Artizen now supports 3 panoramic environments (fisheye, latitude longitude and mirror ball) with the use of 4 panoramic conversion methods. These 3 panoramic environment maps cover the most common methods used to capture 360x360 degree images. The Panoramic Converter filter is located under the Modify menu option.

Interface

The interface is very simple and direct with the essential tools for working with Panoramic images. This is because things like output size (or image resizing) can be done with other powerful tools in Artizen. Each conversion is listed and both Panoramic > Fisheye (Small Planet) and Mirror Ball > Panoramic have additional options which are needed.

The Panoramic > Fisheye option has an Inner and Outer size, which allow users to create fun effects with their panoramic that are commonly called either Small or Little Planets. The Inner size adjusts how big your planet will be with -100 making small centers and 100 makes larger centers. The Outer size adjusts how big the fisheye radius is with 0 being the perfect fit and 100 representing a radius twice the size of the image. The small planet image really begins to take shape when the outer size is greater than 45.

The Mirror Ball > Panoramic has an X Rotate Angle option which is very important when taking panoramic images using mirror balls. Since the mirror ball captures the photographer in the image, the photographer can take a second shot approx. 90 or -90 degree from the original position. Once done both images can be converted using Mirror Ball > Panoramic but with one shot with a value of 0 and the second with a value of -90 or 90 depending on the shot. Now using the 2 panoramic images the photographer can be masked out as well as the un-captured areas directly behind the mirror ball. What you are left with is a perfect 360x360 panoramic with only 2 photos.

The Fisheye Direction options affects both the Panoramic > Fisheye and the Fisheye > Panoramic conversions. Artizen treats all fisheye photos as 360x180 images, which leaves to question is the fisheye a Zenith (top) or Nadir (bottom) image.

Artizen offers 2 interpolation methods Bicubic and Lanczos. In most applications Bicubic is considered the best method if even offered, but as good as Bicubic is the Lanczos method is much better and with better quality Lanczos carries a performance price. This is where Artizen really excels cause all the conversion methods are 100% multiprocessor and therefore extremely fast cause they fully utilize all of your processors. This is significant cause most computers sold today are either dual or quad core.

Artizen is a true HDR editor and therefore all conversions work in 8,16 and 32bit images.

Panoramic Mappings

	Fisheye Artizen treats all fisheye images as if they capture 360x180 degrees of view. This allows photographers to capture a Zenith and Nadir fisheye image unwrap them and then merge them together to produce complete 360x360 panoramic images.
	Small Planet a.k.a. Stereographic 2 controls have been added to the Panoramic > Fisheye option which allows users to adjust the Inner and Outer sizes of the fisheye producing fun images what are usually referred to as either Little or Small Planets.
	Latitude Longitude This is what most people mean when they are talking about panoramic photos. The horizontal coordinate is the longitude and the vertical coordinate is the latitude. The mathematical name is (equi)rectangular projection.
	Mirror Ball (Light Probe) This projection is used by realtime 3D applications for reflection mapping. Notice that the back face is squeezed into the border of the circle resulting in poor quality reflection mapping. This can resolved by taking 2 photo of the mirror ball at equal distances but rotated 90 or -90 degrees relative to the mirror ball.

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