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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.'"
If I ran his site I'd either trim the star attraction down to a thumbnail-formerly-known-as-gigapixel shot or redirect all Slashdot referrals to goatse...
Wah!
That picture is amazing. I asked the photographer to email me a copy of the original but I haven't been able to access my mail server for hours. ;)
Correction: where's the .torrent?
Max Lyons has just posted on his site what it 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.
And thus became the first person to ever be slashdotted by only one visitor.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Is to print each one of them on a separate sheet of paper, and tape them together?
The nation can rest, confident that we were the first to break the dreaded Gigapixel barrier. God speed, Max Lyon.
sigh
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
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?
A gigapixel "Where's Waldo" would drive thousands insane.
Trolling is a art,
I use a billion monkeys, each looking at one particular bit of a scenery, then I tell them to line up and take turn at the keyboard, to type what they saw in emacs (the favorite monkey editor, it requires a lot of dexterity), and compile a very large XPM file.
...
So what? this guy just figured out a way not to deal with a billion bananas and hundreds of tons of chimp shit. Big deal
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
(using freecache to not toast my own webserver)
Harald
Breaking the Gigapixel Barrier
(Last Updated: November 28, 2003)
Introduction. This page contains what I believe to be one of the highest resolution, most detailed stitched digital images ever created. It is the view from Bryce Point in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. It consists of 196 separate photographs taken with a 6 megapixel digital camera, and then stitched together into one seamless composite. The final image is 40,784 x 26,800 pixels in size, and contains about 1.09 billion pixels...a little more than one gigapixel. I have 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.
Resized version of 1.09 gigapixel image after stitching
How was it created? The first step in the creation of the image was to choose an appropriate subject. There are a number of technical issues that I had to consider that are not normally encountered when taking single images. For example, it took me 13 minutes simply to take all the photographs, and I was shooting as fast as my camera could write images to its memory card. So, I needed a subject that was relatively static. Secondly, I knew that I would have to use a very long focal length lens to take the image, otherwise the final composite would end up with an extremely wide field of view...something I didn't want. This also presented challenges due to the extremely short depth of field when using very long lenses.
The second step was to assemble the images. This was a complex and lengthy process. My normal procedure (using PTAssembler, Panorama Tools and Photoshop) was not sufficient in this case for a number of reasons because of the size and number of images I was working with. For example, the version of Photoshop that I use cannot work with images with pixel dimensions of more than 30,000. So, my solution was to modify some of the existing programs in my workflow, and write a number of new software programs to create this image.
196 component images before stitching
Technical Details. Here are some facts and figures about this image:
* Final image dimensions: 40,784 x 26,800 pixels
* Number of pixels in final image: 1,093,011,200 (1.09 gigapixel)
* Final image file format: RGB Tiff using deflate compression
* Final image file size: 2,068,654,055 bytes
* Number of source images: 196
* Number of pixels in source images: 1,233,125,376 (196 images * 3072*2048)
* Lens focal length: 280mm (equivalent to 450mm on a 35mm camera)
* Aperture: F9. Shutter speed: 1/400
* Number of control points in PTAssembler project: 779
* Number of seams that were manually blended after stitching: 364
* Horizontal field of view of final image: 63 degrees
* Time required to capture component images: 13 minutes
* Time required to set control points: 2 hours
* Time required to optimize project: 2 days
* Time required to stitch project: 4 days
* Time required to blend seams / correct misalignments / finalize image: 3 days
How much detail does it contain? Much, much more than would be captured by any conventional digital camera...even those that cost more than a new car. For example, the Canon 1Ds (about $8,000) captures 11 megapixels, while the BetterLight Super 10K-2 scanning back (camera not included!) captures 140 megapixels, but costs about $25,000. I also believe that a gigapixel image surpasses what even die-hard admirers of large format photography argue is possible with large format cameras. For more thoughts on this subject, you might also want to read this essay.
Here's another way to think about it. Given that the resolving power of the human eye (under ideal conditions at the center of the retina) is about 1 arcminute (1/60th of one degree), this image captures considerably more detail than I (or any other normal sighted human) was able to see w
To make a monitor large enough to use that picture as it's background.
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
I don't think even a Carl Zeiss lens can actually resolve a billion pixels, but it's worth a shot. Isn't it?
At least it would, if Seagate/Maxtor/WD/Samsung could get their way.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
after all that patient work, stitching and blending and doing everything manually for days, he realized he had left the lens cap on ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The resulting stitched image is a 1 gigapixel image.
You'll be waiting 20 years before you see a 1 gigapixel camera.
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.
Well, golly. sbeast702 doesn't think it's a gigapixel image, and he's so clever that he (and only he) knows the subtle ways in which using photoshop magically transforms an image with one billion pixels into something else besides a gigapixel image. Oh, how I wish I could understand such esoteric things. Ah to be the sbeast702 . . .
But wait, what's that?! sbeast702, in his haste to get a FP, failed to read any of the article at all. For had he, he would have noted the author's lament that he could not use photoshop at all because his version limits the canvas to 30k pixels in any dimension, which is far too small for this image with 1 billion pixels which, somehow, is not a gigapixel image because sbeast702 says so.
STFU karma whore.
everything in moderation
Heck, what about the image of the Earth without any clouds taken over months at a time and stitched together? How big is that sucker?
The trick is the caveat of a non-scientific image. Pfft. Big freaking deal. All he did was make a mosaic of existing photo images. Why don't I hammer together all of my digital manga collection and call it the first 10 Gigapixel scanner image?
This is nothing. I work regularly with scientific datasets larger than this. I just recently had to fix a memory leak bug exposed by a customer who was trying to mosaic together 6 GB of satellite imagery together in the product I work with.
This is a total non-accomplishment, especially if the software he was using was already tested and working with >2 GB output. Call us back when a single sensor does this.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
... and can't download such a huge picture. Could someone condense it down a bit and send me a copy?
Infuriate left and right
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.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
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.
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/
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
Stitching all of those pictures together.
The submitter obviously doesn't work at a University, where they'd drastically simplify the process. Instead of just using one camera to construct the image, they'd buy 196 digital cameras, make a cluster out of them, maintain a staff of undergraduate students to keep the cluster working, and then complain about their picture-scheduling software losing shots. But once they got the cluster in the right location to take the picture, it would only take them a few minutes to take and process the picture, a huge performance increase over the days required using one camera.
paintball
The Commies are pumping billions into Terrapixel research. There can not be a terrapixel gap!
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Ansel Adams just got friggin' OWNED!
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
Actually, it's kinda sad-- Max doesn't post any of his originals anywhere, because the bandwidth would eat him alive. His site has hundreds of panoramic stitch images, at much-reduced size to let you browse the collection for free. But now he's facing a slashdotting. If you're a fan of his art, I suggest you wait a week, find a photo you really enjoy, and BUY A PRINT from him.
[
Ah. Right. The image must have errors because Mozilla said so. Mozilla couldn't possibly have any bugs :P
Try IE. It works.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
Call me crazy, but it looks like 72dpi to me.
Why shouldn't you consider it a "true picture"? Many astronomical and other scientific (sonar, radar, etc.) images are formed in this way (such as the popular Horsehead Nebula image taken by the Hubble telescope). Also, many very high detailed photos use some sort of mechanical process to take seperate images and later do some processing to combine them. If done correctly, there is no difference in quality between this method and an instantaneous one (at least for quasi-static scenes). Using a mechanical measure to determine what is or isn't a "true picture" seems rather arbitrary and silly to me.
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!
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).
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.
That would just plain suck. Part of what makes porn great is that it usually comes in low quality format and your mind can sorta fill in the fuzzy gaps. With that kind of resolution, the models would go from amazing sex machines to some crazy, jaw clinching people whome you could count moles and hair stubble under the armpits on.
Really, the biggest benifit of working is IT is access to all the free software *cough*
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.
"your mind can sorta fill in the fuzzy gaps"
LOL. This is all the comment it needs.
Site seems slow, here's a mirror of the first page:
t m
http://www.mskf.org/mirrors/gigapixel/gigapixel.h
0x0D 0x0A
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."
If you want to have some fun open up Adobe photoshop and make yourself a blank gigapixel photo it to give you a sense of scale of what this guy has done. The one I did to get up to a gig was 112 inches tall by 140 inches long at 150 dpi. Brings new meaning to 8x10 don't you think? When I tried to save it as a JPEG (level 12 compression) the white (blank) picture came in at a whopping 23mb (His picture was around 2gb).
Software interpolated or no you have to be at least a little impressed with what he has done.
"Wow look at my brand new gigapixel camera!"
"How many picture can you get on your $600 4gb compact flash card?"
"Hmmm on the lowest setting?"
"Yeah"
"Two"
There are other scanbacks for MF cameras that also have very high resolutions. Naturally they can be used only on relatively static targets.
http://www.kigamo.com/scanback/dmc.html
Camera back for the 4x5 large format camera has been beyond 1GP for quite some time. Look ma, no stitching!
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!