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Source image for QTVR panorama of the Meteor Crater, Arizona - full version.
The file size of the QTVR panoramas is dependent on image size, image quality and the zoom level of the source photographs; typical sizes are from 150 - 400 kB for the low resolution image (350 x 150 pixels) and 400 - 1,500 kB for the high resolution image (up to 624 x 350 pixels).
To navigate in a panorama, use the mouse to click and drag the picture left or right, or the keyboard arrow keys. Press the Shift key to zoom in or the Control key to zoom out.
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Click here to download the software necessary to view QTVR files. |
How to Make a QTVR Panorama
QTVR panoramas of nearby objects require special lenses and center-mount tripods, but landscape panoramas can be made using regular equipment - even a tripod isn't essential though it is best to have one. To take the source photographs, make sure the camera is level, then move it around 360 degrees taking photos that overlap by at least 15%. Most scenes are best shot using landscape orientation, though some need portrait pictures, which does of course mean that more images are needed. The number of pictures to cover the 360 degrees depends on the zoom level; for the panoramas on this site, it is between 7 and 12.
Next the photos should be scanned, and an image editing program like Adobe Photoshop used to change one or more of color balance, brightness, saturation and levels, using adjustment layers to make sure the overlapping regions are as identical as possible.
To make the actual movies special QTVR software is needed. QTVR is a Macintosh format, though there are also PC versions of the programs. The panoramas on this site were made using rather old software (on a Macintosh), MPW Shell, which loads each image in turn and digitally blends the edges - an interactive process, to create a single PICT file of the whole scene. This is then spliced and converted to the final QTVR panorama.
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