PTgui

Rating:
Updated: 20 Sep 2007 at 16:06 GMT, by Psychedelicious

PTGui is incomparable. In my opinion it is the one stitching program that truly performs flawlessly. Sure you can still trip up PTGui in automatic stitching mode, but there is hardly a panorama that cannot be stitched by PTGui. In every case PTGui will provide better results than any competing product. Realviz Stitcher comes close, but is a huge ripoff in comparison to the superior PTGui. I've used both, as well as ImageAssembler. Nothing compares to PTGui.

Realviz Stitcher may be preferred by virtual tour builders because it is a complete solution, whereas PTGui only creates the panorama, not the tour. However PTGui is the best choice for using panorama technique to create printable images, including panoramas and photo mosaics. this is because PTGui offers two optimizers (PTGui and PanoTools) and four blending modes (PTGui, PanoTools, EnBlend, and SmartBlend). While all stitching applications make mistakes now and then, PTGui can succeed at perfect stitching more often than any other application, you just need to experiment with different combos of optimizer and blending. With a well-calibrated camera/rotator/lens cobo and PTGui it is indeed possible to achieve perfect stitching most of the time... better than any other application.

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Rating:
Updated: 1 Aug 2007 at 23:10 GMT, by photog

Several days ago I had the opportunity to use the free-trial version of PTgui 7.2. I was truly impressed. I had worked with atleast a half dozen other panorama programs that didn't measure up to the simplicity and accuracy of PTgui. I took my camera outside and shot a panorama both L to R and also panning above to include sky as well,(8 exposures)in all.
Unloaded into computer and pulled them up into PTgui 7.2 on the auto setting without aligning up or down and within 1-2-3 of the auto mode it was perfect, both in alignment and blending the layers without the usual layer edge lines. Congrats! PTgui...needless to say I bought your product, keep up the great work with your software.

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Rating:
Updated: 18 May 2007 at 11:24 GMT, by rudders

Excellent, Excellent, Excellent!

Price... unbeatable

Versatility... unbeatable

Image output... unbeatable

enough said!

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Rating:
Updated: 15 Dec 2006 at 11:28 GMT, by James Rigg [Panoguide]

This review refers to version 6.03

PTGui is a complete panoramic stitching package based on Helmut Dersch's acclaimed PanoTools engine. The latest version 6 has all the original features allowing full fine-level control of the stitching process, but it also adds fully automatic alignment/positioning and support for other popular tools such as SmartBlend, EnBlend and AutoPano. Plus PTGui is now available for Mac (OS-X 10.3.9+) and PC (from Windows 98).

The fully automatic stitching process is really easy and for most people this will work fine. If for any reason you don't want to use automatic alignment/positioning, you can drag images into alignment, type in the position for each image (tilt, pan, roll etc) or set control points (i.e. define matching points in adjacent images). You can of course use any combination of these to achieve your final high quality stitched image.

PTGui allows you to save the parameters of one stitching project as a "template" and then apply these parameters to a different set of images that you shot with the same equipment in the same way. Chances are you've found a good camera equipment combination and you shoot most (maybe all?) your panoramas with this equipment and in the same way each time. A template allows you to quickly and easily re-use settings and shortens your workflow.

Last, but by no means least, you can batch render several panoramic images in one go. For example, you may have shot 10 panoramic images for an assignment - prepare each stitch project (using a template of course to save time) and do a preview stitch (you could even batch process the previews). Once you are happy, queue all 10 images to stitch at high resolution in your chosen file format and options (layered PhotoShop and multiple projections are included). You can then go and shoot more panoramas while your computer does the hard work.

PTGui version 6 not only supports all rectilinear lenses but once again supports fisheye lenses including super-wide angle 180 degree or wider circular fisheye lenses. Plus it supports so-called "barrel" fisheye lens images - these are images taken with an 8mm circular fisheye on a digital SLR that crops the image, so that the image you actually get looks barrel shaped. Dr Karl Harrison has written a fabulous walk-through of the workflow to stitch barrel fisheye images in PTGui.

For the price I don't think you could ask for any more, and the image quality is great. However, bare in mind that PTGui is merely an image stitching and rendering application. If you want to create virtual tours, or if you specifically want to create QuickTime VR panoramic images, you will need additional software.

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Rating:
Updated: 5 May 2004 at 13:45 GMT, by Flash

After demo-ing Smokey City's, etc. etc. I found PTGui to more than meet my needs. Today I expecially enjoy how it incorporates enblend as a plugin to make those nasty seams go bye bye.

For my experience I have to give it a high rating. I may change my mind as I gain more experience.

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