Using the Panorama Feature

While the top 4 images and first Paragraph in the blog entry may lure visitors to your blog, the new Panorama feature certainly keeps their attention! When used well, it sets a great mood to a blog that loads before your eyes. It makes the blog go POP!


For Example, we have all seen blogs on Tongariro NP in New Zealand. Using the Panorama feature on scenery like this turns a normal blog with good pictures into a "Wow! Looks at That!" feel:

Day 227 - so exactly how long do you reckon it’ll be before someone mentions The Lord of the Rings?


A well placed panorama makes you feel like you are there, much like excellent writing does:

Into the holy land.


It gives you a sense of a place, the roar of the falls, the lush green of the forest, the Tropical heat:

Visiting the neighbours


The Panorama lets us see small things, it's the only way on travelblog to present a high resolution shot to your readers that can show the intimate details of what is was like tens of meters under the ocean staring and tiny creatures living in harmony:

Diving Sulawesi - Bunaken


The Panorama feature needs an image at least 1600 pixels wide by 400 pixels high. Clearer Panoramas can be made using higher resolutions, but the dimensions should always be 4:1 ratio.
Ex--> If you choose a picture 2000 pixels wide, divide by 4 you get 500 pixels high.

If these dimensions require excessive cropping of an image, you can always start with the correct dimensions and rescale the image to fit the height and leave the edges blank, like here:

Squidfish and Scuba Diving, Thailand SCUBA

Ive made an image template you can open in Photoshop(or any imaging program) to simplify things. With the template you can use any image as a panorama image- the dimensions are optimized for a 'Panorama' per the travelblog guidelines. The background is set as the same dark blue background travelblog uses to look seamless when a 'non-panorama' image is used. See: Squidfish and Scuba Diving, Thailand SCUBA

Instructions are embedded in the image:


TEMPLATE IMAGE


Hope this helps, its a great new feature for travelblogs!

Does anyone have ideas on maximizing Panorama's or have links of good Panorama's they want to share? Reply to this

Stephen, I'm struggling!

I have Adobe Photoshop Starter Edition 3.0 on my computer, and have managed to open the picture I'd like to turn into a panorama using it. But where do I go from there?

J Reply to this

In PhotoShop Elements 5 that I'm using it is easy to make a panorama with help of the PhotoMerge tool included. Go to: File / New / PhotoMerge Panorama to start the tool. I believe that it is also included in PhotoShop CS2 and CS3 but I'm not 100% sure.
If you don't have PhotoShop, have a look at PTGui. Reply to this

Hello Johaan 😊

Make sure the resolution of your intended panarama photos will fit, and also make sure the tick box on the corner of the panarama photo is ticked, before hitting 'Upload Panarama'.

The last time I uploaded a panarama, the resolution that worked was 4999 by 700.

Mel Reply to this