Hi,

I use PTGui Pro as a sticher. Does anyone know how to make a gigapanorama over 65,000 pixels because PTGui Pro does not allow it? Also photoshop does not open files over 30,000 pixels. How can I open/manipulate images over 30,000 pixels? Any help or suggestions?

Thank you
Thomas

Thomas,

GigaPan’s own Stitcher program will handle that size and much larger. Your images do not need to be taken with a GigaPan unit, however you would have to purchase a license if you don’t have one. I used it on one of my larger ones (5 gigapixels) to create a printable file. Exported out of the stitcher tool, it was a 119020 × 42184 pixel, 15 GB .raw file in Photoshop RAW format. That is the only way to export a file of those dimensions out of Stitcher since it exceeds both JPEG and TIFF size limits. A GigaPan of the finished and mounted print is at http://gigapan.com/gigapans/113711. The original pan is at http://gigapan.com/gigapans/49865.

I am not familiar with the features or limitations of the latest PTGui or other 3rd-party alternatives. Photoshop has been able to handle RAW formats since CS2.

Dave

For my sins I use Autopano, not something I whole-heartedly recommend but it can produce stitched images up to 300,000 pixels wide. (Not 100% sure that is the limit.)

As to editing, my version of Photoshop (CS5) will open images of over 30,000 pixels so I am not sure where your problem is. You don’t give details of the problem or say what your version of PS is so I can only guess, but iirc “30,000” is the maximum dimension of a JPEG file so I’m wondering if your problem is that you are saving your stitches as JPEGs but PTGui is not saving the images correctly? You could try saving as TIFs.

Finally, if you are not aware of it, there is always The Gimp – a free image-editing program from gimp.org. Even if you don’t like the program it is sometimes convenient to have when PS has a problem with the file because sometimes The Gimp will load it and that tells you the problem is with PS not the image.

Para ensamblar las imágenes podrás usar Gigapan Sticher, PTgui y AutopanoGiga. Para editar en Photoshop puedes usar los formatos .psb y raw de photoshop sin problemas. El jpeg está limitado a 30.000 pixeles y el Tif a 4 Gb. Saludos

Thank you all for your valuable input! All the information was really helpful!
Thank you again!

Gracias a todos por su valiosa aportación! Toda la información fue muy útil!
Gracias de nuevo!

Best regards
Thomas

There are file size limits to both JPG and TIFF files, with JPG limitations being 65k pixels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG

TIFF limit is 4GB in size, as the file format uses 32-bit offsets. There is something called BigTIFF which uses 64-bit offsets, but that is rarely seen in the real world. :-)

The problem with TIFF files is that they aren’t always compatible when they are extremely large. I’ve resized gigapans to do smaller images and exported them as a 3.9GB TIFF from the stitcher program and couldn’t open it anywhere (LR, PS, GIMP), but took it down to a 3.1GB TIFF and everything was fine…

If you use Kolor’s Autopano Giga, size will not be an issue, just specify .psb as your output. This is Photoshops large file extension. What does happen though, is Autopano will create a layered file, even though it doesn’t show as layers in photoshop.

So—

step one – take your pano
step two – use Autopano’s import with Gigapan settings
step three – Use Autopano to edit the file, used for straightening, etc.
step four – Let autopano create panorama as a .psb file.

This file can not be submitted to gigapan at this point, it is layered. Mine also usually take up 13 gigs of disk space and take forever to load into Photoshop so wait till you have a lot of time on your hands. After flattening, the 13 gig file is now about 3 gigs in size.

step five – load into Photoshop
step six – DO NOTHING OTHER THE FLATTEN LAYERS. THEN SAVE YOUR FILE.

At this point you can make adjustments, crop, play with etc your image. If you had tried to do these things before flattening the image it would have taken 3, 4, or 5 times longer for Photoshop to complete each action. I have actually replaced the sky while layering and it took almost a week to do it so the top scene looked as perfect as I could get it.

If you are going to submit the image to Gigapan and you have made any edits that required creating another layer you MUST flatten the image again.

I always re-save as a .psb file as it’s lossless, tiff’s have a file size limitation. This is a longer process then Gigapan’s stitcher but the end results are worth it.

Also, don’t increase the bit levels as it won’t make any difference other then increasing file size tremendously.

Love the info here and learning more about gigapanning. Do any of you have experience using the Canon 5D Mark III? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDULltPMs0o

PTGui will save files > 64K pixels, if you use Photoshop large (.psb) format. If you plan on uploading to gigapan’s site, make sure the .psb file has a single layer so you can open the file using gigapan’s stitch software.