GigaPan Upload software, version 1.1

There is a new version of the GigaPan Upload software available at http://gigapan.org (click on the "Download the Uploader" link there). As always, GigaPan Upload is free. There are Mac and Windows versions, numbered 1.1.1551 and 1.1.1552, respectively.

The difference between the Stitch and Upload apps:
GigaPan Stitch takes multiple overlapping images, typically tens of megapixels each, aligns them, blends them, saves them in gigapan quadtree format on disk, and can upload the quadtree to gigapan.org for sharing and web viewing.
GigaPan Upload takes an image in a single file, typically hundreds to thousands of megapixels, and dices it up to create a quadtree that it uploads to gigapan.org.
The latter is useful if you've stitched an image and chose to edit it with software such as Photoshop, or if you stitched using something other than GigaPan Stitch.

Features of GigaPan Upload 1.1:

* Upload can now reliably upload images of practically unlimited size (the old version failed at around 100 gigapixels). The world's largest digital image (Shanghai, 272 gigapixels, http://gigapan.org/gigapans/66626/) was uploaded with this software.

* Upload can now read and upload Photoshop PSB (aka Large Document Format) and PSD files, even multilayer ones. Previously it was necessary to convert images to TIFF or RAW format in Photoshop, before running Upload. Note that if your pictures have 8 bits per channel, you can conserve disk space when saving your PSB files by declining the "maximize compatibility" option, since Upload knows how to composite the layers itself. Note that PSD files are 30,000 pixels in width or height, maximum; PSB files are 300,000 pixels in width or height, max; TIFF files are 4 gigabytes, max (although Upload on Windows cannot currently handle TIFFs larger than 2 gigabytes); and RAW files have essentially unlimited size.

* Upload now gives you an estimated completion time, as it uploads, tells you upload throughput so far in megabits per second, and informs you of any interruptions to communication with the server (if your computer went to sleep, you lost your network connection, or our server became overloaded).

* Upload now retries forever, so if you begin an upload with your computer in one location, lose your connection, and then reconnect to the network later, potentially at another location, if Upload is still running, it should continue from the point where communication was interrupted.

* Upload now has an experimental option for resuming upload that is useful if you're doing uploads that take multiple days, and upload happens to fail in the middle (e.g. because your computer reboots). Ask me if you want to know more about this (ph@cs.cmu.edu).

* It is the same speed as the old Upload. I plan to improve upload speed in a future version.


Paul
GigaPan Stitch Team