stitched the two together (photoshop 8 only) and created a file that had pixel dimensions of 43,200 x 21,600 (2.6 GB uncompressed). And each pixel is equivalent to about 1/2 mile. Not enough for any true detail at high magnification, but fun to scroll around on.
This translates to a file 12' by 6' at 300 dpi, overkill to say the least. But we printed it out at 4' by 8' here at work and used it as decoration for a blank wall. An incredibly impressive piece of art.
A small (600x600 pixel) cut of California at 100 percent
If you are one in a million, then there are six thousand people who are just like you.
Which makes me wonder how many pixels would be necessary to reach a point where no additional sharpness could be obtained by additional pixels.
The definition in this case is completely filling my field of view (wrap around screen or retinal scanner), allowing me to move my eyes without redrawing, so every point would have to be as sharp as my full center of view (foveal) vision, but without allowing me to move my head (either changing its angle or moving closer to the image).
I can imagine many uses for an even higher resolution image that would allow you to zoom in on interesting spots, but I'm curious about how many pixels the full view scenario above would require. If we just had that, then we could refresh the screen in response to head movements (I wouldn't want to do it for eye movements) and cover pretty much everything, I would think.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
I'd bet any decent frame shop could frame a very large image. I'd guess they'd charge you several hundred dollars for the custom frame though.
"Is to print each one of them on a separate sheet of paper, and tape them together?"
Oh my.. that's like $300 worth of ink.
"Derp de derp."
That's what bittorrent is for, isn't it?
If you enjoy this stuff have a look at the master of large format photography, Andreas Gursky. Gursky, for me, adds the 'art' to the photography that Mr GigaPixel somehow misses. Im impressed as hell by the scale and detail of Gigapixels work, but theres something just ... better about Gursky.
If you hear of any of his work near you go and see it - viewing on screen doesnt do it justice.
If I had any advice for MrGigaPixel (as I hope he will now be named) it would be to find the printing mix which best displays his work, and to ONLY release as exceptionally high quality art prints - not cheap posters. It might be easier to make a buck with posters, but its possible to earn a mint with print. (as my old art teacher used to say)