A panorama is a wide, all-encompassing view from the Greek pan ("all") horama ("view"). A growing specialty in web-based photography is the creation and display of panoramic photos. These are photos that have extreme width to height ratios, some even achieving 360 degrees of rotation about the viewer. Popular applications for these photos and ways to view them are increasing. Realtors now use panoramic photos with viewers on their websites to advertise specialty properties. Prospective buyers visit the website and, using their own mouse, navigate a "viewer" to scan a panoramic view of a property or home in any direction they wish - adding a dimension of reality never before possible.
With the exception of some specialty panoramic capable cameras, most panoramic photos are assembled by overlapping several regularly framed photos, in a process called "stitching", into a continuous photo with no noticeable "seams".
While there are many products (e.g. Photoshop Elements) that have panorama stitching tools that may possibly give you a reasonably stitched image, many times the results are disappointing. This is because the professional quality panorama stitching process is not trivial. Camera lenses inherently distort photos, more as you go toward wide-angle, and especially around the edges - just where you end up having to overlap and stitch them. The proper method to do this is quite complex and requires parametric distortion techniques that attempt to warp and match the distortions together.
If you have questions, please visit our Panorama Source website, dedicated to panorama services and images.
We've developed tools, techniques and procedures and that, along with substantial experience, allow us to create a single panoramic photo from your panoramic segment photos. The photo we create is as high resolution as possible, anywhere from 30 - 190 MB.
Visit our Panorama Gallery Index and explore the many examples on this site.
If you send us your overlapping photos, we'll construct a high resolution panoramic photo, put it on a CD, and return it and your originals to you by certified mail. We can also integrate your panorama photo with a java panorama viewer into a web-ready HTML page, complete with instructions on how to set and control photo display parameters. This viewer can optionally display clickable 'hot spots' that will display user defined text or link to other pages. We can print the panorama we create for you up to 13" x 44".
Exceptions to these requirements may be considered with custom pricing. Extra media backup copies are available at a slight extra cost. We pay the postage on orders over $100.
Pricing for our panorama stitching and creation services is based on the number of photos that need to be stitched together and the final photo's angle of view. Scanning charges are added for 35mm film or print originals. If its a 360 degree view, there is an additional step involved in matching up the two ends. The average file size of the panorama also corresponds to the number of photos.
Pricing for printing custom stitched panoramas from your images is based on the width of the final print. The actual height is determined by the final aspect (width-to-height) ratio of the photo.
We also have hundreds of stock panoramic images available as prints online on this website. Pricing for stock panoramas is also based on print width. The height is determined by the final aspect (width to height) ratio of the original photograph.
Please visit Panorama Source for more information.