Retail Applications for Deep Zoom and Silverlight Continued 1

In my previous post I described one technique for creating extremely high resolution imagery for Deep Zoom well suited to retail applications. Sometimes, you don’t need the whole image to be high resolution. You can accept an “overview” picture with embedded islands of higher resolution for specific points of interest that customers may want to explore. It may be a jacket with high-res islands for buttons, fabric and stitching details or a phone with high-res for buttons, accessories etc. Or, in my case, my bookshelf (again)!

The above composition is created in this way. The overall picture is a single image taken with my Canon EOS 450D which has had a small higher-resolution section overlaid (the library label). Note the way the application is aware of high-res islands and creates a hotspot for each that allows you quickly zoom into that area.

The original images (much reduced in size) are shown above – the right-hand image has also been cropped slightly. Using Deep Zoom Composer, the macro image can be easily superimposed on the larger image to create an area much richer in detail for customers to explore.

We’ll look at how to create these sorts of compositions in a future post(s). In my next post I’ll look at how customers can get a 360 degree view of the merchandise with a simple Silverlight Carousel.