gigapixel image

Introduction. This page contains what I believe to be one of the highest resolution, most detailed stitched digital images ever created। It is the view from Bryce Point in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. It consists of 196 separate photographs taken with a 6 megapixel digital camera, and then stitched together into one seamless composite. The final image is 40,784 x 26,800 pixels in size, and contains about 1.09 billion pixels...a little more than one gigapixel. I have been unable to find any record of a higher resolution photographic (i.e. non-scientific) digital image that has been created without resizing a smaller, lower resolution image or using an interpolated image.


How was it created? The first step in the creation of the image was to choose an appropriate subject. There are a number of technical issues that I had to consider that are not normally encountered when taking single images. For example, it took me 13 minutes simply to take all the photographs, and I was shooting as fast as my camera could write images to its memory card. So, I needed a subject that was relatively static. Secondly, I knew that I would have to use a very long focal length lens to take the image, otherwise the final composite would end up with an extremely wide field of view...something I didn't want. This also presented challenges due to the extremely short depth of field when using very long lenses.

The second step was to assemble the images. This was a complex and lengthy process. My normal procedure (using PTAssembler, Panorama Tools and Photoshop) was not sufficient in this case for a number of reasons because of the size and number of images I was working with. For example, the version of Photoshop that I use cannot work with images with pixel dimensions of more than 30,000. So, my solution was to modify some of the existing programs in my workflow, and write a number of new software programs to create this image.

Technical Details. Here are some facts and figures about this image:

• Final image dimensions: 40,784 x 26,800 pixels
• Number of pixels in final image: 1,093,011,200 (1.09 gigapixel)
• Final image file format: RGB Tiff using deflate compression
• Final image file size: 2,068,654,055 bytes
• Number of source images: 196
• Number of pixels in source images: 1,233,125,376 (196 images * 3072*2048)
• Lens focal length: 280mm (equivalent to 450mm on a 35mm camera)
• Aperture: F9. Shutter speed: 1/400
• Number of control points in PTAssembler project: 779
• Number of seams that were manually blended after stitching: 364
• Horizontal field of view of final image: 63 degrees
• Time required to capture component images: 13 minutes
• Time required to set control points: 2 hours
• Time required to optimize project: 2 days
• Time required to stitch project: 4 days
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• Time required to blend seams / correct misalignments / finalize image: ३
  

for more information and pictures refer this link
http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/gigapixel.htm