Panoweaver
Used by real estate agents, virtual tour companies, and web designers who have a busy workflow, Panoweaver takes around 3 minutes to stitch 2 hemispherical fisheye images into a 360-degree spherical panorama. The vendor has related products, including Tourweaver to link the images from Panoweaver together to create virtual tours, and Easypano Studio which bundles the two packages together.
Panoweaver was originally limited to stitching fisheye images, dealing with three different types: drum images (120 x 180 degrees), full frame (rectangular) images and full circular images. Typical equipment needed for this approach is a good quality pano head on a tripod and a DSLR equipped with a fisheye lens such as the Sigma 8mm.
The product can now handle normal photos and wide-angle photos as well as those taken with a fisheye lens. It supports single or multiple rows of images, creates cylindrical and spherical panoramas and can stitch HDR panoramic images.
Comment
All the Easypano packages are fairly easy to use (as the brand name suggests), but they are are priced at a professional level and demand the use of proper equipment to take the original images. You have little leeway for error when you are working with only two images and need to make them match perfectly to create a sphere.
Great results can be achieved using three full circular images. The drum and full frame stitching require several more shots and take longer to stitch (the vendor's site explains these different types with examples). Output is to full screen Flash, QuickTime and Java players for immersive viewing.
It is worth noting that the vendor now has a new virtual tour program in addition to Tourweaver. It is called Panowalker and unlike Tourweaver it creates realistic walkthrough effects.
Tech info
- OS: Window 98ME onward; Mac OS X
- Price level: (standard) $100; (professional) $500; (batch) $1000 (all approx)
Easypano
Founded in November 2001, in Shanghai, China, Easypano is one of the world's leading developers and marketers of virtual tour software. It has users in nearly every industry and has sold its software to over 10,000 customers from 50 countries.
From the same vendor:
- Panowalker
- Tourweaver
©trl