Rating: 
Updated: 6 Aug 2001 at 4:00 GMT,
by James Rigg
[Panoguide]
This review refers to version 1.4
PanoStitcher joins the likes of Image Assembler in that it has a technical rather than graphical interface. Nevertheless PanoStitcher is very easy to use but at the same time offers some fairly unique stitching controls.
In addition to the more common controls such as being able to specify your lens, adjust image alignment and control the amount of blending, PanoStitcher allows you to specify which of a pair of images is positioned "on top" of the other or whether the two are blended equally. This provides an extremely useful and unusual control over possible ghosting: a common problem is people, cars, or other things moving between two shots.
PanoStitcher, like Image Assembler, offers automatic as well as manual stitching. Manual stitching is achieved by setting control points between each pair of images. When you do an automatic stitch PanoStitcher will prompt you if it cannot work out how to position to images. You can then set flags to assist the automatic stitch and then resume. By comparison all other stitching programs will do their best to automatically stitch the whole set and only then allow you to make adjustments before then re-stitching from scratch.
Another unusual capability is that PanoStitcher can not only compensate for the camera being tilted up or down, but can also adjust the position of images to compensate for the camera being rolled side to side. This therefore means that PanoStitcher is capable of accurately warping and positioning each image in the sequence in spherical space.
PanoStitcher can output the normal cylindrical panoramic images (such as those you see in QuickTime 4 panoramas) but can also output planar images. Planar images (or "perspective" view, as they are referred to by PanoStitcher) show a section of a panorama as it would to the human eye. In other words a planar image will show straight lines straight, rather than as curves as they often appear to be in a panorama. This is particularly useful for anyone who is stitching images together to create a larger picture but who doesn't want to create a full 360 degree panorama and wants the final image to look "normal".
Results are very good, and comparable with some of the leading panorama stitchers reviewed on panoguide. However, I found that the automatic stitching functionality could be confused quite easily by images lacking obvious detail. These images do not confuse similar software such as Image Assembler, and it is images that lack clear detail that can be very difficult to manually align too. Fortunately unlike Image Assembler, PanoStitcher offers two modes for manual alignment: define flags (matching corresponding points between a pair of images) or simply click and drag images until they align (overlay mode). This flexibility is great, but I still think the automatic alignment should be able to find alignment or at least guess better than it does.
I think this is a great stitcher, but I think that users will occasionally find that the automatic stitching fails to align images and this can be frustrating and mean that you cannot achieve as good results as you might hope.
PanoStitcher is certainly one to watch, and given the taste of its sophisticated image tilt and roll capabilities, the announced OmniStitcher (a fully spherical stitcher) will be worth looking out for.