Quick Summary
- Free Software:
- Hugin: Cross-platform, functional.
- AutoStitch: Basic, for Windows and Mac.
- GigaPan Stitch: For GigaPan users, basic.
- Paid Software:
- PTGUI Pro: Advanced features, for Windows, Mac, Linux.
- PhotoStitcher: User-friendly, for Mac and Windows.
- Panorama Stitcher Mini: Mac only.
- Image Editing Software with Panorama Feature:
- GIMP: Open-source with plugins for stitching.
- Lightroom Classic & Adobe Photoshop: Built-in panorama stitching.
- Affinity Photo: Affordable with panorama feature, for Mac and Windows.
- Capture One: Added panorama in version 22.
- Quality of panorama depends heavily on input image quality.
Panoramas can make for fun and interesting options for capturing photos. Whether you’re shooting for a specific aspect ratio output such as wall display installation or website header, looking to incorporate a lot of visual data in the image, or just aiming for a different view, panoramas can be a creative approach.
Personally, I’m a fan, and I’ve been shooting them for many years. By capturing a very wide–or, for that matter, tall–field of view, they can be dramatic. And they can be revealing, by adding room for a lot of visual context and detail.
Panoramas also bring with them some challenges. Among those is how you take multiple images and stitch them together into a single panoramic image.
Table of Contents
Some newer cameras and smartphones have an automatic panorama setting built in. They let you sweep the camera around the view, and it’ll all be stitched together in the camera. But as convenient as that is, you often don’t get much control over the finished product, and the resolution is often much lower than you might expect from the camera’s usual capabilities. You can often get much better results, and infinitely more flexibility, by taking a series of individual, full-resolution, overlapping images that you then later stitch together using software.
There are quite a few different software options that can stitch panoramic images. They range from full-featured dedicated apps that give you an enormous amount of control and that produce very professional results, to lightweight free apps that can get the basic job done but don’t give you much control. And some of the most popular image editing apps have panoramic stitching capabilities built-in, even if it’s not always obvious they’re there.
So here’s a rundown of some of the better options for panorama stitching apps, ranging from simple, free apps, to much more powerful, paid ones.
The ones I’m focusing on here are still-image, flat panoramas. There’s quite a lot of overlap in software and technique between flat panoramas and 360° virtual tours or VR, but there are some specific requirements when shooting and displaying the latter.
Regular flat panoramas–still images that have a very wide or tall aspect ratio–are what I’m focusing on here.
Free Panorama Stitching Software – Dedicated Stitching Apps
The best panorama apps tend to be paid ones, and not inexpensive at that. But there are also some free options available.
Overall, the features of the free panorama stitching apps tend to be pretty limited, and their user interfaces are not particularly polished. But if you’re dabbling, just have a one-off need, or just aren’t in the market for another paid app, they’re a useful place to start.
Hugin Panorama Software
If you’re after something straightforward to use, free, and cross-platform, take a look at Hugin.
It’s built on a set of underlying software code called Panorama Tools, a suite of tools that some of the other apps here are also built on. There has been steady development that has been building the app out to a stable release. Early versions were quite basic, but the developers have since added more sophisticated capabilities such as being able to tweak control points and projection manually.
Hugin’s interface isn’t pretty or slick or even especially refined, but it is functional and does what it needs to do.
Hugin is free, and there are versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
I’ve put together a quick guide on how to stitch panoramas with Hugin here.
AutoStitch
AutoStitch is focused mostly on the underlying algorithm that is then licensed to other software manufacturers to use in their apps. But they have also put together a rudimentary front end for it. It’s very basic, and you don’t get any control over things like editing control points or choosing the projection, but it’s simple to use, and it’s free. There are versions for Windows and Mac.
GigaPan Stitch
If you’re shooting with a GigaPan panoramic robot, there’s a dedicated Gigapan panorama stitcher available called, oddly enough, GigaPan Stitch.
Overall, it’s fairly basic and quite outdated now, but one thing it does especially well is multi-row (or multi-column) panoramas, which is a bread-and-butter feature of the GigaPan robots.
But if you’re not shooting with a GigaPan or uploading the stitched images to the GigaPan site, there’s not much reason to use their GigaPan Stitch–there are much better options available. And even if you are shooting with a GigaPan (in which case you’ve already made a significant investment in panorama shooting), don’t feel as though you have to use their software–other options like Hugin and PTGUI Pro work even better and give you more flexibility. I have a GigaPan myself, but I’ve found that GigaPan stitch is more limited than I’d like most of the time. Nevertheless, it is free.
You can download GigaPan Stitch here. There are versions for Mac and Windows.
Paid Panorama Stitching Software – Dedicated Apps
PTGUI Pro
PTGUI Pro is my go-to panorama stitcher, and it’s one I’ve been using for over a decade. It started as a graphical user interface for some underlying command-line tools known as PT Tools–hence the name PTGUI. But over the years, it has grown enormously and offers a wealth of powerful options in everything from masking out unwanted elements, manually editing control points, straightening horizons, and working with very large and multi-row panoramas.
It can also work with HDR panoramas, if you’ve shot multiple-exposure versions of the images. And while it’s not my focus here, PTGui also works great for spherical panoramas–it’s what I use for all my 360° panos. And it has a very useful batch processing module, which I use regularly.
PTGUI Pro’s user interface is another that falls into the functional but not pretty category, and there is a bit of a learning curve to get the best results out of it. But if you want maximum control over your panoramas or are shooting them professionally, it’s hard to beat.
There are versions for Windows and Mac (and now also Linux). Paid license, with a free trial version.
PhotoStitcher
This dedicated panorama stitching software is a newer alternative.
PhotoStitcher is simpler and more intuitive to use than something like PTGUI Pro, and while it also lacks some of the advanced functionality of PTGUI Pro, it is nevertheless very capable and I’ve gotten quite good results from even just the automatic mode. The auto-fill (or “Auto Complete,” in this case) works well, it can handle multi-row panoramas, and gives you the option of selecting the projection.
There are versions for Mac and Windows. There’s also a free trial version, although, annoyingly, you can’t save the stitched result with the trial version. But priced at $19.99, it’s among the most affordable options.
Panorama Stitcher Mini
Available from the Mac App Store. There’s a free version that’s limited to 5 images; if you want to stitch together more images than that, you’ll need to upgrade to the Pro version.
Overall, it’ not in the same league as PTGUI Pro, but it is also a lot cheaper. Mac only.
Free Image Editing Software that Includes Panorama Stitching
These apps don’t have panorama stitching as a primary objective, but they either have the capabilities already built-in or can be extended with plugins to add them.
GIMP. GIMP is an open-source and free image editing app. It’s surprisingly powerful and is backed by a dedicated and committed development community. It’s often seen as a good free alternative to Photoshop.
GIMP doesn’t natively support panorama stitching, but you can get plugins that add the functionality, like Pandora and Stitch Panorama.
Paid Software that Includes Panorama Stitching
Again, these apps don’t have panorama stitching as a primary objective, but they either have the capabilities already built-in or can be extended with plugins to add them.
Lightroom Classic
If you’re already using Lightroom Classic, you already have a very effective panorama stitcher baked in. You don’t get as much control over the process as you do with some of the dedicated apps, but in many cases, the stitching engine works very effectively with excellent results. And the developers have been adding features to the panorama stitching feature in recent years to flesh it out more. It can work directly with RAW files without converting them to JPG or TIFF, it can use content aware fill to flesh out rough edges, and can process HDR panoramas. And there’s a lot of value in the convenience of having it directly accessible in the place where you’re managing and editing your images.
Lightroom Classic is a paid app for Windows and Mac and has a trial version available.
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is the gold standard of image editing apps, and one of its numerous features is that it can stitch panoramas. It doesn’t make much sense to buy Photoshop just for the panorama stitching option (called Photo Merge), but many of us already have it installed. And it’s quite a powerful and effective option for this task.
Photoshop’s panorama stitcher works very similarly to the one in Lightroom Classic–they share underlying engines and algorithms. If you’re already using Lightroom, it can be more convenient to use the one there. If you’re not using Lightroom, Photoshop’s version will give very similar results, although it does give you more options. One I particularly like is the option to use the Content Aware Fill feature as part of the photo merge process to fill in transparent areas–it can work really well in some situations.
Photoshop is available for Windows and Mac and is a paid app with a free trial.
Affinity Photo
Affinity Photo arrived on the scene with quite a splash. It’s a slick, well-thought-out, and powerful image editing app that is priced much more affordably than Photoshop. It also has a Stitch Panorama feature built-in.
There are versions for Mac and Windows; both have a free trial.
Capture One
Panorama stitching was added in the recently released version 22.
Misc Notes
Some of these apps support RAW files, but many don’t. If you want to work directly with RAW files–and there are some advantages to doing so–you’ll need to make sure the app supports the format. Lightroom Classic is an example of one that supports working with RAW files directly, and it even outputs the stitched panorama as a RAW file (DNG format).
Other Panorama Stitching Apps
Not Recommended
- Panorama – Perspective Image Stitcher. This Mac app looks on the surface to be good, but once I started using it, I realized that it doesn’t work well for stitching more than three images at once. If you want to do a panorama with more tiles than that, you can technically stitch them in small batches and then stitch the resulting mini-panos, but that’s a really poor way to do it. Users have also reported that its merging algorithm also leads to substandard results.
- Canon PhotoStitch. While it’s put out in support of Canon cameras, it’s not limited only to working with images shot with a Canon. But there’s not a lot else going for it when there are much better options available. Windows only.
No Longer Available
Some panoramic stitching apps have come and gone over the years. I’m listing some of them here for the sake of completeness and to provide updated information on their fates.
- Microsoft ICE, which stands for Image Composite Editor, was a product of one of Microsoft imaging research labs and was a good complement to the PhotoSynth technology. It had some unusual and really interesting features, like being able to create a still image panorama from a video pan and compositing images in ways that most stitching apps can’t. But it lacked some of the end-user refinement of some of the other apps here–it basically feels a bit experimental, which is precisely what it is, of course. Microsoft appears to have abandoned the publicly-available version of ICE.
- Kolor / Autopano Pro, AutoPano Giga. For a long time, the various Autopano products put out by Kolor were among the best in the business, with powerful stitching apps that gave a lot of control over the whole process. But Kolor closed down in 2018, and their Autopano products are no longer available.
- iFoto Stitcher. It was pretty basic, but had two notable aspects: it made it very easy to work with multi-row stitching, and it had good built-in tools for sharing panoramas on social media. It’s no longer available at the Mac App store.
- Serif PanoramaPlus is no longer available.
- Calico is no longer available.
General Recommendations for Panorama Stitching Software
If you’re after the best free panoramic stitching software, start with Hugin.
If you’re after the most powerful panorama stitcher, take a look at PTGUI Pro.
If you’re already using Lightroom Classic, the built-in Photo Merge function has gotten very good. Ditto for Capture One (panorama stitching was added with version 22).
And Affinity Photo makes for an interesting compromise of affordability and flexibility, as part of a powerful suite of photo editing tools.
Things Worth Knowing
And, as always with any of these, the results you get out are directly related to what you feed in. Carefully captured images with a reasonable amount of overlap and minimal perspective shift are much more likely to yield good results than rough shots where the camera moves.
If you’re finding that the automatic alignment of one of the basic apps isn’t working, it’s worth trying something more powerful such as Hugin or PTGUI because they have tools that let you manually tweak alignment points and even mask out parts of an image where things have moved, such as people in a crowd.
Hi, great article, thank you.
How can I stitch together a realistically rectangular image of a rectangular object like for example a long building ?
In photoshop I have a choice of: Perspective, Cylindrical, Spherical, Collage and Reposition, neither of which produce a realistic rectangular image of the object.
By repeatedly going back and fourth between PhotoShop and LightRoom perspective I managed to cobble together the following:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bnsd/51324792118
From these two originals:
However, I do not know exactly how I did it and I am looking for a simpler and better way.
That looks like you might have used the spherical setting, which will often keep lines straight. Shots like this are easier when taken from a distance when possible (not always possible, of course). You can then use a longer telephoto zoom to retain the detail and resolution (with more shots). That will reduce the amount of distortion that you get from shooting close to the subject.
Using Lightroom’s distortion correction before stitching can also help with architectural-type shots.
What a great review! It’s really refreshing to read a review by someone who patently knows their stuff.
Personally I find Hugins interface unintuitive. Good under the bonnet but I feel it would pay the devs to observe a load of uninitiated users, take notes and then throw the interface away and start again. IMHO, for me any app that performs a straightforward task and requires a tutorial that size is a fail.
I’m a Linux daily driver so use a stripped out Win7 VM just to run ICE which I find does the job nicely and can be cajoled into producing good enough results for me. I find it faster to use ICE and do minor re-touches than use Hugin. I used to use Canon photostitch – haha, I know just what you mean.
Hope you don’t mind but in case useful for Linux users:
The Windows version of Autostitch runs fine under Wine in Linux.
Stripping Windows for speed search black viper on google – mostly kill off disk indexing, stop all the extra services.
To install ICE in the VM, strip windows down first. The ICE installer will prompt you for dependencies. I think I may have manually installed a missing DLL but it works fine. Don’t bother with ICE under wine, lot of work, runs like a (slow) dog.
Keep up the good work!
Cheers
Jeff
Thanks for the great tip! It’s been a long time since I ran Linux, but this’ll be very helpful for any Linux users out there.
Surprised you’re so dismissive of PhotoStitch. I’ve just finished trying to stitch some scans with slight tilts and big variations in exposure. I coudn’t get anything remotely acceptable with Hugin, so I tried an old PhotoStitch. It worked so fast I expected total rubbish, but it was absolutely brilliant. I had a very hard job indeed to find where the joins were, and overall the image was more than acceptable. I then tried both programs stitching a panorama with new camera images – once again couldn’t get Hugin to cope acceptably, but Photostitch was brilliant. It’s limited I know, but definitely does NOT deserve to be condemned out of hand the way you have in your article. And it’s free. Highly recommended.
Glad it worked well for you, and thanks for sharing!
Are you referring to Canon’s Photostitch program, or the free Mac app?
The Canon one. I know it’s old and limited, but it produced good results in the instances I used it, (comparable to PS Elements – but obviously not so versatile) so I do think it deserves to be considered as a free option.
May not be available on Windows 10 though?
One program for the Mac that I like a lot is called DoubleTake. It is easy to use, not having a lot of detailed settings, but it works very well, and rarely do you have to adjust the automatic placement much. It is also inexpensive, and seems to be much faster than some of the alternatives listed above — I run it on a 10-year-old Mac, and in contrast to the case above where Lightroom ran overnight for a 20-frame panorama, Doubletake has never gone more than several minutes for a large 10-20 frame one-row panorama.
https://echoone.com/doubletake/
Thanks for the tip! I’ll check it out.
Might look to remove Hugin as a Mac alternative, been trying for several days to get it to run on Catalina 10.15.5 and all it does is crash…..says it cannot find the “working directory”. Have system set to allow all software downloads and still no go. Program starts, takes images, builds the preview, but I tell it to create the pano it crashes after asking to save the .pto and the image file.
This one is a bust for Mac users!
Thanks for letting me know. I’ve just tried it out on Catalina and ran into the same problem. It seems to be an issue with the way the main app launches the stitching batch processor. A workaround that worked for me is to force quit PTBatcherGUI and then open it manually (~/Applications/Hugin/PTBatcherGUI) and leave it open. So long as PTBatcherGUI is already open, it’s working as normal for me. I’ll dig deeper to see if anyone has come up with a better fix.
I was able to install Hugin on Mac, I use OS 10.13.4 (hmm, should I upgrade?). I did have to right-click to get the option to allow it to run, since it didn’t recognize the SourceForge developer.
It’s not exactly intuitive for sure, but I was able to make a decent panorama in an hour’s time.
I had a similar fiasco trying to run Affinity Photo on Win10.
Hi,thx for the info!
I did try hugin,without success.
I did a closeup video of a geografic map and exported all frames as jpeg. I “scaned” the map with the camera from top corner left to bottom corner right. Now i want to stitch them together. But already if i load the first 2 frames/jpeg, hugin doesnt find any matching points. I have something like 10.000 frames. Any help?
That’s a neat way to tackle it. My first choice to try for something like that would be PTGUI. I have another post on scanning oversize items here, but I haven’t tried it with video frames nor with that many source images, so can’t speak to whether it will handle this particular challenge any better.
I wanted to know about the algorithms separately used by above stitching software for image stitching process. There are various direct and feature based techniques available for that. Some examples are SIFT, SURF descriptors under feature based techniques and some key point detectors such as Harris. Actually I am doing a research on enhancing available techniques used by software. Therefore, I need to know particular techniques / algorithm used by above software. If any one have an idea, pls help me to send the details of them
Sorry, but I don’t know the answer to that. Your best bet might be to contact the developers for the individual apps directly.
Great article. Very helpful to my research on a livretto I am writing on Panoramic photograpphy. I have been doing panos for abou 15 years now and have used most of the programs you mentioned. Actually I started off with Arcsoft Pano Sticher (not mentioned by you) and found it to be both “honest” and “simple” Becaus it was free I passed it on to many beggining students but personally went on to use ICE, Photoshop and Ligtroom stitchers and finally settled down with Autopano Pro and migrated to Auto Giga not too long ago. I still use them although Kolor has gone out of business (I have heard rumors it was sold to GoPro).
Now to my questions. I have run into two softwares you do not mention and I would like to have your opinion on them. One is Panoweaver (www.easypano..com) who also produce Panotour and the other is PanoramaStudio3 by Tshsoft.de/en/products_en. Beside these two I went back to search for Panostitcher and discovereed ARCSOFT who seem to be quite serious business Anything you can tell me about them will be of help. Thanks.
I think it would should be mentioned that Affinity Photo (The Photoshop alternative) is also capable of panoramas, though it is limited in control (https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/)
Thanks for the tip. I’ll check it out.
Unfortunately Affinity stitching does’n work on iPad. It will work for some small number of low-res pictures.
As soon as you try to add more high-res pictures it will crash.
Thanks for a helpful article. I’ve now learned of so many options.
I’m curious if you have computer hardware suggestions for effectively assembling pianos?
I recently assembled a 20 shot stitch on a 10 year old Mac Pro. LR had to run overnight to create a 2x 10 row pano, 220 MPs.
It’s not really something I’ve tried benchmarking, sorry. I do find that Lightroom’s stitching gets very resource hungry. For bigger and more complex stitching, I tend to reach for PTGUI Pro, which seems to take it more in stride. But I don’t have any numbers to put to it.
Hi D 360avid,
Thanks for having this page. It is very helpful. I am a Real Estate Photographer and want to offer spherical 360 Panographic Virtual Tours in HDR. I have Adobe Photoshop CC, Lightroom and Illustrator. Will I be a able to make these in Photoshop CC or do I have to purchase PTGui Pro? I really don’t want to spend another $200 plus on something I already have in Photoshop. I don’t think PTGui standard can do HDR Spherical 360 Panographs. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Thanks in advance for your support and advice.
Hello David, iFoto Stitcher is not available any more. But you can get all similar features from WidsMob Panorama. The program can help users stitch JPG and RAW automatically and smartly.
https://www.widsmob.com/panorama
Thanks for the tip–will check it out.
Hi can you recommend a way I can burn photo’s after adding them to a timeline? I would like to put them on a dvd-r and watch them on a TV from a dvd player. Many thanks.
I’m not sure what kind of timeline you’re adding them to, but you’ll want to have access to them directly on your hard drive, so you might need to download them first. Many of the DVD-burning apps have an option to burn a photo DVD, which creates a multimedia version that you should be able to play on your DVD player. But to confirm compatibility with your DVD player you’ll need to check with the specific app. If you don’t want to mess with the DVD burning apps yourself, some of the online photo services have photo DVD products where you upload the photos and they’ll take care of the rest and mail you the finished multimedia DVD. I haven’t used any of the online services specifically for this, but somewhere like Shutterfly would be a good place to start.
Hi! I’m desperately searching for professional 360 degree video software. Now that Kolor is dead do you have any suggestions?
Sorry, I don’t. I stick mainly to stills when doing 360, and if I do use video it’s quite basic. Sorry I can’t be of more help.
Check the Kuula VR360° website for info. The old Panorama Factory I still use for standard pano’s does 360° stitching and is still available online.
Good range of software here David – thanks for the info. I am still using John Strait’s Panorama Factory (PF 5.3 M32), previously with my Sony F828 and now with the RX10. Outdated software yes, but I still find it does an excellent job of stitching my (mostly) hand-held pano’s. The software hasnt been updated for something like a decade now which is a pity, but I do find it very intuitive, easy to use and it generally makes a good job of amorphous surfaces like cloud, sky and water, with manual mode for problematic image matching. Down the line I’ll probably look at 64bit PTGUI or Lightroom when I next upgrade my PC, and the RX10 has good built in panos as well.
Hi can you recommend me a free one in your post that can also handle adjusting contrast in photos? I would like to find the abilities of photoshop for only stitching and contrast editing only but not purchase light room or the full blown photoshop. Thank you!
The one that comes immediately to mind is Gimp with one of the various panorama stitching plugins such as this one or this one (I haven’t used either of them, so I’m not sure which works better).
Great article overall though perhaps you didn’t know but PTGUI is using the same engine as Hugin (i.e. PanoramaTools) and also i don’t know when did you wrote article but Hugin have masks now and probably the most control you could possibly get with doing the job by hand, which is a feature in Hugin.
I really recommend you try, trust me it will be worth your time.
https://hugin.sourceforge.io/tutorials/index.shtml on that page you find a bit of Hugin’s capabilities.
Sorry about the rambling it just i really don’t like it when people disregard programs just because they are free.
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll give it another look–it’s been quite some time since I used it.
Kolor (Autopano) is out of business.
Thanks for the heads up. Have updated above.
Thanks so much for this overview. I’m sending the link to my pano-buddy, so we can discuss. I have been doing flat-field 180 degree panos, primarily, usually using about 40 tiles, in 3-4 vertical rows. I use the manual Nodal Ninja pano head and am very happy with it. Just wanted to share my experience and perhaps pose a question to everyone: I have primarily been using PhotoShop’s Photomerge and PTGui. I actually find PhotoShop does a better job, basically, but of course it doesn’t have much flexibility at all. My big problem (and it IS a deal-killer) with PTGui is that it massacres water (lakes, etc.) in terms of stitching, and also can’t handle time-exposure tiles at all well (again, especially when I’m trying to blur running water). Basically, it’s water-repellent! I was thinking of trying Autopano Gig but before I plunk the money down, I wondered if you (or any of your readers) could comment on the stitching engine’s strengths and weaknesses, as compared to PTGui and PhotoShop. Any thoughts?
Yes, water can be an issue, for sure. I tend to use Lightroom’s or Photoshop’s pano stitching for simple, straightforward jobs, but PTGUI is so much more powerful. I particularly like its masking and alignment point customization tools. The masking comes in particularly handy when there are moving objects in the frame (eg. people or cars), and being able to specify the alignment points manually–or at least, tweak them–comes in very handy when it wasn’t shot with a pano head/tripod. It’s been a while since I used Autopano Gig, so I’ll have to refresh my memory and take a look at the latest version.
Hi,
Some really interesting reviews – they will save me a stack of time trying (and finding!!) different stitching programs. My application for stitching is sourced from video, and I’m going to experience the problems mentioned by Christopher : having to deal with different angles, distances, and to add to the mix, zoom levels. One of my problems will be I have a wide shot showing the entire scene and then zoom to the detail (and pan over the detail). So I’d like a result image set to the pixel size of the ‘zoomed in’ area, but interpolates the crap out of the ‘zoomed out’ area to fill in the less important context areas… a bit like the way ICE can do autocomplete except using the real image (in interpolated quality) rather than what microsoft thinks is there.
Could you add a review of the “Zoner” application Christoper talks about? It sounds as though it might be able to do what I want (even if I have to extract video stills to do it).
Will see what I can do!
Hi. Is it OK if I link to this article in my blog on Panoramas?
By all means.
Until recently, I had a Nokia Lumia 1020, a smartphone with a Ziess lens that produced 38mp images. I’m curious, since I’m on a budget, what differences there would be if I “downgraded” to a 24mp DSLR or mirrorless. They are smaller files, which means for the same size panorama I would need to take and stitch more files, but hypothetically a newer mirrorless should get better quality images. So basically my question is, at what point does it become unrealistic to stitch together multiple tiles? I’ve done 3-5 image panoramas with that smartphone camera and got pretty good results using Zoner Photostudio, but seems like no matter which software, each stitch eliminates a small amount of each photo and the resulting panorama. I’ve managed to stitch together a collection of nearly 100 images (macro shots of a moth wing), but it was messy. I tried using ICE to do multi-row stitching and it was terrible, probably because I took the photos by hand without much control over angles and distances, but Zoner managed to stitch the 3-5 enormous rows into a single, 5ftx5ft collection that I could then paste sections of undistorted images over an ugly stitches.
There is much more to life than MP. Your phone may be 38MP, but the sensor is about the size of your baby fingernail. If you move to a DSLR you will gain, not lose. There’s too much to this to cover in a single comment, but if you search online you’ll find lots. As far as stitching a given scene, this varies depending on the focal length of your lens and the sensor size of your camera combining to give you a specific field of view. The lens on your phone gives you a (full-frame equivalent) focal length of about 26mm. If you use a wider or longer lens on your DSLR you will have a different field of view and may need more or fewer images to cover the same area.
What about IOS apps?
Fair question. Because iPhones have the built-in real-time panorama function I use that if I want to shoot a quick panorama on the iPhone. But when I need much better quality and higher resolution I always use photos shot with a larger camera like a DSLR or mirrorless. So I haven’t investigated iOS apps that stitch individual photos. A quick search shows that they definitely exist, and I’ll try to test some of them out, but not sure when that will be.
I’ve tried as many as I can find and none do I better job than using the pano feature in phone or in a camera. There was a fantastic app called AutoStitch which used the AutoPano engine and it was excellent. Imported a dozen plus pics from my dslr on to the Ipad and it would just stitch them perfectly. This is not the app currently called autostitch, in fact google bought the original app and incorporated it into google photos, but they don’t allow a user to make a pano. It just occasionally presents one from uploaded photos. Nothing comes close to that on the app front now.
Hello,
Do any of these applications include injection Facebook 360 Metadata and file conversion options for the FB standard of 2:1 aspect ratio, with maximum file dimensions of 6000 x 3000 pixels?
Thanks
The 2:1 is standard equirectangular for any 360° video. It’s a standard feature of many of them–I use PTGUI for it. Pixel dimension resizing can be set in output. Off the top of my head I can’t think of any that inject the metadata into still panoramas by default, but I also have looked into this specific issue.
Hi, great overview – there is still Microsoft ICE out there for free – also a very good option, Windows only
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/image-composite-editor/
Thanks for the tip. I’d forgotten about that one–will add.