In some of our visualization applications, we wanted to create images that are gigabytes or petabytes in size. One source of such images is from photographs. Perhaps the most accessible source is from scanning: e.g., from an atlas or a large poster map of the USA in many separate pieces. We provide a suite of tools to piece these pieces together into a collage that is not necessarily a rectangle or some simple shape. At least, we should be able to translate, rotate and scale these pieces. Non-linear transformations are needed to get these pieces to be fully registered. We also introduce a superfile graphics format for representing these images, including support for wavelet-based hierarchy.
We plan to place these tools on the web in the near future, but meanwhile, feel free to contact us if you need to access such tools.
A preliminary report is found in synthesis.ps.gz.