Zoomify image in Photoshop CS5

Would you like to present your photos in their full array and original resolution on your website? Sure, but who has time to wait until a full-size photo loads? That’s what Zoomify is for – showing the photo as a freely zoomable thumbnail. With Photoshop CS5, you can create images like that.

Load the photo in Photoshop

Choose a high-resolution photo. Alas, Photoshop can only prepare one such zoomable image at a time. Therefore, the Zoomify plugin is primarily used to treat extra large, gigapixel-sized digital photos.

Where is it hiding?

Click File/Export/Zoomify to access this feature.

Settings

The appearing dialog will look like this. First, there is a preset factory Template. This is where you can select whether you want to save the Zoomify player in itself or along with the Navigator. You can also set background colors here. The Navigator is an always visible small thumbnail in the viewer window. Background can be black, grey or white.

Then you have to specify Output Location and name for the saved files (HTML, Flash player, image parts, etc.). The HTML file will also use this name.

Zoomify dissects the picture into small parts, and only shows one of them at a time in the desired size. Settings in the middle section set quality. Low quality means more fragmented, washed JPEG parts but also faster loading times. On the other hand, choosing Large Fileresults in slower loading but almost no noticeable loss of image quality.

Finally, you have to set browser options—the Width and Height of the Zoomify player window in pixels. Select Open In Web Browserto display the result immediately after saving.

Zoomy

This is how the image looks in full zoom. You can drag the photo part or click the arrows under the image to pan the viewed area. If you saved the image with the Navigator, a thumbnail is visible in the upper left corner, which is also suitable for scrolling. The +/- slider controls zoom up to 100%.