14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has kicked up a notch a collection of tools accompanying technologies such as the Image Composite Editor (ICE) and the HD View web-based viewer developed by Microsoft Research's Interactive Visual Media group. Designed to allow end users to create multi-gigapixels, HD View Utilities is now up to version 1.11, with the availability of the latest update to the tools, which Howard Good and Matt Uyttendaele, HD View Team, consider long overdue, and for good reasons. According to the two members of the HD View Team, the refresh brings to the table various enhancements including the hdmake command line utility, but also the HD View Plugin designed to allow the tools to integrate seamlessly with Adobe Photoshop.
“The important changes in the 1.11 update are: fixes export issues on Windows 7/Vista SP2; support for 64bit version of Photoshop; a 64bit version of hdmake; multi-core processing; specification of source imagery in hdmake via a text file as requested on the forum by scrambler; the Photoshop plugin and hdmake support Autopano and ICE panorama metadata,” Good explained.
Key work done around the HD View Photoshop Plugin involves the preservation, under specific conditions, of imagery metadata. Programs such as the Windows Live Photo Gallery (WLPG) and Microsoft ICE both accompany content with custom metadata, which can be used to describe details such as projection surface and field-of-view.
At the same time, there are additional panorama-stitching pieces of software such as Autopano, which use different approaches to storing projection surface and field-of-view information. “When post processing panoramas (e.g in Photoshop) that are destined for an interactive viewer it is very useful to maintain this metadata. So, in the latest Photoshop plugin if your source imagery contains Autopano, ICE, or WLPG metadata then you will see the “Metadata Projection/Extents found” message appear in the plugin. This will then be used to auto-populate the fields in the ‘Projection’ section of the plugin,” Good added.
The “Metadata Projection/Extents found” will change to “… Projection Extents don’t match image size…” in the eventuality that image-editing operations such as resizing are performed. Users will need to subsequently enter the new values manually through the HD View Photoshop Plugin. “The metadata workflow is a test for the next major feature that we release, which is ‘Upload to Photosynth’ from Photoshop. It is important to have the extents correct for the Photosynth viewing experience. It would be great to get feedback, in the comments below or on the forum, about how best to maintain panorama projection and FOV information through post-processing,” Good explained. HD View Utilities Update 1.11 is available for download here.