The Gigapan panorama photography robot review by Stockholmviews.com , page 7
Overview and comparacy of panorama stitching software
This is a small :0/ overview of alternative panorama stitching software.
It contains a few disappointments but also some surprises of the positive type.
I hope that you will find the reading useful and entertaining.
- PTgui Pro 8.0.2
- PT Assembler 4.0.2
- Pano wizard 1.0.27.0 (Freeware]
- Autostitch 2.2 (The motor for Autopano pro, Serif PanoramaPlus, Calico)
- Auto Pano Pro 1.4.2
- STOIK Panorama maker 2.0
- Panorama Factory
- Photoshop CS 4
- Canon photo stitcher 3.1.20.44
- Serif Panorama plus 3
- Hugin (Open source freeware based on panorama tools)
- Any suggestions?
In short!
The result of my research and tryout of the above panorama stitching software
can be summed to the following conclusion.
The freeware beta Gigapan Stitcher is by far the easiest to use.
Resulting panoramas was equally well stitched on all of the software as long
as the overlap and camera alignment was properly done.
When there are trouble areas like wavy waters the Gigapan Stitcher together with
Canon photo stitcher was the first one to show signs of bad stitching.
The Gigapan Stitcher also seams to perform better if a longer lens is used
this might be a sign of that the software have trouble with correction of the
lens distortion that often are related to wider angle lenses some but not all of the
competing software was equipped with lens correction algorithms.
Some of the stitcher's required far more user interaction than others.
The Gigapan Stitcher was the among the software that required least user inputs.
It also was one of the app's with least features of them all.
Never the less the final result from the GigaPan stitcher was almost as god as the most extensive and expensive of the software tested.
If you want some more control I suggest Hugin!
The computer used during this little side project review was a bit outdated :0)AMD Operon 165 Dual core
2GB of RAM and lots of HDD Space
PTGui Pro
PT gui pro is not the most user friendly app for the absolute beginner in stitching.
It do has a great potential and a myriad of tweaking possibilities but you need to
be interested and patient to get most out of it.
But if you give it your time and patience it will reward you with excellent result.
for ease of use
for performance and
for tweakability
PT Assembler
Just like PT gui pro this software has lots of tweaking possibility's but it also have an
step by step wizard like way work that should make it more user friendly.
But the user friendliness is only there if you manage to install and configure
all the additional plugins that this app requires to work and to do that you need to
carry above average computer knowledge :0(
If you do have the necessary computer skills PT assembler will give you all the tools
and tweakabilitys to help you to perform excellent stitching's.
for ease of use
Pano wizard
Pano wizard is just a shell that you have to fill with different components to make a
full application but it is a FREEWARE and that might make it worth the trouble!
But I would suggest Hugin instead if you are on a tight budget.
"Due to the nature of PanoWizard, it s only a wizard, and all the functionality available by the underlying software is not available here. However, using this wizard will let you create astonishing results used in the right way."
for performance and
Autostitch
Autostitch is the engine for Auto pano Pro.
T this application comes in one single exe file and it is super easy to use,
just make some basic settings in the options panel, select the images
to be stitched and wait!
And despite the limited tweaking possibility's it performs well.
Perfect for your first test panoramas.
Auto Pano Pro
Auto Pano Pro is a user friendly application that provides a good final result it looks
and is a more commercial finished product that for instance Pano wizard.
The only but is the limited tweakability (like the lack of projection selection)
that will make the more advanced user to feel limited.
STOIK Panorama maker
Stoik Panorama maker works in a similar way that Auto pano pro does but it is even
more crippled in the sense of tweakability anyhow this makes the application very well
suited to absolute beginners :0)
Panorama Factory
Panorama factory is not suitable for multi row panorama stitching since it only handles
a single row of frames (Or maybe I'm to stupid to find out how to use it :0)
I will not rate this software since it is not usable for gigapan images.
Photoshop CS 4
The trusty old Photoshop, here in its new suite CS4 edition.
The photo merge function works and are no worse or better than any of the other if you use it in auto mode.
The strength of this app is the possibility's to further tweak the stitched panorama but
that requires some beyond basic knowledge in Photoshop sooo don buy this app just
because you want some stitching done!
Canon stitcher
Canon Stitcher, you get this software bundled with many of Canon's products.
It works and it works OK if your camera was set up perfectly.
In this test it was the worst and produced an ugly solution for my sample shots.
Serif didn't make me happy at all :0( it keep crashing on my computer it also complain
about insufficient memory all the time and i just managed to perform a stitching at
half the size (50%) of the full size panorama from the 12 test frames.
This is sad since the result from the final panorama was displaying a nice
stitching result (I have interpolated it to full size for comparing)
Hugin
The Hugin software was a lucky shot it is easy to use have many features,
The end result doesn't stand short of any of the competition and it has all the
tweakability that I want.
It runs just fine straight after I installed it and it can be further tweaked by adding
plugins to gain performance.
And it is a SourceForge project based on Panorama tools so if you are a coder and
would like to ad some features, please go ahead it is an Open Source Software!
The winner is! - hugin.sourceforge.net -
for ease of use for performance and for tweakabilityCompare images from different stitching app's (Hardest/worst section shown, non had success!)
The images in the comparator below are reduced in size by a factor of 7 but they are
still large enough for comparing the most difficult section* in respect of stitching and blending performance. (*An area of bad camera handling)