What is Panorama image & What is the use of it?
When you join multiple images either horizontally or vertically, the output image is called a Panorama Image. If you need to show up multiple images then you can join them up in a single image and then use it. For example you have lots of small images to show, then instead of displaying them one by one, you can use it as a Panorama Image. This reduces the server side request and time is saved in nanoseconds. This means your page loads up a lil fast.
How to create a Panorama Image & What I need to have for it?
You can simply create a Panorama Image with help of many image editing softwares but here I am going to describe the process of creating a Panorama Image by Irfanview, my favorite image viewer and light weight editor. You might also be interested in reading Irfanview 4 Review.
Steps for creating a Panorama Image?
- Open Irfanview.
- Select Image menu and click on Create a Panorama Image.
- You are greeted with a dialog box asking you to include the images you would like to join up in a single image and how you would like to join them up, either horizontally or vertically.
- Select the images you would like to create and the choose either horizontally or vertically according to your needs and click Create Image.
- Save the output file and you are done.
Example:-
Here are four different images of social bookmarking sites:
This is how it will look like if joined horizontally,
and this is how it will look like if joined vertically.
(Note: Border of images are shown to easily distinguish different images)
Now what to do if you did not get the expected result. First of all you need to know that if you are joining images horizontally, the height of all images need to be same so that no image is resized and if you are joining images vertically, the width of all images need to be same. You can also choose a Panorama Image to be included in creating another Panorama Image because it is just a image file. So,its up to you to use your creative brains and get the image you want.
Do let me know how well it performs and if you face any kind of issues.
Unfortunately, your example does little to demonstrate a panorama image, as much as showing how to stitch four images together, which is all Irfanview’s panorama feature does.
A good example of creating /real/ panoramas is Windows Photo Gallery. Outside of dedicated panorama apps, it’s the best I’ve come acoross so far. Unfortunately, like all MS software it’s on the bloated side. I was hoping I’d be able to replace that with Irfanview. Guess not for now.