Are There Alternative Ways to Display High-Resolution Images on a Website?

[BillTre]

I have a large image that I made (a river running to the Washington coast on the Olympic Penninsula) by montaging together 32 pictures I took on my T3i in photoshop. It is 24,362 × 8,801 pixels.
It looks like this (a smallified version):

The photoshop file was greater than 2 gigabites (which photoshop could manipulate but could not save).
I saved it as a .jpg which is ~95 MB.
There is a lot of detail in the full size version. For example, there is a child with a ball on the beach on the far side of the log pile and pebbles and reflections of individual grass blades can be seen toward the right side.

I could print things like this out on one of those large format printers, but I would like to display it on a moderate sized screen or put it on a website in a way that people could click on the screen to zoom in in 2X jumps. The zooming in is very immersive. It really sucks you into the shot. I want to use this effect for a local conservation group's website.

A company does make a device to put your camera on to take pictures like this. They also have a website to do the montaging and get codes to embed images on other websites, to display the results. All this is dependent on getting their hardware (not cheap) which I am not now inclined to do.
I can do this with photoshop and Preview (Apple's pdf viewer), but I am wondering if anyone knows of other possible options, particularly for websites.

 

[phinds]

Why is PhotoShop unacceptable? Surely it allows whatever level of zoom you want and it will scroll up/down and left/right. What is it that you are looking for in addition to that?

 

[rbelli1]

photoshop could manipulate but could not save

You are likely not using a modern file system on your computer. Get an external drive and format it to the newest file system you can.

What is it that you are looking for in addition to that?

Superzoom where you can see the whole picture without having to download the whole 2+GB. Then you can get full resolution on zoom. Kind of like google maps. You can use the gigapan system if you buy their hardware. I don't know off the top of my head of any sites that support this except gigapan. Maybe google has something?

BoB

 

[BillTre]

Why is PhotoShop unacceptable? Surely it allows whatever level of zoom you want and it will scroll up/down and left/right. What is it that you are looking for in addition to that?

For use on my own computer photoshop is fine. If I want to put on a different computer for a display, it would be nice not to get a copy of photoshop for just that. The preview program could also work that way and I am assuming also acrobat and reader.
Alternative to that could be a touch screen display like a large iPad. Haven't tried that yet.

Also, not sure of any of these options would work for a website.

 

[phinds]

Superzoom where you can see the whole picture without having to download the whole 2+GB. Then you can get full resolution on zoom.

Ah, right. I forgot about that kind of capability.

 

[BillTre]

You are likely not using a modern file system on your computer. Get an external drive and format it to the newest file system you can.

My computer is a 2015 Mac Book Pro with an up to date OS and a cloud version of photoshop which is upto date. I also use a separate disk for my photos.
As I recall, when I tried saving the file as a photoshop file, I got an error message specifically about: too big, >2 GB.

Superzoom where you can see the whole picture without having to download the whole 2+GB. Then you can get full resolution on zoom. Kind of like google maps. You can use the gigapan system if you buy their hardware. I don't know off the top of my head of any sites that support this except gigapan. Maybe google has something?

OK, I should have said that the 2 GB photoshop file is now only 95 MB as a .jpg.
Superzoom, nice term. Did you come up with that or is that a google maps thing? I like it. That's what I want to do.

Ideally, for a display, it would be done in as intuitive a manner as possible. Tap a touchscreen seems to me to be the most intuitive, but that is further down the road.

 

[Psinter]

As I recall, when I tried saving the file as a photoshop file, I got an error message specifically about: too big, >2 GB.

Did you try this? http://www.creativetechs.com/tipsblog/how-to-save-photoshop-files-larger-than-2gb/

Superzoom, nice term. Did you come up with that or is that a google maps thing? I like it. That's what I want to do.

You will need to program the display part for websites.

This or OpenLayers.

I have never used them though. In either case, for the zoom, you will still need to create tiles of different resolutions out of your image.

 

[BillTre]

Do people do this for astronomy images?

 

[glappkaeft]

Yes, is is sometimes done for large mosaics like this 9 gigapixel mosaic from ESO or this http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/glimpse360/wwt.

 

[Mark44]

@BillTre, where is the river in the picture? Is it the Quileute near La Push? It also makes me think of the creek at the north end of the beach at Moclips. I spend a lot of time in the interior of the Olympics, and have done a fair amount of hiking along the beaches.

Random fact: The name La Push is a corruption of the French "la bouche" for the mouth of the river.

 

[BillTre]

It was at Kalaloch Lodge at Olympic National Park. South of La Push and just north of Queets. I took the picture in the morning from about 40 feet from their driveway, over about 5 feet of brush.
We stayed there a couple of days with some friends who had circumnavigated the penninsula.

I find out from Google Maps that the "river" is actually Kalaloch Creek.
I guess I was giving it the benefit of a doubt because of all the big stumps laying around.
It was during summer and the water flows seemed small at that time.

The Olympic Peninsula is really a special place. Its easy to find things growing on things, growing on things, growing dead stuff there.
Ecology made obvious.

 

[BillTre]

Yes, is is sometimes done for large mosaics like this 9 gigapixel mosaic from ESO or this http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/glimpse360/wwt.

Neat stuff!
It would be cool to zoom in and out of the Hubble deep field picture.

 

[glappkaeft]

There is but the image doesn't have very high resolution. http://spacetelescope.org/images/heic0611b/zoomable/

 

[BillTre]

There is but the image doesn't have very high resolution. http://spacetelescope.org/images/heic0611b/zoomable/

It would be nice if they could combine it with lower mag images of the surrounding area to show the surrounding area, maybe with an faint overlay of a finger at arm's length for some perspective, but that sounds pretty unscientific for spacetelescope.org.
It would be more like an art project.

 

[rbelli1]

Superzoom, nice term. Did you come up with that or is that a google maps thing?

It is a term I have heard used for high zoom photography.

Google... Google...

actually it is a term for a type of lens system that has a large range of magnification capability. It is a malapropism of sorts on my part. Gigazoom is the term the company Gigapan uses for it. Edit: It being the thing the OP wants to do.

BoB

 

[Mark44]

It was at Kalaloch Lodge at Olympic National Park.

That was another place that came to mine, but didn't list. I've stayed there a couple of times. My first teaching job was at Amanda Park, and three of my students lived at Kalaloch -- their father was the ranger at the Olympics Nat'l Park office there.

South of La Push and just north of Queets. I took the picture in the morning from about 40 feet from their driveway, over about 5 feet of brush.
We stayed there a couple of days with some friends who had circumnavigated the penninsula.

I find out from Google Maps that the "river" is actually Kalaloch Creek.
I guess I was giving it the benefit of a doubt because of all the big stumps laying around.
It was during summer and the water flows seemed small at that time.

The Olympic Peninsula is really a special place. Its easy to find things growing on things, growing on things, growing dead stuff there.
Ecology made obvious.

 

[robphy]

Microsoft had https://photosynth.net/ a while back.
I haven't kept up to see what is new.
When it was introduced, users can contribute photos of scene from different vantage points.
Software would stitch them together to provide a view in a 3D world that can be explored in a browser.