PanGazer logo PanGazer – introduction

Introduction

Download PanGazer


Getting started

General settings

Setting North

Saving views

Saving images

Sharing images

Image geography

Show image location

Overlays

Enhancements

Aspect ratio


Making panoramic images

Keyboard shortcuts

Command line options

The gnomonic projection

Thanks

PanGazer is a free (and advert-free) application for viewing images: not just regular ‘flat’ images but also 360° spherical and part-spherical panoramas as captured by 360° cameras and drones.  PanGazer automatically detects spherical images, so there is no need for a special ‘spherical’ viewer or mode.

PanGazer runs on Windows and also on many Windows emulators on Linux and MacOS.

Zooming in or out and dragging left and right work the same way on all images, unlike some 360° image viewers.  Further, PanGazer always calculates and preserves the known location, direction, tilt, effective lens length, and other details of a view. For example, if you crop then save an image the metadata (Exif, etc.) will reflect the longer focal length resulting from the crop.

The screenshot below is a snapshot view of a 360° panorama (this ‘starter panorama’ is included in the package and is shown when you first start PanGazer; the ‘raw’ image is shown at the bottom of this page). Click on the screenshot to see a more detailed version.

PanGazer screenshot – click for a more detailed image

PanGazer screenshot – click for a more detailed image

Please click on ‘Getting started’ on the left for an overview of the application, or on the other menu items for more specific information.

I am currently actively developing PanGazer, so do please send me suggestions for improving PanGazer (click here for contact details »).

PanGazer has been written from scratch (sharing most of its 34,000 lines of code with my MapGazer » application), but has been inspired by and depends on the work of many other people; please read my thanks, here.

 

PanGazer features

  • PanGazer lets you view a spherical panorama as though from the camera viewpoint, then lets you save an image from that viewpoint.  In other words, you can compose and save multiple images from a spherical image.

    Unlike a screenshot, saved images from a panorama include data such as the effective lens focal length of the view, the camera tilt and also, if known, the location and bearing and other data derived from the original image.

  • You can use PanGazer for viewing images that are not panoramas; again you can snapshot any current view as an image, which makes it much easier to gauge the composition than using a ‘crop tool’. As for panoramas, image data (effective lens focal length, tilt, geography, etc.) are calculated and included in the snapshot metadata.

  • PanGazer emphasises and simplifies the viewing and editing of image geographical data; you can set or edit the geographical values (location, elevation, True North bearing, and tilt), which will then be saved in the image Exif metadata. For spherical images, additional values (including initial camera stance and zoom) are saved in the image XMP metadata.

    If the bearing or tilt are known (from Exif or XMP metadata) or set, compass points (N, S, etc.), a North line, and tilt angles can be overlaid on the image to indicate direction (see the screen shot above for an example). You can toggle all overlays on or off using the Space Bar.

  • PanGazer automatically detects 360° spherical panoramas, and when viewing ‘part-spherical’ panoramas (e.g., drone panoramas, which typically cover 40° above the horizon and 90° below) PanGazer will deduce the correct horizon.

  • Part-spherical panoramas can be saved as full-sphere panoramas, at a chosen size (and using only data from your image – unlike “AI” fillers) for use in social media, etc.

  • If the image location is known or set you can show its location on maps, such as Google Satellite or regular Maps, MapGazer, or Google Earth. You can also show the view direction using a GPX or KML viewer if North has been set, or save the image location as a GPX or KML file.

  • In general, PanGazer tracks image geometry; for example, when zooming in while viewing an image the pel (pixel) ratio (the number of pels used on-screen for each pel in the original image) is displayed, along with the equivalent focal length of the view you are seeing and the angles of view. You can also explicitly set the zoom to 100% pel ratio.

  • A number of shortcut keys are provided for common actions. In particular, the Escape (Esc) key toggles between full-screen and window views, and the Space Bar toggles between showing your selected status and overlays and hiding all status and overlays.

  • Multiple views (windows) are supported – you can view different images, or the same image, from multiple angles and zooms at the same time. For example, you can compare still images with views from a 360° panorama. You can also explicitly set the aspect ratio of any window (to compare compositions, for example, or to suit a particular display or print size).

  • Strong viewing enhancements (brightness, etc.) are available to help you identify features of interest.

  • PanGazer uses a fast multi-threaded implementation of the gnomonic projection which reduces apparent distortion of horizontals and verticals. Interpolation is used to improve the display of zoomed or low-resolution images.

  • The user interface is modeless; you do not have to ‘enter panorama view mode’, for example.

  • The size of the visible image is maximized by the ‘retro’-style menu bar.  Also, the menu bar and/or title bar can be hidden, or you can view panoramas and images full-screen (use Escape to toggle between full-screen and a window).

PanGazer requirements

PanGazer runs on a Windows personal computer (PC, laptop, or tablet, running Windows 7 or later); it also runs on Windows XP and Windows emulators on Mac OS and Linux, but is not fully tested in those environments.

Both 32-bit and 64-bit executables are included, along with a ‘stub’ 32-bit executable that will start the best main executable. The 32-bit executable will run on 32-bit Windows systems but large panoramas and images (e.g., more than 12,000 × 6,000) may fail to load due to memory fragmentation. With either executable you may have difficulty loading large images if you do not have several GigaBytes of RAM. It is recommended that you run a 64-bit version of Windows and use the 64-bit PanGazer (which also renders faster than the 32-bit PanGazer).

PanGazer does not require an internet connection to run (except for internet-specific features); in particular, the Help pages are included in the package and are accessible when offline.

PanGazer lets you load and view many types of images (JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, etc.).  When saving an image, PanGazer uses JFIF (the JPEG File Interchange Format, file extension .jpg or .jpeg) so that metadata (geolocation, camera bearing, tilt, zoom, etc.) can be saved with the image using Exif and XMP metadata.


Here is a reduced version of the plain (un-projected) PanGazer starter image, stitched from 34 images taken using a DJI Mavic Pro drone (the download package includes a much larger and more detailed image). As a plain image it is quite distorted (the entire bottom row of the image represents a single point).

A 360° source image (reduced in size 24×)

A 360° source image (reduced in size 24×)

You can download the full-sized panorama (20480×7587 pels, 43MB) by clicking here »; to view this you probably will need to use the 64-bit version of PanGazer on a 64-bit Windows system.

You can also view the starter image using Google Maps on a PC (or on the Google Street Map app on a phone): Search for “Bejes, Spain”, click on the ‘little yellow man’ and scroll right to 225m due East of the car parking area at the southern entrance to the village (and about 100m SSW of the church); you should see a small blue circle. Clicking on the circle should display the panorama. This upload of the starter image, saved as a sphere, was done using the Google Street Map app from a mobile phone; see the Sharing Images page for more details.

PanGazer and these web pages were written by Mike Cowlishaw; Please send me any corrections, suggestions, etc.
All content Copyright © Mike Cowlishaw, 2014–2021, except where marked otherwise. All rights reserved. The pages here, and the PanGazer program, are for non-commercial use only.
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This page was last updated on 2021-06-14 by mfc.