Once the images have been stitched, balanced, and blended, the resulting panoramic image can be saved to a file. Before saving this scene to a file, three final decisions must be made:
Before selecting the "Save" function, one should go back to the "Scene" dialog and consider the size of the vertical field of view. The Scene dialog may be re-opened by clicking on the "Scene" button at the top of the main window. Inthe case of a complete 360 degree panorama, the Edit Scene dialog may look like the following example:
The vertical field is determined by the sum of the "Upper Field of View" and the "Lower Field of View". In most cases, these values should be nearly equal to form a "vertically symmetric" field of view.
The values reported for the upper and lower fields at this point will generally be somewhat larger than the initial values reported here immediately after selecting the original images and before stitching all of the seams between adjacent images.
The default values of the upper and lower fields of view allow one to see the black "fillet" areas above and below each seam. During the stitching, exposure balacing, and blending operations, these fillet areas can help ne to see where the seams are located. After the images have been aligned and blended, it may be preferable to reduce the upper and lower fields of view so as to eliminate the fillets.
To eliminate the fillets, select the upper and lower fields of view and reduce the values found there by two or three degrees, then click on "Apply" to update the panoramic image in the main window. Take care to reduce both upper and lower fields of view by equal amounts, but do not worry if the values shown for upper and lower fields of view are not exactly the same.
This means of eliminating the fillets may also remove portions of the scene in the upper and lower regions near the horizontal center of some of the original images. Instead of eliminating the fillets, one can save the full panoramic image including the fillets, then use an image processing tool such as Adobe PhotoShop to hide the fillets with sky, clouds, bushes, pavement, etc. This technique allows one to include all of the original images and deliver the widest possible vertical field of view.
Return to Saving the results (top).The image file saved by the "Save" function is created with a particular number of rows and columns of pixels. These numbers define the "resolution" of the image. The default resolution ("100%") is chosen so as to provide the smallest possible file without losing information obtained from the original flat images. This default resolution should be satisfactory for most purposes.
Instead of using the default image resolution, it is possible to produce panoramic images with resolutions greater than or less than the default resolution. The resolution value can be specified in the Edit Scene dialog as shown in the following example:
Entering a value of less than 100% for the resolution reduces the size and quality of the subequently saved panoramic image. A resolution value of 50%, for example, will produce a panoramic image with half the number of rows and columns, and 1/4 the number of pixels as are found in the panoramic image produced with a resolution of 100%. Likewise, a resolution value of 200% will produce a panoramic image with twice the number of rows and cloumns, and 4x the number of pixels found in the panoramic image generated with a resolution of 100%.
After selecting the "OK" or "Apply" buttons, the panoramic scene in the main window will be updated to reflect the new resolution. This allows one to preview the effect of selecting an increased or decreased resolution before saving the panoramic image to a file.
Selecting a resolution value of less than 100% may produce a panoramic image with increased amount of aliasing caused by sub-sampling the original images. The effects of aliasing include jagged or stair-step appearance for diagonal lines. If it is necessary to reduce the size of the panoramic image, it may be better to save this image with a resolution of 100%, then use image processing tools such as Adobe PhotoShop to convert the image to a lower resolution copy. Such tools can "filter" the pixels to minimize the extent of aliasing in the resulting image with reduced resolution.
Aliasing effects are most noticeable in areas of a scene with closely spaced parallel lines, and lines which are nearly horizontal or nearly vertical. Even with a resolution of 100%, undesirable aliasing problems may be found in the resulting panoramic image. In order to minimize the extent of aliasing in a panoramic image, it is possible to save the panoramic image with an increased resolution, such as 200%, then use an image processing tool such as Adobe PhotoShop to reduce the size of the panoramic image to any suitable resolution.
Be warned that some low cost image processing tools do not necessarily filter the pixels adequately when converting an image to a lower resolution. In such cases, there is no benefit to using those tools.
Also be warned that the sizes of the panoramic image files can already be fairly large, even for the default resolution of 100%. Specifying a resolution greater than 100% can produce an image file that is much larger than the one obtained for a resolution of 100%. Before specifying a resolution greater than 100%, make sure adequate resources are available, and that any subsequent tools that may be used to read the panoramic image file are capable of handling large high resolution images.
The "resolution" setting has no effect when working with a single panoramic image instead of multiple flat images.
Return to Saving the results (top).After completing the steps of stitching, balancing exposures, and blending images to form a seamless panorama, one can save the panoramic image as a TIFF or JPEG file. The TIFF format is good for a lossless copy of the complete panoramic image, but the resulting file tends to be very large. In most cases, the JPEG format produces a much smaller file with no noticeable loss of detail.
In order to save the panoramic image as a TIFF or JPEG file, simply click on the "Save" button in the upper right part of the main window. Specify TIFF of JPEG format and a name for the new file, then select "Save" and the image will be saved.
No special TIFF or JPEG options are offered at this point. If one needs more compact JPEG file, or an alternative form of TIFF file, or any other file format, one can import the TIFF of JPEG images generated here into any image processing program and re-save the image in any format supported by that software.
Return to Saving the results (top).