Christopher Mackay’s Blog

Roger Howard has been kind enough to post an AppleScript to the QuickTime VR mailing list that will prove truly useful to QuickTime VR authors like myself. With his permission, I’m linking to it. Says Roger:

“If you do manual blending a lot like I do, you’ll find that as you complete your work you still have to deal with blending across the edges of the document - this means somehow offsetting and wrapping each layer by some fixed distance so you can see where the left/right edges of the document meet. This script will automate offsetting all of the visible layers (and their associated layer masks) in the current document in Photoshop. The offset is exactly half of the width of the document, so the former left/right edges will now meet in the center of the image.

I run this script once, blend the edge seam, and then run it again to restore the document to its original orientation.

Notes:

1. this only works on visible layers, invisible layers will be untouched so do not make a layer visible between runs or you will not have your document properly restored to its original layout.
2. make sure you do not have a non-image layer selected before running this, or the first offset will be wrong. To make sure, simply click the proxy icon of an image layer before running. I’m sure I could fix this in the script, but I’ve just gotten used to it.

http://homepage.mac.com/rogerhoward/.Public/OffsetAllLayers.zip

Thanks to Roger for sharing this.

I think it would be great for Adobe to add this feature to Photoshop; the ability to scroll the contents of a Photoshop document independently of the window. The edges would be ’soft’, like they were in Asteroids, the early Atari video game. The left edge leads directly to the right edge. Obviously, this would interfere with the “big data” metaphor, but it would be a useful option that would greatly simplify the process of creating seamless panoramic images.

Those making cubic QuickTime VR images would use it, but there aren’t likely enough of us to get Adobe’s attention. Another, overlapping group would include special effects studios like Industrial Light & Magic, who use technologies like QuickTime VR photographs as environment maps in their 3D-modeled objects & environments. Since John Knoll (co-creator, with his brother Thomas, of Photoshop) is one such person, maybe there’s a chance?