Editing with GIMP

Publishing panoramas and panospheres

In this series of web pages, I have documented the process which I currently use to create 360x180 degree panoramas and panospheres (mini planets). This page explains how I edit my final images using the GIMP, which is free image-editing software, which can be obtained from this link.

Editing in the GIMP

Generally, I do relatively little editing of the final panoramic image in the GIMP except, perhaps, trying the automatic colour correction, which I often end up undoing, possibly using unsharp mask, maybe adjusting the brightness or contrast, before finally exporting the file as a JPEG. Normally, I choose 90% compression, as this is acceptable to 360cities.net and it produces a manageable file size. With a low-powered computer, it may prove impossible to edit the TIFF image output by Hugin, if the computer has insufficient RAM, in which case, it is possible to upload large TIFF files to 360cities.

I perform much the same as the editing for panospheres, except, I often rotate the final image in the GIMP to achieve a more aesthetically pleasing or balanced mini planet. I also generally crop the image to make it either square or sometimes a six by four ratio.

All of my published panospheres and tubes are on my Flickr stream. So far, I have published my 360x180 degree panoramas on 360cities.net and on Flickr.com. Several have been selected for Google Earth and one of the 360cities.net panoramas has been embedded in my school web site.

On the final two pages, I show some examples of my work from 360cities and my work on Flickr and explain why I use both photo-sharing services.