For $199 upgrade from PS 8.0 to PS CS4. You can do all of your retouching in LR, select all of the pano pieces and then export the whole set of images directly into CS4 by simply right clicking and selecting the menu item.
None of the stitching programs I have used to date even come close to what I am getting out of CS4 right now.
If you want to mess around with a free/easy program in the meantime you can download Microsoft I.C.E., it will do tiled panoramas and the auto setting is pretty cool when starting out.
Auto Pano Pro is a stand alone program with more controls and features than CS4's stitching feature. It can be downloaded as a 64 bit program that runs on Mac OS X. With all the processing and huge files it should work more quickly than CS 4 which is only 32 bits in Mac. It threads well on my Mac Pro's 4 cores.
Really? I'd been holding off upgrading, it's meant to be faster with multicore. Personally I always tweak the control points to use a setting of 2 or less as standard. Copes much better with movement and wider angle stitches. Just wish I could set it as default. Saying that - wish it would default to last folder on import and saving. It's annoying that it always defaults to desktop.
my tweaks have to do with the number of control points and how hard it works to find them. with 24MP captures and fine details, it needs to work harder. i've been having crashes at render time on really large stitches but i think it has something to do with the GPU setting. i need to do more testing. 24Kx14K pixel final output is pretty impressive though.
I prefer PTGui, I abandoned Photoshop for panorama stitching years ago ... I don't usually tweak control points, I just mess around with a few basic customization features and it works excellently for 99% of the panoramas I have stitched. For me the speed that PTGui stitches and renders panoramas is also a plus (I have Intel quad core + 2gb RAM).
tweaking control points in Autopano Pro means telling Autopano Pro how many to create, how hard to look for identical points, and what criteria to automatically delete bad ones. it does everything else. i have used PTGui many times over the years and always pass on paying for it. i've always found better programs.
I've only used PTgui and Photoshop CS2 for panoramas. I must say that PTgui blows CS2 out of the water and I hope that they've made improvements in CS3+.
I put PT GUI first, since it honours embedded profiles, exif and supports 16 bit output and does a fabulous job. I also really like Auto pano kolor and it seems to always work, even when PT Gui struggles (on auto mode). CS4 is pretty decent, but lacks many of the advanced features of the other software, but still worth trying if you use PS anyway.
