Herb, FWIW, I've only used Panorama Maker on a few panos, (all tripod mounted and levelled with lenses from around 50mm up to 300mm) but the ease of obtaining great results makes it a winner in my book. My *istD pano's have been mistaken for larger format images & no one has been able to pick out where the stitching was done.
Kenneth Waller -----Original Message----- From: Herb Chong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Arcsoft Panorama Maker i got around to installing the copy (Panorama Maker 2000) that came bundled with my Nikon Coolpix 5000 and tried stitching a few images together with it and then comparing with the program i use most of the time, iSeemedia Photovista Panorama 3.0. my conclusion is that Photovista is still the better program, but not by much. the areas where Panorama Maker are weaker are in tuning for the lens barrel/pincushion distortion and focal length. in terms of blending, it does about as well as Photovista, which means it is one of the best. in terms of automatic alignment, i don't think is is quite as good as Photovista, but it is very close. it is able to cope reasonably well with foliage-only matches and slight tilting caused by hand holding the series of images. Photovista does better. Panorama Maker has an easier to use interface and supports direct output of QTVR files. with Photovista, you have to use a 3rd party program to create QTVR files, and the user interface is strange, to say the least. i have played with probably about a dozen programs for stitching panoramas including VRToolbox Panoworx, Ulead Cool360, PanaVue ImageAssembler, Realviz Stitcher Express, and more that i can't remember. the two i use are Photovista and Stitcher Express. i beleive that Panorama Tools is the best tool out there, and it's free too, but without a 3rd party GUI that you pay for, it's not easy to use. given that, i would rather work with a for pay tool that comes in one piece. both Stitcher Express and Photovista require somewhere between 20 to 50% overlap between successive images. i aim for the full 50%. Panorama Tools allows nearly 0% overlap with a successful stitch, but i don't use it. Photovista is best for scenes where there are no definite patterns and straight lines that need to be kept straight as it's long and tedious to tune the lens to get everything right. close enough works well with Photovista and produces results that look correct even under close inspection. Stitcher Express is needed when there are strong patterns or lines that have to be matched and geometrically aligned correctly. if there aren't any, Stitcher Express usually fails to align the images and that means you can't create the panorama since manual alignment seldom works. Panorama Maker seems to be in-between with respect to ability to handle or require patterns and lines. if you haven't got anything, it's a good choice. if you have specific needs, you probably want to look at Photovista, Stitcher Express, and Panorama Tools and decide which one, or several might be needed to improve your stitched panoramas. Herb.... ________________________________________ PeoplePC Online A better way to Internet http://www.peoplepc.com
