Panoramic world

You can’t study all the time during the exams period. I mean...you can’t devote most of the time when you could study (between breakfast and lunch or lunch and afternoon tea, etc.) to studying. Some people do, but they are either freakish or in big trouble. And as for me, during the time of exams i often find many interesting movies and exhibitions to see, new games to play, or, as in this case, new software or new ways to modify the pictures i have collected when there was enough time to go out with the camera and the light was inspiring...even though this time it made me go out and make some more :)

Checking some new pictures at stock photography sites i found quite an interesting type of picture: planet. Not that kind of planet you would see in the space, but more like a the-little-prince-planet, as these planets are made from 360° panoramic pictures turned round. Therefore you can see a planet with one house and one tree, etc. As these pictures look quite neat, i wanted to make some on my own. The results are not as great as some of those i have seen, but where am i supposed to get a place with green grass and blue sky! One trip to Baba hill in Prague yielded a snowy panorama with white ground and grey sky, but at least i got something :)

And now the magic tool! After using the Canon Photostitch software i got with my compact camera i am really amazed by the power of Hugin, which is the name of my new toy :) One can find it here, it's free and bloody smart! The only thing you have to count on when making e.g. a panorama from 15 6MPix pictures is that you'll need some free space (hundreds of MB if you want a higher quality result) and it may slow your machine down a bit (at least i had enough time to make myself a quick lunch).

The software is quite easy to work with, even when you're a beginner...and i suppose it can do many things i haven't even dreamt of. One of the tricks is changing perspective (or lens, as you wish). That allows you to create pictures with unusual perspective, to kind of switch lenses on your camera when the picture is already in your computer. And the results are quite interesting.

If you want to make a “real planet”, you really need to get not only a 360° horizontal panorama, but also a 180° vertically, or else you will end up having a ring, just like i did (when there's snow around, it's easier, because you can just fill the middle part with white, as happened on the first picture). But even the rings are good. Unless you want to print a 360° panorama and stitch it to a cylinder, allowing you to see the panorama once you put your head inside, this is a nice way to present the 360° in a reasonable format.

This is my Sicilian circle:

 However, Hugin is really good in making standard panoramas as well, it's not a deformation tool, although the deformation gives you many possibilities! Hope it brought you some inspiration ;)