Glossary

Please add the entry alphabetically to the list.

A

Aspect Ratio - the ratio (proportion) between height and width of an image.

B

Banding Visible steps in smooth gradients. Early versions of Panorama Tools software could introduce obvious banding, for example during radial luminance correction as discussed by John Houghton. This problem is largely corrected in current versions of the software.

C

Cylindrical Projection A projection capable of mapping 360 degrees horizontally by roughly 120 degrees vertically with acceptable distortion.

Cubic Projection A subcase of the Rectilinear Projection used as the input source projection for some fully spherical panorama viewers.

D

Dynamic Range The ratio in brightness of the brightest highlight to the darkest shadow that are accurately captured in a scene.

E

Entrance Pupil The special point that you have to rotate your camera around, to avoid parallax errors. Commonly referred to as the Nodal Point, which see for more information.

Equirectangular Projection A projection capable of mapping the entire sphere to a rectangle with 2:1 aspect ratio. See Equirectangular Projection for more information.

N

Nodal Point The special point that you have to rotate your camera around, to avoid parallax. Also called "entrance pupil". Click the term for more info.

Nadir The point directly below

P

Pitch Angle up-and-down (above and below horizon). See also "Roll" and "Yaw".

Projections Different possibilities to get a two-dimensional image of the three-dimensional world around us.

R

Rectilinear Projection A projection in which every straight line in the world stays straight in the image.

Roll Rotation angle around the lens axis. See also "Pitch" and "Yaw".

V

Vignetting Light fall-off in the corners of images

Y

Yaw Panning angle, left-and-right. See also "Pitch" and "Roll".

Z

Zenith The point directly above.