A while back we were discussing panorama stitching software. At the time, I couldn't find anything better than the PhotoStitch application that ships with the Canon cameras.

I've just been messing with Panorama Factory and it's the business, the real deal.

Its Killer Feature for me is the ability to automatically correct for the brightness falloff at the edge of pictures, something that always plagued my panoramas in the past, manifesting itself as dark stripes down my finished image.

At sixty bucks it's a bit steeper than I expected to pay, so I'm waffling on whether or not I really will purchase it. I don't make all that many panorama pictures, but when I do, I really like being able to make ones that don't have the stripes.

I eventually had a play with the Videorbits thing I mentioned last time this came up, and it turns out that while it will do more-or-less what it says on the tin, it's extremely not ready for prime-time. Its hunting for overlap is aimed at video, and so only works if the overlap is almost total (like, 95% or more). If your overlap is less than that, you have to give it a hint as to where to start hunting. These "hints" are conveyed by passing a series of eight numbers on the command-line -- numbers which apparently form some kind of transformation matrix, but aren't documented.

Plus, it makes no attempt to correct brightness, and although my new Olympus camera has an exposure lock mode for panoramas, that panorama was taken with Hugo's Canon, which doesn't (or at least I couldn't find one).

Peter

That's a neat stitched image there. Try out the demo-download of Panorama Factory on those pictures and see what kind of results you get.

Does it matter if the program supports a particular camera? Seems the Photostich worked best with the camera it came with because it knew the distortion the lens would cause and could correct for it.

You wouldn't believe the list of cameras included with Panorama Factory. Your camera is probably in its list.

In any case, it offers fine-tuning of barrel distortion and focal length. If you happen to know your camera's focal length then you can simply plug that in. For instance, mine is 35mm unzoomed, and 70mm fully zoomed (it's a 2x zoom lens).

Don't know about the other models they've got but Canon IXUS cameras should support panorama mode and lock the exposure settings. At least it does on my 300 and 500.

ALE is much closer to prime time than VideoOrbits, and can deal with much less overlap, without user intervention. The only problem is the option select is a bit complex.