Panorama Tools

[foxgrrl]

Something that's been on my TODO list for a long time, is to stitch together a large number of my photos into one big one. I really really don't have enough time to evaluate several packages. So if anyone can just tell me which one is "the best" I'll be on my way.

Here's an expiriment I did this morning while I should have been doing other things. It's from a series of photos I took of the moonrise lastnight, parked on the side of the road (University Ave.)
http://www.arclight.net/~julia/lj/2008_Jul/test.jpg

Comments

[tastyeagle.livejournal.com]

When I last looked, PTGui was always on the top of the list. But I've never used it or any of the others ones.

However, it seems to be at a pricepoint that has decent functionality for the price. Others are incredibly expensive by comparison, or are simply broken, abandoned packages.

And it seemed to work pretty well for you.

[tiggerfox.livejournal.com]

this one is stupid simple and works well:

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

[tiggerfox.livejournal.com]

If you want to spend money (~$150) to get more features, http://www.autopano.net/ uses the same engine, I have used it as well, normally when autostich fails. Autopano Pro gives you tools to manually tweak how the images merge. It also can load DNG files directly, so that's a big plus for me. It does HDR as well, although I haven't had a chance to try that yet. It's multi-threaded (up to 8) when it renders. I find it is easier to use than Panotools.

Another feature of Autopano I like is that you can just throw it a pile of images and it will detect all the pano sets it can. So if you go out and shoot a bunch of pano's you don't have to manually select each group. Rendering takes a lot of time too so you can make batches and just let it do it's thing.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

I've always used the PhotoStitch software that came with my Canon cameras.

I've heard good things about the stitch function in Photoshop (Photomerge, I think it was added in CS2). I own Photoshop, but I've never tried it; haven't shot any panorama-type stuff since I got CS3.

[ctuck.livejournal.com]

I dig on Photoshop's stitching tools. I think it's under Edit > Automate > Photomerge. It does a pretty good job.

[didjiman.livejournal.com]

Supposedly CS3's photomerge tools is as good or better than any standalone SW. I am still using CS and I have a pano camera so ....

[tiggerfox.livejournal.com]

I don't think it is, or at least I haven't been able to make a pano out of anything I give it. Maybe my source images are to large. I duno but that's kinda the point for me anyway of a pano, is to have a high res image that I can zoom and move around on. Photoshop also consumes a huge amount of memory to do this as well. It has to load all the images at once. I love Photoshop, it just sucks for making pano's.

I have several posts with pano's I have made, I used autostitch for most of them.