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Prints are trimmed and glued together. Digital photographs are «stitched», therefore a stitching program is needed. There are several free and commercial products available and each one works differently. There is no way around familiarising yourself with one or several of such programs. I cannot give a generalised procedure here. Stitched cylindrical or spherical panoramas can either be directly exported to an Apple QuickTime movie from the stitcher or can be converted into one using an additional program.

Hot spots that work like weblinks can be defined in a QTVR panorama. With the use of hot spots, complete virtual tours can be assembled if several QTVR panoramas are linked together appropriately.


— Panoramas – Combine

Combining Prints are trimmed and glued together. Digital photographs are «stitched», therefore a stitching program is needed. There are several free and commercial products available and each one works differently. There is no way around familiarising yourself with one or several of such programs. I cannot give a generalised procedure here. Stitched cylindrical or spherical panoramas can either be directly exported to an Apple QuickTime movie from the stitcher or can be converted into one using an additional program. HotSpots Hot spots that work like weblinks can be defined in a QTVR panorama. With the use of hot spots, complete virtual tours can be assembled if several QTVR panoramas are linked together appropriately. Vignetting The amount of light through a lens is not uniformly distributed over the whole surface. The light is more attenuated towards the edges than at the centre and depends on the quality of the lens. This decrease of light towards the edges is called vignetting. Own measurements on two zoom lenses for a DSLR camera showed a difference from the centre to the corners of 3 dB — which means that only half of the light intensity at the centre appears at the corners. The stitching program ought to be able to compensate for vignetting. Chromatic Aberation Wrong colours and artefacts created by the lens. They appear at extreme bright to dark transitions. The flaw is more pronounced towards the edges. The picture below shows a particularly ugly example, which is very difficult to correct. The problems are less severe if the aperture is smaller, i.e. the diaphragm more closed. Try to bring extreme contrast transitions towards the centre of the lens and use the highest f-stop possible. Stitcher Programs I played around more or less vigorously with the Windows programs listed below. The list is by no means conclusive, there are more programs than those listed. PhotoStitch V.3.1 von Canon. This small but nice program came with the purchase of a Canon digital camera. Simply made and producing fast and good results. It does only cylindrical panoramas — horizontal and vertical ones and it can also stitch pictures horizontally and vertically at the same time. The focal length of the lens can be defined. The colour adjustment at the seams is not always spot on but quite often satisfactory. PhotoStitch can export directly to QuickTime provided QuickTime 4 or 5 is installed on the computer. This option does not work anymore with a better QuickTime version installed. Hugin / PanoTools http://hugin.souerceforge.net/. Hugin is a Windows GUI for the legendary PanoTools which are controlled via the DOS or Command console, which is not very current anymore. The package is free and very conclusive. Stitching is semi-automatic or fully automatic. Hugin can save the finished panorama in eight different projections. Direct export to QTVR is not supported. REALVIZ Stitcher (Express) http://www.realviz.com/. REALVIZ Stitcher is a professional software and available in three different versions: Express (€ 99, US$ 119), Pro (€ 299, US$ 349) and Unlimited (€ 499, US$ 580). The pictures can be stitched automatically or manually. The seams can be manually colour adjusted if the result of the automatic is not considered good enough. Cylindrical, spherical and flat panoramas are supported and export to QTVR is inclusive. The stitching process is very time consuming. PanoramaStudioV. 1.6.0 http://www.tshsoft.de. The full version costs € 34.95 and is well worth the money. Cylindrical and spherical panoramas are supported, so is export to QTVR including hot spots. Automatic stitching and colour correction at the seams is quite good. Even stitching huge panoramas is fast. PTGui & PTGui ProV. 7.8 http://www.ptgui.com/. The personal license comes for $ 130.00, the Pro version for $ 244.00 and the program is worth every dollar spent for it. Cylindrical and spherical panoramas are stitched almost automatically, the Pro version supports multiple exposures (bracketted exposures) and assembles HDRI panoramas. My wildest project so far had 18 exposures per shot, totalling at 126 photos. In a good hour, the spherical HDRI panorama larger than 8000 x 4000 pixel was finished — 30 GB hard disk space was used for the almost 1000 temporary files. The results are in professional quality with a minimal amount of time spent in front of the computer. QTVR Converter To be able to display QTVR (QuickTimeVirtualReality) movies, QTVR von Apple must be installed or a plugin for the browser available. If the stitching program used does not export to QTVR, there are free programs that can convert panoramas into QTVR. There are several and a small selection follows below. QTVR displays a cubical panorama like a spherical one. The six faces of a cube are transformed in such a way that you believe being in the centre of a sphere, not a cube. PanoCube http://www.panoshow.com/panocube.htm. PanoCube accepts spherical panoramas, creates the six sides of a cube on the fly and saves the QTVR panorama. The program has a footprint of about 20 KB on the hard disk. Compression, initial window size, etc. are defined in a configuration text file. The stitched spherical panorama can be dropped on the shortcut on the desktop and the finished movie appears in the folder where the original panorama can be found. Pano2QTVR http://www.pano2qtvr.com. Pano2QTVR converts pherical and cylindrical panoramas fast and clean into QTVR movies. Spherical panoramas are disassembled into the six sides of a cube, cylindrical into four and from this, the QTVR movie is created. Pano2QTVR supports hot spots as well. The Pro version has many more options and can be purchased for € 36. Little Helper: To redefine the initial window size of a finished QTVR movie, the free program MovTweak can be used. It reads the window size, proposes another one — which can be changed — and writes the new values back into the original movie. The program runs without installation from any folder and is 40 KB small.

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© 2005 - 2008 by Hans-Rudolf Wernli.

Vignetting
The amount of light through a lens is not uniformly distributed over the whole surface. The light is more attenuated towards the edges than at the centre and depends on the quality of the lens. This decrease of light towards the edges is called vignetting. Own measurements on two zoom lenses for a DSLR camera showed a difference from the centre to the corners of 3 dB — which means that only half of the light intensity at the centre appears at the corners. The stitching program ought to be able to compensate for vignetting.

Chromatic Aberation
Wrong colours and artefacts created by the lens. They appear at extreme bright to dark transitions. The flaw is more pronounced towards the edges. The picture below shows a particularly ugly example, which is very difficult to correct.

The problems are less severe if the aperture is smaller, i.e. the diaphragm more closed. Try to bring extreme contrast transitions towards the centre of the lens and use the highest f-stop possible.

I played around more or less vigorously with the Windows programs listed below. The list is by no means conclusive, there are more programs than those listed.

PhotoStitch V.3.1 von Canon.: This small but nice program came with the purchase of a Canon digital camera. Simply made and producing fast and good results. It does only cylindrical panoramas — horizontal and vertical ones and it can also stitch pictures horizontally and vertically at the same time. The focal length of the lens can be defined. The colour adjustment at the seams is not always spot on but quite often satisfactory. PhotoStitch can export directly to QuickTime provided QuickTime 4 or 5 is installed on the computer. This option does not work anymore with a better QuickTime version installed.
Hugin / PanoTools http://hugin.souerceforge.net/.: Hugin is a Windows GUI for the legendary PanoTools which are controlled via the DOS or Command console, which is not very current anymore. The package is free and very conclusive. Stitching is semi-automatic or fully automatic. Hugin can save the finished panorama in eight different projections. Direct export to QTVR is not supported.
REALVIZ Stitcher (Express) http://www.realviz.com/.: REALVIZ Stitcher is a professional software and available in three different versions: Express (€ 99, US$ 119), Pro (€ 299, US$ 349) and Unlimited (€ 499, US$ 580). The pictures can be stitched automatically or manually. The seams can be manually colour adjusted if the result of the automatic is not considered good enough. Cylindrical, spherical and flat panoramas are supported and export to QTVR is inclusive. The stitching process is very time consuming.
PanoramaStudioV. 1.6.0 http://www.tshsoft.de.: The full version costs € 34.95 and is well worth the money. Cylindrical and spherical panoramas are supported, so is export to QTVR including hot spots. Automatic stitching and colour correction at the seams is quite good. Even stitching huge panoramas is fast.
PTGui & PTGui ProV. 7.8 http://www.ptgui.com/.: The personal license comes for $ 130.00, the Pro version for $ 244.00 and the program is worth every dollar spent for it. Cylindrical and spherical panoramas are stitched almost automatically, the Pro version supports multiple exposures (bracketted exposures) and assembles HDRI panoramas. My wildest project so far had 18 exposures per shot, totalling at 126 photos. In a good hour, the spherical HDRI panorama larger than 8000 x 4000 pixel was finished — 30 GB hard disk space was used for the almost 1000 temporary files. The results are in professional quality with a minimal amount of time spent in front of the computer.

To be able to display QTVR (QuickTimeVirtualReality) movies, QTVR von Apple must be installed or a plugin for the browser available. If the stitching program used does not export to QTVR, there are free programs that can convert panoramas into QTVR. There are several and a small selection follows below. QTVR displays a cubical panorama like a spherical one. The six faces of a cube are transformed in such a way that you believe being in the centre of a sphere, not a cube.

PanoCube http://www.panoshow.com/panocube.htm.: PanoCube accepts spherical panoramas, creates the six sides of a cube on the fly and saves the QTVR panorama. The program has a footprint of about 20 KB on the hard disk. Compression, initial window size, etc. are defined in a configuration text file. The stitched spherical panorama can be dropped on the shortcut on the desktop and the finished movie appears in the folder where the original panorama can be found.
Pano2QTVR http://www.pano2qtvr.com.: Pano2QTVR converts pherical and cylindrical panoramas fast and clean into QTVR movies. Spherical panoramas are disassembled into the six sides of a cube, cylindrical into four and from this, the QTVR movie is created. Pano2QTVR supports hot spots as well. The Pro version has many more options and can be purchased for € 36.

Little Helper: To redefine the initial window size of a finished QTVR movie, the free program MovTweak can be used. It reads the window size, proposes another one — which can be changed — and writes the new values back into the original movie. The program runs without installation from any folder and is 40 KB small.