Has anyone actually compared the results of individual apps' output? I was impressed with how good CS3's stitching was until I noticed that it distorted some images significantly.
all pano programs have their strengths and weaknesses. you'll never be able to use just one. Realviz Stitcher is the most expensive commonly cited and, when i tested it, gave no better results than programs costing 1/10th as much. PTGui has its fans but i don't like how it blends. AutoPano Pro often doesn't line up horizons right even when you take a level panorama. you end up rotating it. i haven't done a stitch using the latest release but prior releases don't blend too well. they claim to have improved it. the program i use the most is Panorama Factory. it's faster than most, does level panoramas properly, and blends well. i've tried dozens of others, free and paid, and i use it the most, followed by AutoPano Pro. i try PTGui every now and then and always come away wondering what the big deal is.
Papathanassiou wrote:
PTGui, with out any doubt, I've tried them all.
Papathanassiou Thanks a million for suggesting PTgui, i just tried a trial of the app, it works flawlessly. Thanks man, and thanks to the rest of you as well, more great knowledge from FM'ers.
I tried AutoPano last night with a torture test pano (handheld, poor alignment, and lots of motion between shots). It did a good job with everything but the motion. Anything that had moved between frames was ghosted severely.
By comparison, Photoshop CS3 didn't ghost anything, but it gave me significant distortion. An app I used to do the stitch a long time ago called PanaVue Image Assembler did a perfect job on the motion, but had some minor stitching errors in a seam between two images where there was wavy water.
About a year ago I had a big pano project. Fed the same images into most of the major programs. For the final, printed large result, PTGui was the clear winner.
It wasn't the easiest or quickest, but in the end it's the print that matters.
That being said, a year is a long time in the world of software, so I'm sure some things have changed.
I wish I could tell you what is the best software, but all I can do is give some feedback in what I've learned in the last two weeks. I attended PS World here in Boston a couple of weeks ago and they demonstrated how quickly CS3 could resolve a real mess, and I do mean a mess, of different shots. I purposely took my own 13 shot sloppy pano (now I wish I took more time to do it right too) so I could test it when I got home. The result? A complete and abject failure with no option to manually align points. True this was using beta software so I have yet to try it (just got CS3 Design Premium last night) on the real thing. This includes PS CS3 Enhanced but I don't know if that makes a difference in Photomerge.
I was also told about another package, Panorama Maker Pro 4.0 (Seems to be George Lepp's current favorite pano package). I tried using this on the same messy panorama with the same results. IOW, complete and utter abject failure. I'll try this pano again with Realviz sticher (I only have v4.0, not the more recent 5.5) and both PTAssembler and PTGui, as well as some others I guess.
I think testing a pano with a reasonably well aligned group of shots is not necessarily effective. Almost every application can handle this, but the tougher and sloppy groups of images will break most applications so that's going to be part of my testing criteria.
Definitely PTGui. I've tried many (about a year ago) and PTGui was hands down the best. Not as user friendly as the rest, but not bad or cumbersome by any means. Not sure about the 'bad blending' comment earlier. Blending shouldn't be an issue if you're locking your exposure. I shoot exclusively pano's now, and PTGui does an excellent job.
Wow, i just tried PhotoMerge in Photoshop cs3, its incredible, i did a 11 image panorama that was handheld , it was a complex shot where i shot from the top of some grandstands at the Long Beach grand prix, the foreground theres people, in the middle ground theres the race track and in background the city skyline, its a 180 degree image, it rendered it perfectly. i cant post here but to see it go here http://www.thomasmcconville.com/
Cool. I've heard good things about it from Mahesh, but I haven't tried it myself yet. Glad to hear it works so well. I can't really tell from you shot since its so small, but it looks pretty good. What's with the weird blurry banner thing in the middle though?
