iMove Spherical Photo Solution

Product version: iMove Spherical Photo Solution v. 1.0

iMove's SPS is very much a tool. In other words, you do the work, not it. It allows you to take one image at a time and adjust the settings applied to it. Interestingly though you cannot adjust settings on multiple images. Likewise, although there is an "auto-match seam" function, it will only align one image at a time.

Anyway, after loading your images, the main interface is simple enough:

You can adjust the positioning and settings of each image using keystrokes, but you can also call up the status window that shows you the settings and in which you can edit them:

I found that the best way to use the software is to follow these steps:

1. load the images and position them as if they were perfectly shot (e.g. top row are all +50 degrees up, bottom -25 degrees down, etc)
   set the lens focal length to be whatever the focal length is of your lens, and set all the images to have the same focal length.
2. Now, starting with an image on the bottom row (because there is likely to be more detail in the bottom row), take each picture and align it manually with the one to its left. Adjust position only (pan and tilt but not focal length). Note you are not likely to get a perfect stitch at this point.
3. if the last picture in the row overlaps too much with the first, you need to reduce the focal length slightly. If it overlaps too little, increase the focal length. Having done this, repeat the previous step again until the overlap is roughly right. Because this is experimental, remember to save your work in a new file each time you change focal length.
4. Next go through the row and adjust for roll on each image to improve positioning.
5. If you have an image that seems mis-aligned you may like to try adjusting the focal length of that image only to see if the stitch improves.
6. Once one row is in position, repeat these steps for the other rows (although no change to focal length should be necessary)
7. Last of all, you can remove or reduce defects that remain by adjusting blending by tweaking the alpha settings of individual images.

Perhaps most important, as mentioned above, is to keep saving your work in a new file. When you first load in your images create a project called something like project001.ipr. After doing some work on it, save it as project002.ipr and so on. That way if you think increasing focal length might solve a problem and you try it and it makes things worse, you can quickly and easily revert to the previous settings.

If you want to stitch very high resolution images, you will probably find it useful not only to use the resolution control menu (see below), but to actually create two sets of pictures - low and high resolution. Start off using the low resolution set (which will be faster because less computer memory will be required). Once you have got the set as good as you can, copy the high resolution pictures over the low resolution ones and re-load the project. Your high resolution pictures should then be loaded and you can continue to refine your stitching project.

There is an automatic alignment function but it only aligns one image at a time, and presumably it attempts to align it to all the surrounding images. It would be nice if you could align all the images in one go as you might expect to do having one of the non-spherical stitching programs. It would also be nice if you could select a pair of images to align - this would provide much needed finer control.

As you gradually adjust all the images until they all come into alignment, it becomes increasingly important to be able to see the images perspectively corrected. The very top and bottom of the image in particular can be quite difficult to align because the amount of warping that takes place in the main window makes it difficult to see what's what. For this reason there is a viewer which allows you to see the panorama as if it was finished, and to look around inside the sphere of the panorama:

As part of the stitching process you'll probably want to adjust colour:

And perhaps adjust the blending between images so as to avoid artifacts caused by, say, moving objects. To do this you change the alpha map of each image:

To speed up viewing when using large images you can also adjust the panorama size, using the larger sizes only once you have nearly got the settings right anyway:

Last of all, you can export the panorama as either iMove PAN format or Quicktime QTVR format. When you do so you can choose to adjust the final image size. For QTVRs you are also prompted to specify where to crop the image (since QTVR does cylindrical projection and so the full spherical image is inappropriate):

After finishing stitching your panorama you can use the Hot spot Editor to add hot spots, scripted movement, embed sound, video and other features. Oddly the Hot spot Editor relies on you doing certain keystrokes. You might expect a row of buttons for defining different types of hot spots and things, but instead you must do things like hold the CTRL key and use the right mouse button, in order to define a hot spot. Nevertheless, once you have read the help information and understand how the Hot spot Editor works it is extremely versatile:

The images featured in these screen shots are courtesy of iMove inc.