Coolest. Program. Ever.
Fri Jul 08, 2005 15:05 (UTC -5)After having stitched together crude panoramas by hand, I’ve long lusted after good panorama software. I had looked at one package that seemed to be pretty good, except that it was $60. So I put my dream of making cool panoramic images aside… until today.
Earlier today Scotto posted a panorama he created with a program called autostitch. Unlike other programs, this creates panoramas not only with one dimension (horizontal) but allows for a vertical dimension for extra depth. If that doesn’t make sense, have a look at this gallery of images.
What’s more, it automatically decides the placement of your images without any input from the user. I tried it with a November 2004 panorama of my room and it turned out a fairly good result, except in one spot where it seemed to mess up (perhaps because I didn’t take enough pictures). So an hour and a half ago (from typing this) I adjusted the settings to make a full-size, high-quality version of the same panorama. It’s still working on it.
Now it’s done. It’s so similar that it’s not worth posting. Well, it’s kind of boring anyway.
Now I just took a bunch of pictures outside, and it totally messed it up. So I’m trying it again with fewer images, and we’ll have to see how it turns out.
Hmm… this looks pretty good.
That’s my house in the middle. This view is from a public patch of land across the street from my house. In the exact spot where I stood was once a tree (before it was destroyed in Hurricane Frances last year).
You’ve probably seen these, but hey. It’s those pavement drawings that appear lifelike when viewed from the correct angle. Very cool.
3 comments
#1 by Eric Moritz: Fri Jul 08, 2005 16:12 (UTC -5)
You’re right, that is an awesome program. I just did a simple test outside my house and it worked fine. It even works in Linux with the aid of Wine.
#2 by Scottobear: Sat Jul 09, 2005 14:04 (UTC -5)
I think my biggest trouble hit when light sources changed too much… a cloud passe din forn to the sun, and I lost about 3 picutres for my bus stop image.
#3 by Jordon: Sat Jul 09, 2005 15:09 (UTC -5)
Yeah, that’s tricky. In the 360-degree version of the panorama I posted, differences in color are especially evident. Even in the image above, you can see dark (discolored) patches in the sky. I remembered to set the exposure time and f-stop the same for every shot, but I neglected to change the color balance/light thingy from Auto.