See also
Rating: 
Updated: 29 Aug 2000 at 5:00 GMT,
by James Rigg
[Panoguide]
This review refers to version 1.0.9
PanEdit seems to be targetted at the semi-professional... I say this because it allows a fairly fine level of control and yet has quite a powerful automatic stitch and simplistic interface. The interface follows the general style of the likes of PhotoVista Panorama and Quickstitch: a simple main screen that shows the images being processed, including alignment, together with a row of buttons across the top that represent the stages involved in the process of stitching the images together.
Automatic alignment has been dramatically improved since some of the early versions of PanEdit. You will however need to run the automatic-alignment at least twice to make sure the alignment is really spot on, and as with any stitching program you may have to then adjust it slightly manually too. With large images I found it advisable to manually align as best you can first and then use the automatic stitching several times to refine the alignment.
Manual alignment is achieved not by dragging images into alignment, nor by defining matching points or flags between images on each seam. Instead, to manually align each image you 'edit' each image and change the position of the seam lines, the image centre and horizon. Although this works quite well I found it to be a little "clunky" because if you want to manually tweak the alignment along a seam, you have to adjust the seam lines in each of the images either side of the seam in turn. When both images are displayed at once, for click-drag or matching points style interfaces, it becomes easier to manipulate the alignment.
The alignment dialogue allows for an image to be tilted up or down so that the entire set of images could have been created with the camera pointed downwards or upwards... but you don't get to specify the degree of pitch, which you might expect. Roll is also accounted for, which is quite unusual amongst stitchers.
PanEdit is a little slow by comparison to most stitching tools but I guess it makes up for this by having such a large number of controls and by being completely free. It would also be nice to see PanEdit support a wider range of file formats, such as BMP in addition to TIFF (for non-lossy image file formats), and perhaps to see QTVR support. Having said that there are of course a few utilities out there to convert a stitched panorama into a QTVR or other format (see the web publishing article on this). PanEdit is a utility intended to complement the Hot Media tools from IBM, which provide a Java solution to publishing panoramas (including iPIX panoramas) on the web. Hot Media provides all the other functionality (e.g. hotspots) that you might expect to be part of the PanEdit stitching tool.
Performance is OK with narrow FOV lenses, although I noticed some ghosting and was unable to remove it. With wider angle lenses the ghosting gets worse, so I would stay clear of wide angles when using PanEdit.
If you are looking for a free stitching program, this is one you should definitely consider. However there's an increasing amount of competition even in the free stitching tools market now... so you'd be wise to check out the others too.