I recall there being a lot of cool panoramic picture stitchers in the past, especially one that came with some old volume of Digital Photography for Dummies. But I can't find this software any more. Does anyone know what that genre of software is actually called?
Also, does Quicktime still have a circular, google-walkaboutesque, feature? And what software can generate those things.
Panorama Tools is free and of good quality. It has a nice GUI called Hugin.
If you are on Mac try PanoEdit.
It boasts features such as:
For my money, there is no doubt that Autostitch yields the best results out there. The base version is free for down load at the developers website.
http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html
The short write up in Wikipedia says "The software uses the SIFT- and the RANSAC-Algorithm. This program differs from others such as photostitch in that it automatically stitches together even unaligned or zoomed photographs seamlessly without user input, whereas others often require the user to highlight matching areas for the photographs to merge properly. The only requirement is that all photographs be taken from a single point."
If the currently offered demo is the same as I downloaded sometime ago, it is fully functional, but very short on documentation of the obscure parameters. The best way to try it is to chuck a shoebox of photos at it and go form there.
The developers web site contains plenty of examples of how the program works through the process.
It has been licensed to some commercial vendors who have wrapped in a better interface, and added features.
I'm not sure about the actual name, but you can find answers on this question : How to make a cyclorama
I think panoramic photo/image stitching pretty much covers it.
MS labs do a free one, pretty good as it goes:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/
We produce professional panos and have tested every kind of beast existing.
Our choice is PTGui for stitching, smartblend plugin gives the better results.
