Locally Adapted Projections to Reduce Panorama Distortions

Displaying panoramic and wide angle views on a flat 2D display surface is necessarily prone to distortions. Perspective projections are limited to fairly narrow view angles. Cylindrical and spherical projections can show full 360° panoramas, but at the cost of curving straight lines, interfering with the perception of salient shapes in the scene. In this paper, we introduce locally-adapted projections. Such projections are defined by a continuous projection surface consisting of both near-planar and curved parts. A simple and intuitive user interface allows the specification of regions of interest to be mapped to the near-planar parts, thereby reducing bending artifacts. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on a variety of panoramic and wide angle images, including both indoor and outdoor scenes.