Pano tool comparison

I've been trying more and more extreme panos to see how tools like Autostitch, Panorama Plus 4, Photoshop's Photomerge and Kolor Autopano fare. So far this is what I've found. I apologise in advance to those of you who found my previous examples somewhat nauseous

Autostitch - mostly works well but in many cases it produces an inverted image of one of the shots in the wrong place. This happens more with wider angles of view, and becomes all too common with 360-degree views. It has no control over the projection and other image parameters. When it works well it is excellent but when it doesn't work there seems to be no tweaks to improve things. Free.

Panorama Plus 4 - I purchased this because it purports to use the Autostitch technology but with more control. The control it provides doesn't extend to the way the panorama is created, more to do with the input images. Outputs have exactly the same problems as Autostitch. Not worth £14.99.

Kolor Autopano - this is an amazing piece of technology. It gives complete control over all aspects of the input, projection, rendering, exposure, stitching, merging, HDR and so on. You can move the vanishing point and other pano parameters and re-render. The thousands of control points that it generates automatically can be edited or modified before rendering, and there are extra tools to work with the geometry of the image. Excellent, even in the free demo version. Unfortunately the paid-for version is 99 euros plus tax

Photoshop Photomerge - comes with Photoshop CS4, but you need to 'downgrade' the plugin to an older version if you want the 'manual placement' feature. Unable to work with large numbers of large images, but can still cope with small images. When it works it gives excellent results. When it can't find enough control points it just discards large chunks of the image, and even manual placement can't get them to align. Expensive (due to Photoshop required) or free (if you've already got it).



For testing I took a set of shots half-way up the stairs, using the Sigma 10-20 at 12mm, 3 rows of 15 shots covering just under 360 degrees horizontally. The tripod was in the middle of the staircase.

First, Autostitch and Panorama Plus 4. They both have the same problem in that there is no control over yaw, and there is a spurious image:



Then Kolor Autopano (watermarked due to demo version):



Photoshop's Photomerge:




Given the excellent control features Kolor Autopano is probably good value for pro panorama creation, but too expensive for me...


And finally for the roller-coaster fans, this wouldn't be complete without an example of a pano gone off the rails This one used Autostitch but without specifying initial orientation:




This uses the exact same set of input images as the one above but rendered with Kolor Autopano:

You should try Microsoft ICE and see how it compares to the others. Microsoft ICE is free, and I get good results out of it.

Good idea - I just downloaded it and gave it a spin with the same data.

Microsoft ICE:




Looks like that could be the best of the free ones on this showing.

By the way, the image is 340 degrees horizontally and 153 degrees vertically, 45 separate wide-angle shots.

ICE is my favourite of the free tools and I like PTGui best out of the more expensive options.

I note that Serif offer a money-back guarantee, so I've raised a ticket regarding PP4, suggesting that it isn't fit for purpose when ICE can repeatedly stitch ones that PP4 makes a mess of. Although £14.99 is cheap it is still too much when it doesn't actually work on the majority of wide-angle panos I've tried it on.

However, I'm 3 days over the 7-day money-back period that applies to downloads, so not sure what will happen...

This. ICE in particular is great at avoiding ghosting without manual intervention. PTGui though is as good as it gets if you have some time to invest in the process.

Have yet to spend some time with Kolor Autopano.

ICE gets my vote too. It works fine most of the time but if it goes wrong I found there is almost nothing you can do to fix it.

At the other extreme, if you want ultimate control, then I think Hugin is worth a look. It is also free but has a fairly steep learning curve for anything other than auto. It can however often rescue your work where, occasionally, ICE has failed.

Glyn

+1 for Hugin. Don't know about other apps mentioned but this one also seamlessly enblends frames of different exposures. On the down side, the outcome looks a bit soft.

Lucian