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Graphics Software

Breaking the Gigapixel Barrier 538

Posted by michael from the sweetness dept.
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.'"
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Breaking the Gigapixel Barrier More

Breaking the Gigapixel Barrier

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  • My god... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MrEd ( 60684 ) <<tonedog> <at> <hailmail.net>> on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:08PM (#7612640)
    Linking a 1 GIGAPIXEL photo to Slashdot? bwwwwwaahahahahahahahahah!


    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...

  • Wow! (Score:5, Funny)

    by krbvroc1 ( 725200 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:09PM (#7612652)
    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. ;)

    • Huge bandwidth bills aren't funny... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Speare ( 84249 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:46PM (#7613042) Homepage Journal

      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.

      • If you enjoy this stuff have a look at the master of large format photography, Andreas Gursky [moma.org]. 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 dis

    • How many pixels are enough? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by GCP ( 122438 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @08:07PM (#7613845)
      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.

      • Re:How many pixels are enough? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @12:02AM (#7615412) Journal

        I can't remember the precise numbers but can approximate fairly easily as long as we change the rules so that I don't have to know what portion of a sphere you can view at full resolution without changing the angle of your head. When browsing photog newsgroups in the past, I found that the generally accepted resolution beyond which a photo to be viewed at a little less than arms length (like holding it in your hand) would not be improved is 170 pixels / inch or 28,900 pixels / sq inch. That is approximately This was based on calculations utilizing the minimum arc that the human eye can distinguish. I just pulled out a tape measure and see that the distance from the approximate center of my head to my hand while holding a picture at a comfortable viewing distance is about 24 inches. The surface area of a sphere with 24" radius is 4*pi*24^2 or 7238 sq inches. At 28,900 pixels / sq inch, that would be 209,168,200 pixels. So, assuming that you must stay at the center of the sphere but that you can look in any direction, this gigapixel photo contains far more resolution than is actually required to meet your specified goals.

        More interesting to me would be the answer to a question like, what storage capacity per day is required to capture a full motion, with depth information for every pixel, 360d spherical recording of every moment of ones life with sound, some zoom capacity (I've utilized 35X in my photog experience and would like to see that), and reasonable ability to freeze frame motion of the speeds encountered in everyday life and extract nicely focused still images from that. When someone can either carry storage capacity like that in a pocket sized computer or when the future WIFI equivalent can send that much bandwidth to a home server, our lives will be drastically changed. Roughly calculating this out it comes to about 87 Petabytes / day uncompressed. Compression technology might drop that to 1 PB/day. Should happen about 39 years from now so I'll likely see the day. What a future.

        • Re:How many pixels are enough? (Score:4, Funny)

          by Quixadhal ( 45024 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @10:39AM (#7618004) Homepage Journal
          Well, many years of it should compress nicely:

          Day 7781, 8am:
          Sitting at desk, white cubical walls surround three sides, monitor in front with 1024x768 changing pixels. Fingers on keyboard move. Mouse moves every so often. Coffee level drops.

          Day 7781, 1pm:
          Sitting at desk, white cubical walls surround three sides, monitor in front with 1024x768 changing pixels. Fingers on keyboard move. Mouse moves every so often. Water level drops.

          Oh yeah, if you want to add sound recording:

          "God damn windows!"
          "Bite me Bill Gates!"
          "You want me to code WHAT?"
          "Grrrr, why isn't cut-and-paste consistant in X?"
          "*mumble* site must be slashdotted again"

  • new low (Score:5, Funny)

    by 3ryon ( 415000 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:09PM (#7612665)
    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.

  • Next stage ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jonbryce ( 703250 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:10PM (#7612667) Homepage
    Is to print each one of them on a separate sheet of paper, and tape them together?

  • Finally, the long, sad wait is over: (Score:5, Funny)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06@@@email...com> on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:10PM (#7612668)
    The nation can rest, confident that we were the first to break the dreaded Gigapixel barrier. God speed, Max Lyon.

  • Why (Score:5, Funny)

    by ad0gg ( 594412 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:11PM (#7612679)
    Why couldn't have been porn?!?!?!

    sigh

  • Relatively static? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SpaceRook ( 630389 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:12PM (#7612693)
    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 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?

      I wonder if thats where the term relatively comes in?

    • Re:Relatively static? (Score:5, Informative)

      by bobbozzo ( 622815 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:45PM (#7613031)
      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 [badastronomy.com] 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.

  • ouch.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:13PM (#7612707) Homepage Journal

    A gigapixel "Where's Waldo" would drive thousands insane.

    • Re:ouch.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by morcheeba ( 260908 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @07:39PM (#7613608) Journal
      We had a 150 megapixel image (greyscale, in 1999 or so) that had been taken by an F15 equiped with a survailiance pod. The plane flew many passes over this little section of town and the images had been stitched together. I printed it out at 11x17 (my inkjet couldn't physically capture all the detail even at that level - it was more like 1 bit per pixel) and we'd play "I spy"

      There must have been 100 homes or more in there... you could see all the trees and cars pretty clearly. One car had a sunshade in the front, another had its door open. Some vehicles were trucks, and one had some old tires in the back. One guy's house was really messy, and there was an area where they parked construction equipment.

      The most interesting part of the picture was the pool at the apartment complex.. there were lots of empty chairs, but someone in a bikini was lying in one face-up, unaware that the F15 flying way overhead was taking her picture.

  • Pff easy (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:13PM (#7612719)
    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 ...

  • another large image (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Harald Paulsen ( 621759 ) * on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:14PM (#7612731) Homepage
    It's worth to mention the WTC ground zero photo [freecache.org]. It doesn't look to be stitched together, and it's a whopping 9372x9372, or 87 megapixels.

    (using freecache to not toast my own webserver)

    • Re:another large image (Score:5, Informative)

      by PurpleFloyd ( 149812 ) <zeno20@@@attbi...com> on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:56PM (#7613147) Homepage
      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.
  • 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 mo

  • Now.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by hatefulmofo ( 695500 )
    To make a monitor large enough to use that picture as it's background.

  • Yar (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mix_master_mike ( 540678 )
    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...

    • Re:Yar (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Speare ( 84249 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:58PM (#7613165) Homepage Journal

      Well, if you wait a few days for the site to calm down, you can READ his site to get a LOT of information about his processes.

      • Use a tripod and a pano head to rotate the camera around the nodal point.
      • Take 196 images that overlap slightly in grid formation.
      • Use a GUI to assign several control points for each pair of images: image[N]@x1,y1 == image[M]@x2,y2 (He uses his own GUI called PTAssembler for Windows. Others exist, and Hugin works on Linux and Windows.)
      • Use an engine to optimize the distortions, and to render the distorted images onto a final image. (He uses Helmut Dersch's panotools, as does PTGui and Hugin and other front-ends.)
      • He had additional challenges due to 2GB address limits in Windows (and most 32bit Linux builds would have similar challenges).
      • He had additional challenges due to apps breaking with images bigger than 16bit signed coordinate space (and a few Linux tools break on this too).

        • The free-as-in-beer panotools libraries itself is closed-source, and not supported anymore. IPIX(tm) apparently was one of several companies chasing Helmut for patent issues, the resolution of which I am not sure. New work is being done today to open the process up with Open Source equivalents. Otherwise, it's the top tool since it can stitch images taken from any orientation into several projections into several image formats with high quality.

          I use (and help develop) the Hugin tool for my front-end; I've done a few 25 MP images, but nothing so large or as diverse as Max Lyons' works.

  • "The image "http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/gigapixel_strip .jpg" cannot be displayed, because it contains errors"

    Some jpeg limitation in Mozilla or plain slashdotting or what?

  • 8x10 Gigapixel Digital View Camera? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:18PM (#7612775)
    The 196 frames in that composite are pretty close to the the actual size of the CMOS sensor in the "35mm" digital cameras. If you had a big wad of cash burning a hole in your tailored pants, you could mount those sensors onto the backplane of an 8x10 view camera.

    I don't think even a Carl Zeiss lens can actually resolve a billion pixels, but it's worth a shot. Isn't it?

  • This would be the new camera standard (Score:5, Funny)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:19PM (#7612785) Homepage Journal
    At least it would, if Seagate/Maxtor/WD/Samsung could get their way.

  • Wouldn't it have been a bummer if (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:20PM (#7612799)
    after all that patient work, stitching and blending and doing everything manually for days, he realized he had left the lens cap on ?

  • I have a dialup line ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) * on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:23PM (#7612832)
    ... and can't download such a huge picture. Could someone condense it down a bit and send me a copy?
  • I myself hold many pointless records, as far as I have been able to verify:

    * Most pencils held on face while facing south-southeast and humming Kraftwerk's "The Robots" - 8

    * Largest lint ball created from other, smaller lintballs found on blue and green sweaters given for Christmas 1996 - 3.5" (diameter)

    * Most drawn-out, sarcastic post ever by me - this one

  • How do you print it? (Score:4, Informative)

    by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:25PM (#7612847)
    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.

    • Re:How do you print it? (Score:3, Informative)

      by addaon ( 41825 )
      Any decent frame store should do an 11'x1' frame without difficulty; should be a one-hour or while-you-wait thing. Also, it's still very easy to get banner paper, which most inkjet and dye sub printers are fine with; I don't know if your color laser will like it, though. Still going to be mediocre quality, but cool for the price.

    • Re:How do you print it? (Score:5, Funny)

      by JSmooth ( 325583 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:45PM (#7613037)
      These guys [wide-format-printers.org]can help ya:

      They got a 10' foot thermal for only $275,000. I'd snap it up.

    • Re:How do you print it? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by xpccx ( 247431 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @09:22PM (#7614385)
      I downloaded an archival quality (200Meg) image of a map [slashdot.org] from the Library of Congress [loc.gov] that I wanted printed. Since the Library of Congress charges $200-$300 to print the maps I called the local Kinko's, or maybe it was Sir Speedy. Anyway, I asked them how large of a print they could do and the guy told me the largest he had done was something like 20+ ft by 20+ ft. They printed the map on thick, almost vinyl, paper and it came out to something like 4ft by 3ft. Not only did it look amazing, but it cost me less than $50.

      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.

  • My 1.3Mp camera would do me fine if it would take pictures in the same lighting conditions as my ISO 800 35mm film camera. 5Mp, 100Mp, 1Gp, who gives a stuff? I can already print A4 blow ups that look as good as normal film; give me sensitivity at a reasonable cost or give me death!

    Well, maybe not death. Slight joint-pain. How about that?

    TWW

  • This is not the first gigapixel image (Score:5, Informative)

    by Performer Guy ( 69820 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:26PM (#7612862)
    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/ [airphotousa.com]

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

    http://www.earthviewer.com/ [earthviewer.com]

    • Hmm... yes, but my guess (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that these images are stitched together in the UI by pulling out segments from a backend database and putting them together on the client-side. Thus, they don't qualify as a single, > 1 Gigapixel image... technically. IOW, it's not like they're panning across a > 1 Gigapixel JPEG. :)
    • 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 n
  • Frankly, as one who *just* joined the Dark Side by purchasing a Digital Rebel, I'm impressed.

    For you naysayers, this particular gorgeous image is *begging* to be blown up to 30x50 inches or even more, IMHO.

    When (not if) I figure out the stitching software (it's a little non-intuitive to me), my 4x5 is going on ebay!

    I wish the learning curve for image manipulation wasn't so steep - I'd love to collaborate on a GIMP plugin to do stitching...

    Mark
  • Since he's /.ed I can't verify what he actually has, BUT a friend of mine routinely works on PhotoShop files that are at or over a gig.

    I built him a new machine a couple of years ago to speed up his artwork. PIII-933, 768MB of Ram, 64MB Geforce card, 40GB HDD. He says he is ready for a nother new one in Spring as this one improved his situation by about half of what he really wanted.
  • 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.

    Why not throw in resampled and stretched as well? How about expanded or even made bigger too?
  • Instead of using alot of cameras , how about using a just a few to scan a landscape by moving the camera focus ? I have seen these types sold for panoramic images .

    Panoramic google links [google.com]

    How to shoot panoramic nature photos [naturephotographers.net]

  • That seems like an awful lot of work.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by raehl ( 609729 ) <raehl311@@@yahoo...com> on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:38PM (#7612980) Homepage
    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.
  • All you have to do is take a low resolution picture, and then use that software they use on almost every TV show to sharpen it and bring in details that weren't in the original photo.

  • It's too bad he didn't post a link to the full file. That would make for a most thorough slashdotting!

    steve

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @06:45PM (#7613033)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • has finally entered the realm of kitsch online tourism

    this our largest ball of twine on route 66
  • Has anyone got a cache of this as ASCII art or something?

  • Linux image stitching tools (Score:4, Informative)

    by mfago ( 514801 ) on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @07:01PM (#7613190)
    PanoTools [unimelb.edu.au]: 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 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.

  • Mirror (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mskfisher ( 22425 ) * on Tuesday December 02, 2003 @07:49PM (#7613700) Homepage Journal
    Site seems slow, here's a mirror of the first page:

    http://www.mskf.org/mirrors/gigapixel/gigapixel.ht m [mskf.org]

  • Sorry, GP has been broken for some time (Score:3, Informative)

    by cetan ( 61150 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @11:08AM (#7618268) Journal
    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!

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