Create Your Own Amazing Panorama

Since the invention of photography, people wanted to take as many photos as they could, and that is because photos are a nice way to remember the places you’ve visited or people you’ve met and maybe you will never meet again. But soon after, another technology appeared, namely image stitching, which allows you to combine multiple photographic images with overlapping fields of view into a segmented panorama or high-resolution image.

This is perhaps the best way you can remember both the places and the people. But this kind of picture has its drawbacks, since it requires nearly exact overlaps between images and identical exposures to produce seamless results. The art of image stitching is somehow like mosaicking.

The Looks

Enter PTGui, a piece of software that will help you tweak your pictures so as to get the best results for your photo album. Once you open the application you will see that most of the interface is the main workspace, where most time is spent. But adjacent to that, you have a panorama editor that can surely be used to view the exact changes made to the panorama in real time. A good thing is that in the main window you also have access to the most important actions you can take, like control points, project options, and even some image adjustment tools.

PTGui can work with a huge amount of files, although doing that will surely need a lot of work, because a panorama is originally created by less than 10 picture files. But the more they are, the better the results. Bear in mind that if you want to use PTGui in full force, you will surely use most of its tabs and side windows, and will probably get confused at some point, even if each one has its usefulness.

The Works

As I said before, immediately after entering the program, you can use the project assistant. This allows you to add the photos that will be used at a later time. The number of photos is only limited by your imagination. Also in the assistant window you can set up some minor camera and lens parameters, to ensure the high quality of the photos. This is called image calibration and it’s usually the first step in creating an amazing picture.

Near the project assistant you can view the source images separately. Pictures can also be added here, if needed, and you can also sort, replace and correct them if you want to. If you toggle the advanced button, you will gain access to even more actions. For example, you now have access to more advanced lens settings, like lens type, focal lens, and even some minor or major lens adjustment tweaking.

When creating a beautiful panorama, you must also think about projection. PTGui offers by default a lot of projection styles that can be used as you want. You can also crop images and set some individual picture parameters if necessary. Setting the control points for the pictures will surely save you a lot of time in recreating and reconfiguring the environment you have in mind. After doing these adjustments, you must also think about optimizations, which you can tweak even further from the same panel.

From the Finder bar you can access the more advanced and important features. The control points are vital for your panorama, so you must ensure that all the pictures have them. Control points can also be managed and adjusted in the control point editor. And remember, each thing that you do and every alteration you make to your project can be viewed in real time in the Panorama Editor.

Before pressing the create panorama button you must make sure that the picture is the one that you want. In order to do just that, a preview is available. If the picture is the right one, you can surely proceed. After waiting a little, depending on the dimensions of the panorama, you will finally have the result of your hard work.

I must also refer to the main options of PTGui, which are various and allow you to customize every bit of the program. You can adjust some general settings, some EXIF settings, and also configure the control point editor, generator, and the panorama editor as well.

The Good

PTGui provides you with a quick and professional way to create beautiful, breathtaking panoramas. It has many complex options available right from the start, and it is good even for the most passionate photographer. It can also be used for fun, with your family, in order to create some fun panoramas using pictures from your vacation. Everything depends on what you want to do with it.

The Bad

If you don’t have some minor photographic knowledge you will surely be overwhelmed by the complexity of the program. But the major setback would be the price, $121, which will surely make most users think twice before ordering it.

The Truth

Creating a panorama requires a lot of time and work, but most of all it requires a lot of passion. If you have that passion, PTGui will help you make your dream panorama come to life, provided you have some pictures to use. You can improve quality and get rid of those annoying artifacts, in order to create marvelous, intense and breathtaking panoramas. Grab the trial and see if you can astonish your friends with your work.