Stitching Software 2012

Some 1.5 years back I visited last time this topic. What are the current stitching software products in the market ?

There is not much movement in terms of new players (rather some disappearing), but the leading (2) existing companies keep their software updated and it is fantastic to see how much they still can improve (at least that ones I use).

From my point of view the important ones remain in 2012:

• PTGUI (curr. Version 9.1.2)
• Autopano by Kolor (curr. Version 2.6)
• Hugin (active opensource project, stable version 2011.4.0 from December 2011)
• Microsoft ICE (curr. Version 1.4.4 May 2011)
  I am not sure about their strategy, the tool is free as part of their research but the proprietary display software like HDView and Photosynth is based on Silverlight which is shelved by Microsoft for further development)

Others:

• Photoshop Panorama Merge Feature
• Panorama Factory (Jan 2011, ?)
• Easypano (still selling at a unreasonable high price, no further comment)
• Realviz (acquired by Autodesk, also expensive)
• iSeemMedia (?)
• Panavue (?)
• Some OEM software bundled with cameras
• A list of panoramic software apps for iPhone and Android
  (Personally I dont believe in phones making serious panoramic images)

Sideline: Seems, since the history of patent wars (creation of fisheye based panoramas) around IPIX (defunc since 2006) is closed, even the patent is owned by Sony now.

My recommendation: Stick to Hugin and ICE if you want to use something for free, otherwise PTGui and Autopano are great products at a reasonable price, up to you to decide which one you prefer, both offer trial versions.

Performance Observations Stitching Applications

It does not make much sense to qualify stitching applications by their speed. !! But for the fun of it I compared the render time for 1 project in Autopano Pro and PTGui (both in Windows XP and Ubuntu  10.04 on the same hardware, Core 2 Duo 8300 @ 2,4Ghz).

Source Images:
12 images (Panasonic MDC FZ28, F5, 1/800s, 9.8mm)

Autopano Pro in Ubuntu (native): 3'34
Autopano Pro in Windows (native): 5'09

PTGUI in Ubuntu (Wine): 2'25
PTGUI in Windows (native): 3'05

Result file: ~14.5 MB JPG , ~15659 x 3925

Remarks:

• All default settings used.
• I also tested a virtual Windows XP in Virtualbox for Ubuntu, but the timing were much longer (using only 1 virtual CPU).
• The test above are in no way a re objective reference or whatsoever. It wont give you any advice what product is better based on timings.Is merely showing you you get more performance with Linux ! Most important is stitching quality and ease of use !
• When using batch stitching it does not matter if it takes 10 or 12 minutes (or any other time) because you can leave it running over night(s).
• For serious large gigapixel projects you need to operate in different scales. To stitch 100's of images in one project you need lots of memory and CPU horsepower if you want to render in reasonable amount of time.