Tool design

Planning a Viewer for the Really Big Images

Notes from designing a better way to inspect very large photos without turning the experience into a technical chore.

  • February 8, 2026
  • Gigapixel Photography Platform

Why this tool exists

Once an image crosses a certain size, normal web presentation starts stripping away the exact detail that made the image worth sharing in the first place.

What comes next

The public link will go live when the interaction feels calm enough to trust in front of other people.

Related project

Where this write-up came from

Case study

Gigapixel Photography Platform

Built a deep-zoom platform for 140+ ultra-high-resolution photographs, with tile generation, keyboard navigation, downloads, and a desktop publishing tool for new images.

Status: Actively expanding

  • JavaScript
  • OpenSeadragon
  • Python
  • Tkinter
  • pyvips

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