Creating panoramics in PHP

Is there a library for this?

[zulu_dude]

I know this is probably a long shot, but I thought I'd ask you fine folk at WW before deciding it can't be done :-)

Does anyone know of a library/function for PHP that allows a user to upload several images and have them joined together into a panoramic picture? The picture would then be used in some sort of DHTML panoramic viewer.

I know it's possible to get desktop software that allows users to make panoramas, but it would be much more useful if they could be generated server-side with php (or even ASP for that matter).

[Sarah Atkinson]

That would be cool but hard. For one thing the program would have to "stitch the file togetther". I think they look for common pixel patterns and overlay them. Another thing it would require the user to have some control to ajust they place the images overlap. also not everyone is going to take good pictures for overlaping(most probably won't even use a tripod. And the amount of overlap wouldn't be consitant. Even when I did them with a tripod and degree marks in a template at the cameras base things messed up sometimes.

[zulu_dude]

Yeah, you're right, it would be awesome and awesomely difficult!

I also had reservations about the fact that users would have to have input into the process. In the last half an hour though, I've managed to find a windows program that stitches photos together without any input from the user. Sure, there are some things that can be tweaked (brightness, etc) but in the vast majority of cases, it's a matter of select photos -> press button -> use panoramic.

Only problems are that it's probably written in C++ (not PHP) and that it's not open source (i.e. no porting to PHP, if such a thing was even possible).

And you're right, the user would have to use a tripod and take care that the photos were good enough to use for a panoramic.

Looking at it from another angle, would it be possible to run a server-side linux program from PHP? If so, one would only need to find a command line program for linux that could stitch the photos together, similar to this other software that I've found. Then the PHP script could call the program, pass it the photos and receive the panoramic back. My PHP skills don't extend this far though... yet :-)

[coopster]

A quick search on sourceforge.net turned up a couple of "panoramic" software applications for *nix.