Panorama Utilities

There are a number of plugins one can use to display a panorama. That's why it is useful to detect which plugins are installed on a user's system. The main plugins used for pano display are Java, QuickTime, Flash, Shockwave, and DevalVR. After a great deal of work and testing, I came up with this plugin detection script.

The detection script takes into account the new challenges presented by Internet Explorer 7.

I have a few simple DOS ultilities (for Windows XP/2000, not Win 98) that use PanoTools for resizing images, and converting between equirectangular and cubic image formats. These utilities work in drag and drop mode, meaning you only have to drag one or more images onto a program and it will run. The utilities are as follows:

Translate.bat - Will translate an equirectangular input image (Width x Height = 2N x N) to a specified yaw, pitch, roll.

Pano2Faces.bat - Will convert an equirectangular input image (Width x Height = 2N x N) to 6 rectilinear cube faces.

Cube2Pano.bat - Will convert one or more rectilinear cube faces (Width x height = N x N) to equirectangular format.

Resize2NxN.bat - Will resize one or more images (with Width x Height = 2N x N) to another size.

ResizeNxN.bat - Will resize one or more images (with Width x Height = N x N) to another size.

You can get the utilities here: DOSUP v1.1b (September 2007)

ImageSlicerPT

ImageSlicerPT is a Photoshop CS/CS2/CS3 script that will slice a panoramic image into smaller pieces for use with PTViewer. The idea here is to allow PTViewer to load a pano one slice at a time.

There are several possible advantages to this:

- You don't have to wait for the entire panorama to download before PTViewer actually displays something.
- You can set a different jpeg compression for each slice, which can lead to a smaller file size for the whole panorama.
- Memory use of PTViewer under Sun Java can be somewhat reduced.

ImageSlicerPT is intended for PTViewer version 2.7L2 or HIGHER.

ImageSlicerPT will also create *.ptv and *.ptvref files that are used by PTViewer v2.8 beta3 or higher. The html files to use with the *.ptv and *.ptvref files are also generated.

[A *.ptv file is a single file that contains ALL the roi image slices and the preview image. This simplifies the html code, but *.ptv files may not be cached by browsers.

A *.ptvref file is only a text file that contains the list of all the roi image slices. Again, this simplifies the html code.]

Here is the script: ImageSlicerPT v1.3 (May 4, 2005)

This script has been tested on Windows and Mac.

LayerMaskCopy is a Photoshop CS/CS2/CS3 javascript that will allow you to copy the layer masks from a multi-layered document to another multi-layered document.

This script will be most useful when you are creating hdr (high dynamic range) panoramas, and you wish to copy the masks from doc A (which contains panoramic images taken at an exposure A) to doc B (which contains panoramic images taken at an exposure B).

There are 3 modes of operation:

1) If 2 multi-layered docs are open when running LayerMaskCopy, then the layer masks will be copied from one document to the other.

2) If only one multi-layered doc is open when running LayerMaskCopy, then the layer masks will be copied to a new document (called "layermasks"). The "layermasks" document uses only a small amount of memory/disk space compared to the multi-layered doc.

3) If one multi-layered doc and the "layermasks" doc are open when running LayerMaskCopy, then the data in the "layermasks" doc will be copied to the layer masks of the multi-layered doc.

Here is the script: LayerMaskCopy v1.3.2 (February 25, 2006)