World's biggest digital pic
Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 1:39 am
[b]World's biggest digital pic[/b]
[img]http://www.killagraphix.com/uploads/RubberBands_450x299.jpg[/img]
[size=1]Above: A TNO engineer prepares to start capturing images for the world's biggest digital photo.[/size]
[i]A group of Dutch engineers has produced the world's largest known digital photograph--a 7.5GB monster that consists of almost 2.5 billion pixels.[/i]
[size=1]By David Becker [/size]
The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), a research and engineering conglomerate involved in fields ranging from aerospace to petroleum, announced the creation in a posting on the group's Web site Tuesday. The site includes a condensed version of the photo and a Flash-based application for viewing details.
The photo--an aerial image of the city of Delft that's unlikely to spur a sudden upswing in tourism there--consists of 600 individual images shot over the course of more than an hour. The images were then stitched together on a computer.
"It took about 24 hours to compare the overlapping photos and optimize them," according to the TNO statement. "Stitching the photos into one image required the capacity of five high-end PCs for three full days."
The image consists of precisely 2.487 billion pixels and would measure about 22 feet by 8.7 feet if printed at a standard resolution of 300 dots per inch. By contrast, typical consumer digital cameras capture images with 3 million to 5 million pixels.
The TNO team had to write its own software for much of the image-stitching work, including devising a new file format. The TIF format typically used for high-definition photos maxes out at 4GB. The group also solved temporary storage issues by creating a FireWire link between the camera and a laptop PC to capture images, bypassing the camera's memory card.
The TNO engineers pay credit to the previous record holder, photographer Max Lyons, who broke the 1 billion pixels mark last year with his panoramic image of Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park.
[url=\"http://news.com.com/Worlds+biggest+digital+pic/2100-1046_3-5457023.html?tag=nefd.top\"][Source][/url]
[img]http://www.killagraphix.com/uploads/RubberBands_450x299.jpg[/img]
[size=1]Above: A TNO engineer prepares to start capturing images for the world's biggest digital photo.[/size]
[i]A group of Dutch engineers has produced the world's largest known digital photograph--a 7.5GB monster that consists of almost 2.5 billion pixels.[/i]
[size=1]By David Becker [/size]
The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), a research and engineering conglomerate involved in fields ranging from aerospace to petroleum, announced the creation in a posting on the group's Web site Tuesday. The site includes a condensed version of the photo and a Flash-based application for viewing details.
The photo--an aerial image of the city of Delft that's unlikely to spur a sudden upswing in tourism there--consists of 600 individual images shot over the course of more than an hour. The images were then stitched together on a computer.
"It took about 24 hours to compare the overlapping photos and optimize them," according to the TNO statement. "Stitching the photos into one image required the capacity of five high-end PCs for three full days."
The image consists of precisely 2.487 billion pixels and would measure about 22 feet by 8.7 feet if printed at a standard resolution of 300 dots per inch. By contrast, typical consumer digital cameras capture images with 3 million to 5 million pixels.
The TNO team had to write its own software for much of the image-stitching work, including devising a new file format. The TIF format typically used for high-definition photos maxes out at 4GB. The group also solved temporary storage issues by creating a FireWire link between the camera and a laptop PC to capture images, bypassing the camera's memory card.
The TNO engineers pay credit to the previous record holder, photographer Max Lyons, who broke the 1 billion pixels mark last year with his panoramic image of Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park.
[url=\"http://news.com.com/Worlds+biggest+digital+pic/2100-1046_3-5457023.html?tag=nefd.top\"][Source][/url]