Emerging Web Software
Panoramic Image and Virtual Tour
Methods Used for Panoramic Image:
- Used my digital Canon Rebel EOS on a tripod
- Took each picture with at least 30% overlap
- Traveled in a 360° radius
- Utilized Photomerge in Photoshop
- Made minor color adjustments to the various image layers to ensure color matches
- Flattened image and optimized for web
Software Used:
- Photoshop CS3
- iMovie 3.0.3 (Bundled with iLife) for virtual tour
NOTE: The most current version is iMovie '09 - iTunes 8.2 for audio track
- iPhoto 2.0.1 for importing cropped images
- UPDATED: Virtual Tour - YouVR Basic Tour Builder
I originally just merged the photos in to a panoramic picture using Photoshop's Photomerge automated feature (as seen above), but then decided to take it one step further and make a virtual tour out of those pictures. I decided on also using iMovie since I had the program already but never truly used it. I decided to use it after seeing different examples online using it.
Photomerge
When using Photomerge, you are given the options of auto, perspective, cylindrical, reposition only, and interactive layout and then you select the pictures you want merged. The software does the work for you. Sometimes you need to help it along. The only problems I had with Photoshop was the color shift between some of the images and a little disjointed objects. The color shift mainly came from the images that were taken toward the sun. I had taken many pictures and ended up deleting some of them from the merged panoramic image since a teeny sliver was used and was easily fixed with a similar image on another layer since I had plenty of overlap. Not huge problems just minor fixes.
iMovie
iMovie is a fairly simple software to use. It integrates very smoothly with the iLife bundle - can grab the photos from iPhoto, audio from iTunes, and import video clips into iMovie library to use. Everything is drag and drop and customization is done with slider and typing in title text if needed. You can add titles, effects, and transitions. I added an audio clip as well to give the tour an added layer of dimension. I imported a bird chirping track into iTunes and after cropping the large panoramic image into smaller ones in Photoshop. I saved the images in an album folder in iPhoto. When I needed the stills, all I had to do was drag and drop. To export it was matter of choosing the Export menu item and selecting the desired compression format and file format.
I had a couple little dilemmas getting things figured out at first with the timeline, but after that it went fairly smooth. I tried getting it to export bigger, but for it to be optimized for web, it has a set dimension and compression. See final virtual tour below.
If trouble viewing, click to view iMovie Virtual Tour.
An alternative virtual tour can be viewed at YouVR Tour showing the backyard. The password is EWTT09. To make my virtual tour a little more interactive, I ended up doing an additional virtual tour using the same image, but using a free online virtual tour site. The drawbacks of it were that it took a while to load the pages for the process. It was nice to have a map incorporated into the tour as well as have hot spots on the map. Also you can have use a panoramic image, still images, and video.
Recommendations:
- I would definitely recommend using Photo merge in Photo shop. You have more control over your image. I tried using Photo stitch 3.2 software that came with my camera just as an alternative method, and it didn't do as great of job in my opinion.
- As for iMo vie, I think it is a great beginner video editing software. It is just really nice how the Life bundle works together seamlessly just as the Adobe Creative Suite does.
- You VR would be a recommended site. It was free (upgraded package available as well) and I thought it provided quite a few options for information to set up the tour. It was easy too.
Improvements: I don't have any suggestions for improvements. I think it was fun to do something on the creativity side. There are so many options to do virtual tours. I just wanted to try something that I already had but never had a chance to use. I'm sure the newest version probably has more features that what I have too.
Download the zipped file of individual images for the panoramic (7.9MB - 22 images)
Prezi - Presentation Software
Below is a screen shot of the the file open in Prezi. It shows the interactive menu, the playback controls and the infinite canvas.
Prezi is a "digital napkin" presentation software from Hungary. It doesn't use slides like Power point but rather a large whiteboard, and it works on one's spatial skills. It is more interactive - can zoom in and out as well as drag the presentation around to view the different topics, auto play, forward/back, etc. The topics are connected using a path. You can use audio, video, and images within the Prezi.
Once I watched a couple tutorials on the Prezi site and You Tube, I was convinced this was an emerging software. It was easy to use too. I just used the free account available which did come with a 30 day trial of the offline software. I still might try the offline version but the web-based was just fine for what I needed to achieve. The site provides a lot of information about the software. I didn't have to look to far to get any help ("Learn" tab) - offered as You Tube videos, manual, samples, and tutorials.
The menu is really easy to use. If you want to rotate or resize or move an object, click the Place menu item, then the object you want to adjust. From there you get a "zebra circle" like in the logo. The three different rings do the adjusting - inner ring/circle moves the object, the middle scales the object and the outer rotates the object. It is that simple.
Also to keep different thoughts/topics together you place frames around the objects. When you rotate an object and set up your path, the presentation will automatically rotate the presentation to make the words right side up to read. With that feature, it makes setting up the presentation fun.
There are only a few preset style templates to choose from and you can't adjust them. They do have quite a few additions/changes that the company is working on upgrading. The manual does a great job explaining what you can and can't do in the program.
Recommendations:
- I would definitely recommend this software. It makes you think "out-of-the-box" and makes the presentation more memorable. The examples on the Prezi site were outstanding. I am going to use this again in the future. Bonus: The offline software works on Mac AND PC.
Improvements:
- I had a hard time converting the provided code for embedding the presentation onto my page. It would work for transitional doctype, but I'm using strict. I found a site that converted the Flash embed code to XHTML but it then said my Prezi didn't exist. I'm going to keep working on it. For now, I just have to link to the Prezi site.
Download the zipped file of the Prezi presentation (8.7MB)
Download the zipped file of the individual images for the Prezi presentation. (88KB - 4 images)
I used Adobe Illustrator CS3 and Photoshop CS3 to create the custom images for my presentation.