Build Your Deep Zoom Mosaic

Deep Zoom ?
 
Deep Zoom originally known as SeaDragon is now a Microsoft Presentation. Deep Zoom allows users to interact with high-resolution images in a highly interactive manner. It allows the user to zoom into an image up to a larger extent; it enables smooth loading and panning by serving up multi-resolution images and using spring animations.
 
Deep Zoom is a layered format for images; when a single image or multiple images are converted to a deep zoom format it contains the tiles in every possible resolution and stores them in various folders depending no their resolution. The following image will clarify it for to you:


 
Before creating a Deep Zoom application you need to convert your images to deep zoom formats (.dzc deep zoom collection and .dzi deep zoom image). Once you have created a deep zoom pyramid the file format used to access the image pyramid is XML. So our primary task is to create an image pyramid (deep zoom collection); for doing this we need some tools. The tool provided by Microsoft is Deep Zoom Composer; you can simply add images to the Deep Zoom Composer and create your own mosaic.
 
There are two techniques to create your mosaic; you can either create a large image using any tool or create your tiles in the deep zoom composer. I used the first option; I created a large file using Andrea Mosaic tool. Andreas Mosaic can create a file of up to 210 MegaPixels. (Tips to use Andrea Mosaic will be with the software itself or if you guys feel any problem using it write to me and I will post a blog on how to use Andrea Mosaic).


 
Once you have created your high-resolution image, import it into the Deep Zoom Composer and it will convert it into the pyramid form deep zoom format and then preview or export your mosaic. Then you are done.


 
Hope you enjoy making your mosaic.
 
(Make whatever settings you need depending on your mosaic.)