FYI: PTGui is now available for a MAC

[paul stimac]

I just tried PTGui for my MAC. This was previously a window's only program. This current version is VERY easy to use and it produces VERY nice results. It does't cost a lot either.

I've stitched some large images (500+mb) and it hasn't crashed yet. It's not super fast at this size but it eventually gets it done.

You can download a trial here:
http://www.ptgui.com/

If you don't know what PTgui is, it's software used to stitch several lower resolution image files into a larger higher resolution image - mostly used to create panoramas, but can be used to produce high resolution rectangular and/or square formats with lower resolution files (from digital cameras or scanned images). This allows you to fake LF quality with smaller formats.

[QT Luong]

How much manual labor time was required to create one composite, and did you find them to be absolutely seamless ?

[paul stimac]

This is how it goes:

Click button 1 - load images
wait
Click button 2 - align images
wait
Click button 3 - create panorama
wait
That's it.

It provides advanced adjustments but so far I haven't had a need for them.

So far blends have been perfect, I couldn't find any seams at all. However, you can always have it create masked photoshop layers and do the blending yourself. It will even create a blended layer along with the masked layers if you want.

[Roger Hein]

I've been using PTGui for the past 3 weeks. I've given it some of my old panos that were known to be difficult to stitch and it's not faulted once. The accuracy of the stitching has been spot on - especially with things like over head wires or with repeating patterns like the side of a building. It even handled a pano I shot handheld. Also easy to navigate into any 'advanced' function or menu. Good output options too - jpeg, tiff, layered PS file, etc. It's also faster at loading, aligning, auto control point placement and blending than PTMac. The other benefit is that it's a 'universal' binary - all in all a bang up app for a very cheap price.

[JohnnyV]

How much manual labor time was required to create one composite, and did you find them to be absolutely seamless ?

I've tested all Mac pano apps and PTGui is by far the best.

After finding the NPP (No Parallax Point - formally Entrance Pupil ) of my 17-40mm f4L using Nodal Ninja 3 pano head - http://nodalninja.com/ - PTGui did a perfectly seamless job. Time to stitch/assemble is really based on the speed of your Mac and how many images are being stitched. Very little manual input is needed....deleting auto generated control points that are too far off is one manual operation that is needed.

There is a data base listing the Entrance Pupil (No Parallax Point) of many lenses to get you started:

http://wiki.panotools.org/Entrance_Pupil_Database

Best,

John