Product reviews by James Rigg
Prev
Stitcher
Rating: 
Updated: 1 Jul 2008 at 20:49 GMT,
by James Rigg
[Panoguide]
This review refers to Stitcher Express 2 / Stitcher Unlimited 5.7
Since Autodesk acquired RealViz in early May 2008, the Stitcher product line has been simplified to just Stitcher Express and Stitcher Unlimited (Stitcher Pro and Stitcher Unlimited DS have been dropped). The RealViz website includes a convenient Stitcher comparison table
The two versions of Stitcher aim to cater for everyone from the amateur to professional virtual tour creator and also providing solutions for both low and high budgets. The underlying stitching engine and core features are the same in both versions, which is why I am reviewing them together here. In this review I will highlight differences between the versions where appropriate.
What's new?
There are a few small changes in 5.7, the most noticeable of which is the simplification of the product range (mentioned above) and updated low prices. The two-fisheye-shot stitching in Unlimited DS is now in Unlimited. The user interface is improved with GPU acceleration, 2D as well as 3D preview and selectable rendering.
Stitcher Unlimited 5.6 introduced Mac Universal compatibility and support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging - see below for more details.
Overview
Stitcher was probably the first really user-friendly spherical stitching software, and I was really impressed with it when I first reviewed it on panoguide. At the time (2001) the alternatives were Helmut Dersch's PanoTools (using the optimizer, so having to write a script in pseudo-code), Enroute's Powerstitch (since discontinued), and iMove's Spherical Photo Solution. Of these Stitcher was, in my opinion, by far the easiest to use.
Work the way you want to
Some stitching software provides fully automatic alignment and stitching, without manual control if the software gets it wrong. A few products provide manual control, without much automatic functionality. Of course what you really want is the best of both worlds and that is precisely what REALVIZ Stitcher gives you.
Stitcher provides fully automatic alignment and you don't even have to put your images in any kind of order. You can align them one by one by dragging them into alignment and Stitcher will fine tune the position for you (or you can force a stitch regardless). And for more manual precision, you can set control points (matching points between any pair of images) which Stitcher will then use for alignment. You can also use any combination of these ways of aligning images.
If your pictures contain plenty of detail, Stitcher should be able to automatically work out the alignment of the images for you. But if you shoot an outdoor scene with lots of featureless blue sky, automatic stitching might not be able to work out how to accurately position sky shots. Now you can let Stitcher automatically align everything, and then adjust the sky shots yourself afterwards - really simple.
Fisheye lenses and linear distortion
Stitcher will automatically recognise your lens from the EXIF data in your images, or you can specify the lens yourself. The best bit is that Stitcher can also calculate linear distortion in your images and compensate for it. Just stitch three images and then select High Distortion to calibrate your lens. Providing the three images you are using contain plenty of detail, Stitcher will accurately calculate your lens's linear distortion characteristics and compensate for them.
Stitcher Unlimited includes fisheye lens support for stitching 2 or more fisheye images, and this includes 2-shot circular fisheye lens stitching (just like iPIX used to do). This also includes support for barrel fisheye images. "Barrel" means that you used a super-wide 8mm equivalent fisheye lens which is supposed to create circular 180+ degree field-of-view images, but you did not use a full-frame digital SLR. The effect is that the sides of the image get cropped, so your images have curved top and bottom and straight sides (barrel shaped).
Stencils and blending
Moving people, vehicles and other objects can cause real problems when you shoot panoramas - you can easily end up with ghosts, vehicles cut in half and so on. If you use any software other than Stitcher, you probably have to retouch your images afterwards. Or maybe you output layered PhotoShop PSD files and you adjust the blending.
In Stitcher resolving these problems is really easy. If someone moves between shots, open the stencil tool and draw a polygon around the person and select Preserve Inside. In another picture, a bus is half way out of shot and you want to make sure you don't end up with half a bus in the stitch - draw a polygon around it, and this time select Remove Inside. It's really quick and easy and a lot faster and easier than retouching a layered PhotoShop file. If nothing else about Stitcher impresses you, the Stencil functionality should.
Many output options
Both versions of Stitcher can create flat, cylindrical and spherical panoramic images in JPEG and TIFF formats. QuickTime (cylindrical and cubic) as well as HTML publishing is also supported by all of them. QuickTime VR is particularly well supported in Stitcher and I think every possible option and QuickTime feature is made available and easy to use.
Stitcher Unlimited adds support for 16 bit images and allow you finer control of the rendering process. You can control the blending method and that includes using Enblend if you want to. You can also control the sharpening, interpolation method and save all your render settings for easy reuse. Stitcher Pro and Unlimited also provide a few more input and output formats including PhotoShop PSD files with or without layers and masks. Note that includes layered PSD as source files for stitching.
Stitcher Unlimited also supports cubic image output (i.e. output the 6 sides of a cube as separate images), Shockwave 3D, VRML, ImmerVision PurePlayer and it allows you to create hotspots in your QuickTime movies. Stitcher Unlimited can also convert between panoramic image projections, and convert previously saved images into QuickTime VR movies, etc. For example, you can output your spherical panorama and edit it in, say, Adobe PhotoShop, and then convert the edited image to a QuickTime cubic movie easily afterwards. (You can of course do this with any stitched image, cylindrical, cubic etc, and you can convert the edited image to any of the other formats supported by Stitcher.)
QuickTime support
The QuickTime support includes just about everything you could want - you can control codecs, preview options, streaming, set the playback window size and set the default, minimum and maximum zoom, pan, tilt etc. This means that when exporting an image that is less than a full spherical image you can create a cubic movie and then limit the user's ability to 'move' in the panorama so as to avoid displaying the black 'blank' area. (It also means that if you export a cylindrical panorama of less than 360 degrees you can limit the left/right pan.)
Stitcher Unlimited provides a really easy-to-use hotspot interface for creating QuickTime VR virtual tours for the web. At the time of writing this review, Stitcher is the only software solution I know of for Windows that offers QuickTime cubic hotspot authoring.
Templates and batch scripting
If you shoot a lot of panoramas you've probably got your prefered equipment and way of shooting your pictures. Stitcher Unlimited allows you to save a project as a template and use it to stitch different sets of images that were shot in the same way. Unlimited also features an additional render button the "Batch Queue". You can select multiple projects to render and then kick them off and go out and do something else while yout computer does the hard work.
Who needs a leveller?
If you are shooting a spherical panorama, you really don't need to make sure your camera/tripod is level any more. Not only can Stitcher guess where the horizon is in your project and level the scene, you can also quickly and easily define the precise horizon by drawing vertices that are horizontal or vertical (for example the side of a building).
The real time preview of the panoramic image makes it easy for you to adjust the viewpoint (important if you want to print or perhaps retouch the panorama afterwards). Stitcher Unlimited allows you to change the real time preview projection (cylindrical, spherical, cubic etc).
Movie output
Stitcher can also output a movie from your panoramic image. Just enter movie editing mode, and you can define a sequence of movements around the panoramic scene and output them as a QuickTime or AVI movie. You can control frame rate and resolution too. I have not tested it, but I suspect that DVD output (just a movie, not interactive of course) should be really easy.
HDR in Stitcher Unlimited
The core engine of Stitcher processes images in 32bits (a JPEG image is 8bit, a TIFF image up to 16), and includes support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) stitching using the OpenEXR (EXR) and Radiance RGBE (HDR) file formats. The main target audience for this functionality will be computer game and film special effects creators who need HDR Images to achieve convincing special effects. However this feature should also interest professional photographers having to deal with difficult (e.g. high contrast) lighting conditions.
To create an HDR panorama using Stitcher Unlimited, you will need to shoot multiple exposures for each frame that makes up the panorama. Next combine the multiple exposures for each frame in an EXR or HDR image file using PhotoShop CS, Photomatix Pro or similar software. You can then load your EXR or HDR images into Stitcher and stitch the panorama just as you would if you were using non HDR JPEG or TIFF files.
5.6 was the first version of Stitcher to support HDR and I anticipate future versions will improve the functionality. The stencil functionality of Stitcher, which is so powerful and useful for non HDR panoramas, is less useful for HDR images, because you cannot apply a stencil selectively to one of the multiple exposures you have shot. Shooting an HDR panorama in public may therefore be more complicated because stencils will not help you quite as much as they do in a non-HDR panorama. I have yet to properly test and explore the HDR functionality myself, so please let me know if you know better!
A product company that listens
Several previous versions of Stitcher have been reviewed on panoguide. Each and every time a new version comes out, criticisms made on panoguide of the previous versions get fixed. And the latest Stitcher products are no exception. As if to prove the point, here are the criticisms of version 4.0 and what has happened since:
1. If you have to manually align images, it is not easy. With control point stitching you can now easily and precisely stitch images manually, in addition to the drag-and-drop interface.
2. Fisheye lenses not supported. Stitcher Unlimited now supports fisheye lenses.
3. Too expensive compared to alternatives. There are now several versions of the Stitcher product now to cater for a wide range of budgets. (See Conclusions below).
So as you can see the RealViz team listen. And so far I have not found anything I dislike about the latest version of Stitcher.
Market position & conclusions
AutoDesk, which incorporates RealViz, specialises in software imaging solutions for imaging professionals from film special effects to 3D CAD models and animations. So, as you might expect, Stitcher is designed specifically to create high resolution spherical/cubic panoramic images from any number of images. Part of the reason for multiple versions of Stitcher is to better compete with the full range of products from competitors, from cheaper image-stitching-only products (PanaVue Image Assembler, PTGui) to full-suite solutions (such as iPIX Interactive Studio).
PTGui provides similar stitching flexibility to Stitcher Unlimited (fully automatic alignment, control points, drag-and-drop, etc) and has very similar rendering precision and functionality. Although PTGui is cheaper than Stitcher, Stitcher provides some very valuable additional features in particular QuickTime VR support and stencils. Easypano Panoweaver is another well-known fisheye lens image stitching solution, and interestingly at a similar price point to Stitcher Unlimited. The differentiators are: QuickTime VR output (including hotspots), the stencil functionality and multi-row stitching in Stitcher Unlimited.
If you want to stitch fisheye lens images and you are on a tight budget, you will still probably want to go for PTGui or another PanoTools-based product. But if you are looking for an all-in-one solution to your image stitching needs, I think it's pretty hard to beat Stitcher Unlimited.
Once you try Stitcher and explore all of its features and capabilities, you won't want to use anything else.
PTgui
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.
PanoPrinter
Rating: 
Updated: 15 Jul 2004 at 20:59 GMT,
by James Rigg
[Panoguide]
This is a review of version 1.0
I think many people are interested in creating panoramic images to print out and hang on the wall, and are not really interested in creating webpages with interactive panoramas like on real estate websites. PanoPrinter is the first dedicated software solution to help you print out your panoramas on any standard photo printer.
Before you print your image, you may want to adjust colours, brightness and contrast, change the exact viewpoint, or crop the picture. And yes of course PanoPrinter does all these things.
PanoPrinter also allows you to convert your panorama into one of many projections, and you can apply artistic and special effects such as lens flares, sepia tone and "painting" like looks.
What is more PanoPrinter makes all these things simple and easy to do, and you could spend hours exploring new fun ways to display your images.
The most important thing of course is that PanoPrinter makes it easy for you to print your panoramic image to a very large size. You can specify the size that you want to print, or simply specify how many sheets of paper you want to use. PanoPrinter works out how to splice the image into sections for printing onto each sheet of paper, adds crop marks and numbers to each page and then you just carefully cut and glue pages back together into one large print out.
I've got just one small gripe, which is that this first version of PanoPrinter supports only equirectangular (spherical) format images. So if you have cylindrical or cubic images you would need to convert them to equirectangular format before using PanoPrinter. However, the guys at ImmerVision tell me they intend to add support for more formats in the next version.
D Joiner
Rating: 
Updated: 20 Dec 2001 at 5:00 GMT,
by James Rigg
[Panoguide]
This review is of version 1.0
D Joiner is a simple image stitcher... well, that was my impression when I first started it. However D Joiner can create cylindrical, spherical and planar panoramic images and also output spherical images in cubic format. As well as just outputing images it can also generate a simple web page for you using its own Java applet viewer.
Stitching is a manual process - you set corresponding points between images and D Joiner works out the rest. I expected to have to specify the lens or provide other information, but to my surprise D Joiner appears to use the points you define to work out what it needs to do, and just gets on with it.
When you request a preview stitch, D Joiner analyses the stitching points you have defined and will warn you if any of them appear to be mis-positioned by more than the tollerance level (see the screenshots). This is a very neat approach and one similar to what the Optimizer can do in Helmut Dersch's PanoTools. A possible addition would be to calculate the stitch accuracy (like PanoTools), which can be worked out by doing an average of the number of pixels inaccuracy of each stitching point.
Unfortunately I am not a fan of "manual" stitching programs... because they make a simple task more time consuming. The price of D Joiner puts it at the professional photographer end of the market, yet a professional panoramic photographer is unlikely to want to spend lots of his or her valuable time defining stitching points for each set of images to be stitched - (s)he would rather spend the time shooting more pictures and earning more money! By comparison to D Joiner, REALVIZ Stitcher has the advantage that it provides automatic stitching per image, and recently also batch job stitching and templating capabilities. On the other hand, no automatic stitching system is infallible, and D Joiner will make manual stitching easier (and much more precise) than simply dragging each image into alignment with the next.
D Joiner should I think be improved to provide similar functionality to PanaVue's Image Assembler - define a control point and the program uses pattern recognition to try to identify a more accurate match. This means that you need only approximately position your points, and you can then rely on the program to fine tune the positions. This would mean that the process is much faster and easier.
In my tests results were good, but I still got shear lines occuring. So perhaps more control points are required than the 3 or 4 per seam that I created, or perhaps I needed to define them more precisely. I had some problems running D Joiner on my Windows 98SE machine, but it is difficult to say whether this is due to my machine rather than D Joiner because of all the other software I run - on Windows 2000 I had no problems.
This is an interesting first version image stitching program from D Vision Works. If D Joiner incorporated more stitching/alignment intelligence to make it easier and faster to set matching points for the stitch (e.g. like the intelligence in PanaVue IA), or perhaps a full auto-stitch of some kind, it would be really great. I think the price is a little high at the moment, but as new features are added to future versions no doubt D Joiner will justify its professional price tag. D Joiner is one to watch.
LM Stitch
Rating: 
Updated: 11 Nov 2001 at 5:00 GMT,
by James Rigg
[Panoguide]
This review refers to version 1.0
LM Stitch is a very simple, cheap and easy to use image stitcher. It will stitch both horizontal and vertical panoramas and will also stitch images to create a planar (normal perspective) image too.
The really surprising thing about LM Stitch is that it is a spherical image stitcher - you can stitch multiple rows of images together, or even any arrangement of images. In other words, it can correctly warp images to account for tilt and roll.
LM Stitch doesn't automatically recognise or fine tune your lens settings, and cannot automatically (or semi-automatically) stitch your images for you. Although you can easily zoom in and pan around as you manually position your images, LM Stitch is labour intensive and therefore not suitable for commercial use, for which speed is important. The simple 'crop' box is the only means of defining the ends of the panorama, and it is up to you to position the crop lines appropriately so that the ends align. In most cases that will not be easy.
Unfortunately I also found LM Stitch to be unstable when handling large numbers of images - when stitching multiple rows of images for a spherical panorama it ran out of memory and, without warning, crashed. Output also omits images when there is insufficient memory.
Lots of criticism then, but remember this is the first version of this software and it is extremely cheap by comparison to the other image stitchers reviewed on panoguide. If you are creating simple non 360 panoramas or mosaics this is a good choice.
Image Assembler
Rating:
Updated: 14 Oct 2001 at 4:00 GMT,
by James Rigg
[Panoguide]
This review is of version 2.02a
Image Assembler's interface stands out because it seems very systematic and, err, "practical". Whilst this might put you off at first, the interface is very easy to use. Unlike its predecessor (Visual Stitcher), Image Assembler has a very powerful fully automatic stitch function. However it still retains the manual stitching capabilities and the manual alignment flags that made Visual Stitcher so difficult to use suddenly make Image Assembler extremely easy to use and very powerful.
Image Assembler supports a huge range of image formats for both source files and for saving the final panorama, including QTVR. You can also save your "project" so that if you want to re-try a stitch again (perhaps with a later version of Image Assembler or after having re-scanned an image) you can do so easily. Most stitching programs can't do this so if you want to re-stitch you have to re-do everything.
Image Assembler performs extremely well and even the few flaws in the images that remain could be re-touched quite easily. All automatic stitchers will fail occasionally and Image Assembler was no exception. But with its extremely simple manual alignment capabilities this is not a problem. You can easily and quickly define a manual stitch point by positioning flags in each image. When an automatic stitch is run Image Assembler positions the flags too so that if you need to adjust the stitch all you have to do is tweak the flags for those seams that didn't work out quite right.
PanaVue have even thrown in a few extras that really sets Image Assembler apart: you can compensate for lenses that exhibit linear distortion (i.e. concave or convex distortion) and also account for tilt. You can therefore tilt the camera down and still stitch seamlessly. If you are stitching a problematic sequence (e.g. one with parallax problems) you can adjust the percentage of blending to achieve a better picture. You can also choose between spherical, cylindrical or projectionless stitching. In addition to stitching panoramas Image Assembler can stitch 2D mosaics and stitch together the ends of a 360 degree sequence, and it has a sophisticated system for analysing your lens so as to determine the best parameters for stitching.
However, although Image Assembler is quite easy to use, its interface can be quite clunky compared to some other image stitchers. For example, it is annoying that if you want to stitch a panorama you have to stitch the images together first and then separately manually set control points in order to stitch the ends together - why can't it do it all in one go? If you have a panorama without much detail in it, you might find it difficult to set the control points to be able to get a good stitch on the final seam, which is very annoying if the panorama is fine apart from that...
Stitching mosaics becomes confusing very quickly because you have to make sure you assign the right position number to each picture as you load it in; the interface doesn't show you clearly the mosaic arrangement, and you cannot rearrange them without starting again.
Despite all this it is reassuring to have the clear controls to be able to do what you want and to be able to export both pictures and QTVRs. You can also control the compression settings for QTVR (not all programs do this). Shame you can't add hotspots though. And where's the Mac version?
In conclusion: if you use Windows, Image Assembler is a good choice, but you might prefer something even simpler. If you are using a lens with linear distortion or if you want to be able to tilt your camera up or down, then this is one of very few image stitchers that can do the hard work for you. It performs very well and has lots of features.
PanoStitcher
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.
Panoweaver
Rating:
Updated: 25 Jul 2001 at 5:00 GMT,
by James Rigg
[Panoguide]
This is a review of version 2.0
Panoweaver is possibly one of the simplest and easiest panoramic image stitching programs you can use. The main reason for this is that it is designed exclusively to work with just two hemispherical images shot back to back. This in turn means that it can quickly and easily stitch a fully spherical panorama in which you can look straight up and straight down.
As well as having a very clear and easy-to-use interface, Panoweaver has some neat and unusual features: it supports uncompressed source images such as TIFF and Targa (TGA) and can save in uncompressed formats too including multi-layer PhotoShop (PSD) and as Targa. These formats are in addition to the usual ones you would expect, including JPEG and PNG.
Of course what you probably want to do is put your finished panoramas on the web or CD, and Panoweaver makes it very easy for you to create web pages. In fact it not only can export VRML cubes for use with VRML, JPEGs for use with Java applets and QuickTime format files, but it will also create a web page for you for any of these and all you then have to do is customise the page or cut and paste the panorama bit into your own pages. Helmut Dersch's PT Viewer is included and is the Java applet that is used if you choose to create a Java web page.
I reckon it is easy to get poor results with Panoweaver, but that is mostly because it is easy to make a bad job of shooting two hemispherical pictures back to back - accuracy is extremely important. To get good pictures you will need to be using a good quality panoramic head that works with your choice of camera and fisheye lens and you will need to make sure that the tripod is perfectly level and that once the panoramic head and camera are added that you maintain level as you rotate. The reason for all this is that the amount of overlap between two hemispheres is quite small. For example two images shot with a Nikon CoolPix camera and the CoolPix fisheye lens will have an overlap of less than 4%. So there is very little room for any errors such as misalignment or mismatch of exposure/lighting.
Having said all that, to get perfect results with any panoramic image stitching program, it is these very same things that you need to be careful about. You just need to be that little bit more careful when shooting hemispheres for Panoweaver.
If all this sounds familiar it's probably because you have seen or used iPIX's patented solution for doing exactly the same task - stitching two hemispherical fisheye images together into a single seamless image. However there are now an increasing number of solutions for stitching fisheye images to create spherical panoramas.
Overall Panoweaver is a great easy to use program that allows you to very quickly and easily start creating spherical panoramic pictures and publish them on the web. Because it only requires two images, shooting the pictures is very quick and easy and providing you are careful to set up your equipment properly you should produce really great pictures.
HotMedia
Rating:
Updated: 2 Jun 2001 at 3:00 GMT,
by James Rigg
[Panoguide]
This review refers to version 3.5 which was originally available for free
HotMedia is a simple authoring tool for creating Java based presentations including panoramas. You can create animations of images, display movies, VRML objects and display cylindrical panoramas as well as spherical iPIX movies. The first thing to understand is that generally you will create separate files for each 'node' in your presentation, and then when you add a hotspot to a panorama or still image, you specify which other file should be loaded. You can of course also link to a URL in order to go to a specific web page (which might, or might not, have another HotMedia or other presentation in it).
The size of the incredibly detailed manual in itself gives away the flexibility of HotMedia and what you can achieve with it. You can also extend it further if you know your HTML and JavaScript, and add additional interaction within the web page.
On the down side, HotMedia is not designed specifically for creating virtual tours, so it is not necessarily obvious how to use it to create a virtual tour. I also think it is a shame that it supports iPIX spherical movies but not other non-iPIX spherical panoramic images. HotMedia also relies heavily on JavaScript to allow to do customise any of the functionality - some kind of internal scripting might be nicer, although I realise that probably JavaScript is far more flexible.
HotMedia used to be free, but is no longer available on its own. To get it you must buy either IBM Studio Homepage Builder or IBM WebSphere Studio.
PhotoShop Elements
Rating:
Updated: 7 May 2001 at 4:00 GMT,
by James Rigg
[Panoguide]
This is a review of version 1.0
PhotoShop Elements is a "light" version of one of Adobe's best known products: Adobe PhotoShop. Elements replaces the older PhotoShop LE which was just like PhotoShop but with certain bits of functionality taken out: Elements also lacks some of the more advanced features of the full PhotoShop, but Adobe added other features, including "photo merge" for creating panoramas. Aside from photo merge most of the additional functionality makes PhotoShop easier to use: a context sensitive help tool; the automate option allows you to batch convert images from one file format to another, resize, etc. One of the major limitations of LE has gone - the history functionality (multiple levels of undo) is now in Elements (there was only one level of undo in LE).
Image stitching, or "photo merge" as Adobe have called it, appears to simply be a set of PhotoShop macros that flattens a set of images into a single canvas and then merge them together. Photo merge is intended to be used to create normal panoramic pictures and not full 360 degree pictures. The stitching is achieved by simply aligning and blending - no image warping or lens compensation is performed, so only quite long lenses will perform well (e.g. more than 35mm).
Without the ability to warp lenses appropriately I found that Elements was incapable of stitching my images satisfactorily - even with 35mm sequences I found it poor. It is possible to get round this limitation very easily by installing Helmut Dersch's Panorama Tools plugin for Adobe PhotoShop and then use that to warp the images before you use Photo merge. Unfortunately this means you have to do the hard work of editing each image first... and unfortunately again, I have tried this with an 18mm sequence and Photo merge got completely confused and made a real mess of what should be a simple stitch of 12 images.
For simple sets of a few pictures shot with quite long lenses (35mm or longer), I think the Photo merge feature is a nice little extra in what is an extremely good digital photo manipulation package. But if you are really interested in panoramic photography (even if you are not interested in 360 degrees or websites), I think you will need something other than Elements. Having said that if you are a wannabe panoramic photographer and you don't have Adobe PhotoShop and you are looking for a cheap alternative, this is it.