Photoshop Plugins?
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Thomas Sharpless
Sep 3, 2011, 1:25:36 PM9/3/11
to Panini Support
Hi All
People keep suggesting that I make Photoshop plugins. That could be a way to money and fame. So I am considering two suggestions seriously--
One (thanks to Toni G. and others) is a simple viewer for equirectangular panos that one is working on in PS. I'd guess it would need just yaw, pitch, zoom and Panini compression controls. Probably the default compression should be zero (rectilinear view). It would display in its own window outside PS. That window could stay open even after the plugin 'returns' to PS, but of course to update it you would have to invoke the plugin again. The plugin would not change the stored pano (though PS would act as if it did) and things like selecting which layers to show etc would take place in PS. This would be a cheap, perhaps free plugin, and certainly would be bundled with Panini-Pro.
The other (thanks to Jef De Becker) would be a filter to convert wide-angle photos to Panini projection, designed for professional real-estate photographers. It would be limited to rectilinear input, as that is the only "corrected" format PS supports. When PS "corrects" fisheye photos to rectilinear, it crops away the extreme-angle parts, but one can get rectilinear pictures up to about 130 degrees wide. Those naturally look better as Paninis (and the Panini view makes rooms look bigger) so it should be a popular tool. I'd figure on charging almost $100 for this one.
This plugin would modify the input image in-place without changing its dimensions. However it would allow zooming and shifting the image within that fixed frame, and of course have a Panini compression control. Ideally PS would supply focal length data, but most likely it cannot. So the tool will need its own control for this; I would prefer "35mm Equivalent Focal Length" to "FOV" here -- what do you think?
These plugins would be engineered to run on 'medium-end' systems, so could not provide the full range of conversions available in Panini-Pro. Anyhow, a plugin should be limited to one well defined function. So, even though it would not be impossible to launch Panini-Pro as a PS plugin, that won't be happening. If PS ever fully supports panoramic formats I might reconsider. But don't hold your breath.
-- Tom
People keep suggesting that I make Photoshop plugins. That could be a way to money and fame. So I am considering two suggestions seriously--
One (thanks to Toni G. and others) is a simple viewer for equirectangular panos that one is working on in PS. I'd guess it would need just yaw, pitch, zoom and Panini compression controls. Probably the default compression should be zero (rectilinear view). It would display in its own window outside PS. That window could stay open even after the plugin 'returns' to PS, but of course to update it you would have to invoke the plugin again. The plugin would not change the stored pano (though PS would act as if it did) and things like selecting which layers to show etc would take place in PS. This would be a cheap, perhaps free plugin, and certainly would be bundled with Panini-Pro.
The other (thanks to Jef De Becker) would be a filter to convert wide-angle photos to Panini projection, designed for professional real-estate photographers. It would be limited to rectilinear input, as that is the only "corrected" format PS supports. When PS "corrects" fisheye photos to rectilinear, it crops away the extreme-angle parts, but one can get rectilinear pictures up to about 130 degrees wide. Those naturally look better as Paninis (and the Panini view makes rooms look bigger) so it should be a popular tool. I'd figure on charging almost $100 for this one.
This plugin would modify the input image in-place without changing its dimensions. However it would allow zooming and shifting the image within that fixed frame, and of course have a Panini compression control. Ideally PS would supply focal length data, but most likely it cannot. So the tool will need its own control for this; I would prefer "35mm Equivalent Focal Length" to "FOV" here -- what do you think?
These plugins would be engineered to run on 'medium-end' systems, so could not provide the full range of conversions available in Panini-Pro. Anyhow, a plugin should be limited to one well defined function. So, even though it would not be impossible to launch Panini-Pro as a PS plugin, that won't be happening. If PS ever fully supports panoramic formats I might reconsider. But don't hold your breath.
-- Tom
Thomas Sharpless
Sep 4, 2011, 2:24:02 PM9/4/11
to Panini Support, luca vascon
On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 5:07 AM, luca vascon <luca....@gmail.com> wrote:
Tom!
You could considerthe possibility of photoshop integration of Panini.
I mean..
You load the equirect into PS, you modify, you call panini filter. Then you actually call PaniniPro, in a way that when you close it it will serve the results on a new PS layeror a new PS file.
The other VERY GOOD PART of a filter like Toni suggests would be
Given an equirectangular:
1: the ability to extract a rectilinear and re-implant it in place.
I mean not only to retouch zenith and nadirs, but also to retouch a specified area!!!
1b: the ability to do it... parallel to a surface! I have some pictures hung on a wall. I want to exchange the picture 1, that is at 0.0 (polar coordinates), with another that is at 125,0 (if you do not understand I'll try to reexplain
2: ability to extract a portion from equirect and to write a small piece of txt to RENDER IT BACK AS DISTORTED HOTSPOT IN KRPANO!!!! I'd kill for a feature like that, but I'd prefer to pay.
3: Remember me for check and or translate in italian, in conjunction with Toni
4: I still cannot test Panini coz I'm stuck on XP and XP64 on work computers, XP and ATI on home IBM T60...
I bought the T60 last year after my old Toshiba Portege M100 gave up and I will not change it before 2 years.
Loan on the house is a bad ass. Please think about we retrocomputerers!
;-)
Hi Luca!
I can understand your desire to modify parts of an eqr image held in photoshop. Bernard Custard especially, others too, make similar requests. It seems the key operation is converting from eqr to rectilinear and back again, that PS does not do. Everything else should be easy for a PS expert.
Is this the right idea? You make a selection in a 360x180 equirectangular, and mark a point as the optical center. The plugin converts the selection to rectilinear, with that optical center, and gives it back to PS as a new image. Some data are saved so that later the extracted image can be converted back to eqr, at any position on the panosphere (including rotated), and used as an overlay on the orginal eqr.
I could easily make Panini-Pro move a selection around on the panosphere and paste it in a new place. But of course you guys need to edit the selection, then mask and blend it back just so; for that I agree it has to be in PS.
I am no kind of professional PS plugin developer. Though I have built a few simple ones, what we are talking about here is not an elementary PS filter. So if anyone knows someone who is a pro PS filter developer, and might be interested to work with me on this (for eventual or even immediate money) please do help me get in touch with them.
As for going straight from PS into the full Panini-Pro, I don't think that is important enough to justify developing a special version of Panini-Pro that can be launched under PS. Just save the image from PS, load it in P-P, cut a view and load that into PS. This could of course be "automated" the way exchanges of images between PS and LR or Bridge are, but that is just head-candy.
I am seriously going to build a new Panini version for less than top-end hardware. I need a more universal engine to support these PS plugins anyhow, and the open source Panini is long overdue for an upgrade. It will definitely run on a Thinkpad T60, which I consider about the bottom end for photo work.
Best, Tom
I can understand your desire to modify parts of an eqr image held in photoshop. Bernard Custard especially, others too, make similar requests. It seems the key operation is converting from eqr to rectilinear and back again, that PS does not do. Everything else should be easy for a PS expert.
Is this the right idea? You make a selection in a 360x180 equirectangular, and mark a point as the optical center. The plugin converts the selection to rectilinear, with that optical center, and gives it back to PS as a new image. Some data are saved so that later the extracted image can be converted back to eqr, at any position on the panosphere (including rotated), and used as an overlay on the orginal eqr.
I could easily make Panini-Pro move a selection around on the panosphere and paste it in a new place. But of course you guys need to edit the selection, then mask and blend it back just so; for that I agree it has to be in PS.
I am no kind of professional PS plugin developer. Though I have built a few simple ones, what we are talking about here is not an elementary PS filter. So if anyone knows someone who is a pro PS filter developer, and might be interested to work with me on this (for eventual or even immediate money) please do help me get in touch with them.
As for going straight from PS into the full Panini-Pro, I don't think that is important enough to justify developing a special version of Panini-Pro that can be launched under PS. Just save the image from PS, load it in P-P, cut a view and load that into PS. This could of course be "automated" the way exchanges of images between PS and LR or Bridge are, but that is just head-candy.
I am seriously going to build a new Panini version for less than top-end hardware. I need a more universal engine to support these PS plugins anyhow, and the open source Panini is long overdue for an upgrade. It will definitely run on a Thinkpad T60, which I consider about the bottom end for photo work.
Best, Tom
2011/9/3 Thomas Sharpless <tksha...@gmail.com>
--
Luca Vascon.
www.nuovostudio.it
www.officinepanottiche.com
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