Better Light 7 - Manual (Page 95)

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Rollout Panorama
Hardware Setup
For a rollout, the camera is fixed to a tripod and the stepper stage unit is placed on a firm, non-
skid surface in such a manner that it will not turn as the motor is activated. A flat platform is attached
to the stage armature then mounted to the stepper motor stage. The subject is positioned in the
center of the platform such that the center of the object is in line with the center of the stepper motor
stage. The camera is adjusted to put the center of the object in the exact center of the camera’s image
area.
Software Operation
A rollout image is very dependent on the
setup to maintain a square aspect ration in the
final image. There are several ways to accomplish
this. The first method is to enter the appropriate
values into the Object Height and Object Diam-
eter fields. This method depends on the object
filling the vertical field of view exactly.
If the object does not completely fill the
field of view, then a way to specify the vertical
image height must be used. This can be accom-
plished by using the crop tool to set a cropped
region whose height exactly corresponds to the
height of the object in the preview and whose width is the entire width of the prescan. Then check
the Crop box. The aspect ratio will be calculated and the preview image resized to the calculated
aspect ratio.
Another technique for calculating the rollout values is to perform a prescan, then select a region
with the crop tool that is square on the object. Then click the Square-It-Up button (the fancy button
below the Crop checkbox). The preview image will be resized and the parameters will be calculated to
make the selected region square in the final image.