bigmike.it

GigaPX2Pano Lite is a free tool which converts your gigapixel image into a set of small image files compatible with PanoJS3 viewer. The program can open RAW files (a true rgb uncompressed file, not camera specific) or KRO files (created with Kolor Autopano). Follow the link to view an example: Sanctuary

PanoJS3 is a free software that shows the small image tiles, seamlessly joined together, in your preferred browser with pan and scroll capabilities. It supports many browsers and works with Windows, Mac, Linux, IPhone, IPad and Android.
The image is showed zoomed at 100%, or 1:1, so you can view every tiny detail of your large photo and check if the stitching process worked perfectly.

Using the program

Follow the steps below, and you'll be ready to view your giga image without any effort using only free software.
Before starting, download the GigaPX2Pano Lite package and unzip it on your local disk. The destination directory is not important, and no installation is required. PanoJS3 is included in the package, so you are ready to process your first image.

• 1. Create a new directory where all the needed files will be stored. Let’s say, for example, d:\panotest
• 2. Copy all files and directories contained in the directory “template”, from the GigaPX2Pano Lite package, into d:\panotest. You should see something similar to this:
• 
• 3. Copy the gigapixel photo into the img folder.
• 4. Launch GigaPX2Pano.
• 5. Select the input file (click on the blue folder icon).
• 6. If the input file is KRO skip this step.
  If the input file is RAW, you have to specify the width of the image, so the program calculates the height of the photo. Insert the width value, in pixel, in the input box and then click on the yellow check mark.
• 7. Be sure that the output format is JPG and you are ready to process the file.
• 8. Press the “Split” button.
• 9. When the program has finished, you need to edit the index.html file with a text editor (notepad.exe is perfect)
• 10. Find these lines (starting from line 71):
  • function initViewers() {
  • createViewer( viewer1, 'viewer1', 'img', '*FILENAME*', *WIDTH*, *HEIGHT*, 256 );
  • }
  
  Change the three words *FILENAME*, *WIDTH*, *HEIGHT* with the right parameters.
  Example: the filename of your image is mountain.raw, width = 5000 and heigth = 2000.
  After the edit the lines should be:
  • function initViewers() {
  • createViewer( viewer1, 'viewer1', 'img', 'mountain_', 5000, 2000, 256 );
  • }
  
  A note about the file name. If the original file name is mountain.raw, you must write mountain_ removing the “.raw” extension and adding the underscore “_” at the end of the name. Don't remove the single quote characters before and after the file name.
• 11. Save the modified file and close the text editor.
• 12. Double click on the index.html file. Your default browser will be opened showing the image.

The program is useful to view the stitching results without the need to upload it on a specialized site such as gigapan.org, only to discover too late that the final image was not perfectly stitched.

 

Troubleshooting

• - If the browser doesn't show the image but only a dark grey area, check carefully the changes you applied in the indext.html file.
• - Try to rename the original image using only letters and numbers, don't use the space or any special characters, then restart the whole process.
• - Go to the img directory and open some of the JPG files you find in the directory and check if everything is ok.

 

Download

GigaPX2Pano Lite is free for personal and commercial use.

• Windows version 1.0.0

  Download

 

 

Only the Windows version is available at moment. Depending on the interest for this program and on the requests I could plan to develop a Linux or Mac version.

 

PRO version

If you want to zoom in and out, or you feel uncomfortable manually editing the index.html file, take a look at the GigaPX2Pano PRO version which offers many improvements.