[theksmith]

i like to make panoramic photos, there are just so many times when we visit a really kewl place that a single photo can't capture.

i usually use the photo-merge tool in Photoshop CS4, and it does an excelent job and even leaves created a many-layered file that you can go back in and clean up some things if it doesn't quite stitch the pics as you expected.

for some reason, my favorite photo manager, Google's Picasa doesn't have a pano tool yet, but i'm sure it's just a matter of time! however if you use Windows Live Photo Gallery, note that it is also free and DOES have a pano tool: http://download.live.com/photogallery - also, many camera's like Canon i know, come with pano stitching software.

However, i recently heard of some a panorama making software called AutoPano Pro that blows everything else away! check out the demo video here: http://www.autopano.net/en/photo-sti...opano-pro.html

- first neat thing is does is automatically scan folders for you and find potential panos for you! no more trying to find those 5 files in the middle of 100 that you want to stitch!

- second neat thing is that it can stitch stuff left to right, bottom to top, and on any angle. this is actually 11 photos and at least 2 of them are taken at random weird angles to the horizon and yet AutoPano Pro not only automaticly figured out that they all could go together, it did a great job of stitching them!



here's another where i just was taking random pics out the window while moving and it matched a few of them up:



- one more neat thing is what they call "ghost removal" - when people or objects are moving (like those darn Jeeps usually do) and appear in different places in multiple pictures, the software is smart enough to not half-blend in the person multiple times. in this picture, the person and dog on the far right actually were moving from far left the whole time i was taking pictures and appear in all 5 source pics - yet the software removed them cleanly from all but the one far left position!



- and a final neat thing is that you can capture multiple position action shots... so if you have a few pics where a subject moved to each pic but doesn't overlap, you can leave them in and make a kewl shot like this:

[gearhead]

cool find!

[dzJeepChic]

That is so cool! I wondered how you came up with all the great shots on our last trip - I thought you got a new camera or something. Thanks for showing that, I'll go take a look when I get a chance. d

[KC7IPY]

Have you tried Hugin for panoramic stitching before? I'm not sure how it compares to autopano, but it is free.

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

[theksmith]

Have you tried Hugin for panoramic stitching before? I'm not sure how it compares to autopano, but it is free.

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

haven't seen that, but it appears to be a GUI front end to Panorma Tools which I have played with some before in terms of other things that use it as the back end, kewl to see another free option

[GRUNT]

Apologies Mr. Kris, but I cannot find how much it costs. Is the dinomination listed Euros or Lira?

[theksmith]

almost $160 in USD including tax... definitely pricey when there are good free options, but i really like panos and was also really impressed with the software... and as a software developer i know someone's gotta pay for all the dev time!

[zoomlenz4u]

great work. If theres something about people who offroad, photography is a must. You pans are killer. I have used canons shince high school year book class.

[theksmith]

thanks!

can't wait to see some of your work, with a member name like "zoomlenz4u" i assume that photography is a passion of yours, or perhaps even a profession? start a thread and show us some pics!


oh and bringing up this post again made me remember another great job the software did with a pano (such a wide range of light shot with a point-n-shoot camera with auto-exposure makes this hard set of images to blend seamlessly usually):

[fangars]

AutoPano is good stuff, I use it and Hugin because they both run on linux.
Hard to remember which I used on which stitches.
Its the next best thing to owning a wide angle.