PanaViewer is a program I wrote to view panoramic images.

    What do I mean by 'panoramic image' ?  Well, images like this pan02.htm with pixel dimensions of 4970 w x 551 h ( 1.4 mb ) , or this  grandcanyon.htm  with pixel dimensions of 3618 w x 594 h ( 1.7 mb ), that are much wider than the screen.  Now, that's not exactly a dictionary definition of 'panoramic', but then again this program is free, so quitch'er bitchin :-).

     Taking 'panoramas' in the days of film was a great big deal - you needed expensive special camera equipment, expensive darkroom processing, etc.  In today's age of digital cameras, all you need is a digital camera, a decent tripod, and some image processing software such as PhotoShop, Paint Shop Pro, etc..

• First, set up your tripod and level it in both planes ( left-right and front-back ).
• Then, pick a focus point and 'mid-range-tone exposure' point for your shots and set your camera accordingly.  You can use the 'auto-focus' and 'auto-exposure' functions to set it up, but then you need to lock those in with 'manual mode', so that they won't change in the steps below, as you move the camera.
• Now, take a series of shots from left to right, making sure that each one overlaps the next, and has some kind of identifiable object that will help you to know exactly where to 'stitch' them together later.  Do not allow zoom, focus, f-stop, ISO, or exposure to vary between the shots.
• Later on, when you get them downloaded, use  your editing software to 'stitch' them together into a new panoramic image.
• PanaViewer will accept any image size, but it is best on most screens to use vertical dimensions of < 650 pixels.  Your horizontal dimension can be anything you want, far in excess of the screen size - that's the whole point.
• PanaViewer will accept any color depth, and any resolution.  It will also accept dimensions larger or smaller than those above.  You can use your editing software to either 'resize' the image, or crop it, etc, in any way you want, to achieve whatever dimensions you want.

PanaViewer is freeware, and you may freely distribute it.  You may not charge for it.

   To download PanaViewer, click here .  This is a simple self-extracting zip file, with the program, and a few sample images.  The samples are not really true 'panoramics', because at this date I don't have any source images to work from, so I just used a cheap PhotoShop trick and mirrored them, and PRETENDED they were actually panoramic.

I did not build a full Installer script for this program.  Most computers will already have the very standard DLL's required, such as the VB6 runtime, and a couple of common controls like that.  If you can't load it, let me know.

Comments to the author :

Paul Milligan

pjm@pobox.com

Some interesting related links on the web :

http://pic.templetons.com/brad/pano/ - this page has a nice panoramic shot by Brad Templeton that can be downloaded.  Grand Canyon North Rim
(3359 x 600 - 288K) .. Brad also has many other panoramic images on his site.

Some software links

http://www.panoramafactory.com/

http://www.ptgui.com/

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

General info and links

http://www.panoguide.com/

Google for more links

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=panoramic+photograph