Panorama |
Create beautiful high-resolution panoramas.
The FREE Panorama for iOS is available on the App Store.
System Requirements:Mac OS X 10.6 or greater.
Its free iOS companion, also named Panorama, is available in the App Store.
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All photo apps byLimit Point LLC:
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Annotatings (Mac)
PhotosCollage (Mac)
Panorama (Mac)
Panorama (iOS)
PhotosBlender (Mac)
Photo Blender (iOS)
PhotoReflector (Mac)
Photo Reflect (iOS)
PhotoTiles (Mac)
TransformPicture (Mac)
ImageConvert (Mac)
PDFDek (Mac)
DropImageURL (Mac)
TilePhotos (Mac)
Panorama is a professional high quality image stitcher for iOS and Mac.
Panorama has perfected an image matching technique called homography, whose primary advantage over other apps of this type is that it does not warp horizontal edges in the panorama, making it ideal for photographing architectural scenes.
All users are encouraged to click the various info buttons in the app, in particular the main info button right in the camera view, to take full advantage of all features of the app.
Create stunning high resolution panoramas on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. The best panorama app for iPhone, iPad and iPod devices!
Use the iOS Panorama app to take photos for the Panorama Mac app. Its camera guide can help you take photos with proper image alignment for best results.
To move your photos from your iOS device to the Mac for stitching: from within Panorama Gallery view, choose the option to save your original photos to the Photos Camera Roll on your device for syncing with iPhoto on your Mac. The simply drag your iPhoto photos into Panorama Mac.
Recent enhancements:
• Introduces 3 exposure matching methods
• Enhanced blending via more precise interpolation
• More accurate photo matching reduces ghosting
• Higher quality stitching with greater megapixels
• Improved cropping produces fuller results
• More options, such as option to turn off cropping
• Adjustable blend region
• Extended merge quality for faster devices (i.e. higher res.)
• Numerous improvements to the interface
• Extended "tips" as built-in suggestions on usage
Basic features of Panorama iOS and guides for performing special tasks that may not be obvious capabilities are covered.
• 1 - iOS Highlights
• 2 - Simple Panoramas
• 3 - Export Original Photos
• 4 - Undo & Redo
• 5 - Vertical Panoramas
• 6 - 2D Panoramas
• 7 - Blending Montages
• 8 - High Res Panoramas
• 9 - Options & Settings
iOS Highlights (Table of Contents)
• Use your iOS device camera to produce beautiful panoramic photos. Or, in the Build pane, stitch custom panoramas or creatively blend photos to create image montages from your Photos Camera Roll.
• Save all your panoramas in one place in the Gallery, either as merged photos, or as a film roll of "original" photos. Resume, Merge, View and Export original images and panoramas here too.
• Location data is added to your panoramas so you remember exactly where you shot them. See the location on a map in the Gallery.
• Build horizontal or vertical panoramas. Save vertical panoramas to your Photos Camera Roll and then you can merge them using Panorama's "Build" function to create 2D panoramas.
Simple Panoramas (Table of Contents)
When Panorama is launched the initial view is the camera view. This is where you take your pictures for stitching or blending. Each time you take a picture a guide is displayed on the left side (or bottom, when in "locked orientation" mode for vertical panoramas) of the view to help you align the next picture:
Camera View, My Clock
As you take your photos, thumbnails of each are placed into the photo drawer. When the photo drawer is closed a handle to it is displayed. Click the handle to open the drawer. You can delete a photo from the drawer if you are not satisfied with it, and then retake it, i.e. you can undo a shoot. You can remove all photos in the photo drawer at once with the "Restart the Panorama" button in the camera settings pane.
After you take all your photos click the "SAVE" button in the lower right of the view. A merge of the photos will begin.
Alternatively, you can click the "film roll" button in the lower left of the view to save the photos in the drawer to the Gallery as a film roll. Then later you can merge or blend these saved photos in the Gallery. In other words you can defer the task of merging or blending.
If during the merge you decide to abort it, the photos will be saved to a "film roll" in the Gallery:
If you tap the panorama in the Gallery you get the options view:
Tap the "Merge" button and the saved photos will be merged (or blended, depending on your chosen settings, namely if "Merge Quality" in camera options is set to its lowest value.):
When the merge is done, it will be placed into the Gallery, as usual, replacing the film roll of photos:
Note that merged panoramas in the Gallery can also be undone, i.e. disassembled into a film roll of the original photos.
Tap the panorama again, and from the options view select "View" and the panorama will be placed into another view where you can scroll and view it up close:
Export Original Photos (Table of Contents)
From the Gallery you can export the photos you take in Panorama. Just tap any merged panorama and then tap "Export":
The following options are displayed. Tap "Export Original Images" to save the photos that make up the panorama into the Camera Roll of the Photos Camera Roll:
Alternatively, go to the Gallery, by taping the film roll button in the camera pane:
Now in the Gallery you can "undo" any merged panorama to see the original photos first. Tap the panorama to bring up options:
Tap the "Undo" button, and the panorama will be split into its original images, displayed as a film roll:
Tap the film roll, then in the options view tap the "Export" button, and the export pane is displayed:
Tap "Export Original Images" and they will be exported to the Camera Roll in your Photos Camera Roll:
You are now ready to sync with, say, iPhoto on your Mac. Then you can use Panorama Mac to stitch the photos!
Undo & Redo (Table of Contents)
If you have a merged panorama in the Gallery, you can "undo" it, i.e. separate it back into its original photos in a film roll in the Gallery.
This is useful if you want to preprocess the images in some way, or change the app's settings, such as "blend width," and the re-merge them with these changes.
Tap it to bring up options:
Tap "Undo" and the panorama is undone:
Tap the camera roll of originals to bring up options again:
Now tap "Merge" and the originals will be merged back into a panorama:
And here is the result!
Vertical Panoramas (Table of Contents)
To make a vertical panorama you need to select the option "Lock Orientation" in the Camera Options pane, accessed from the main, or camera,view.
When this option is selected the photo registration guide will appear at the bottom of the camera view to help you align your photos as you take them from the bottom to the top of the scene.
Here is an example of creating a vertical panorama using three images of a tree. Note that your photos will be rotated, and the resulting panorama will be on its side, as it will be merged as a horizontal panorama.
1st photo, the tree's bottom:
2nd photo, the tree's middle:
3rd photo, the tree's top:
Bottom, middle and top merged. Note it is on its side.
All you need to do is rotate it 90º, which can be performed in your favorite image editor:
2D Panoramas (Table of Contents)
This is a fun feature of Panorama! By combining vertical and horizontal stitching you can create mosaics, i.e. a stitched image of a 2D array of photos.
Please read the previous section Vertical Panoramas, so you familiar with the creation of vertical panoramas. Here we will illustrate how you can create a 2x2 panorama of photos.
First, using the camera we take two sets of photos for each of the columns.
The first set of photos is two photos taken vertically, with "Lock Orientation" selected in camera options, and merged into a vertical panorama. This is the left side column:
Then we do the same for the right side column, making sure that this column's photos overlap the photos of the left column by 30%, since that is the overlap Panorama expects.
Important: To facilitate good registration with the left column find a common feature in the top right corner of the first photo of the left column and make sure it appears in the same relative position of the top left corner of the first photo of the right column. (A future version will help via guides.)
Go to the Gallery and export these two columns to the Photos Camera Roll so that you can access them to merge together next.
Note that you can shoot the first 2 photos for the first column and save them to the Gallery as a film roll by clicking on the film roll button in the lower left corner of the camera view. The drawer will then be emptied, and you can then take the next 2 photos for the second column. Once both sets of photos have been saved to the Gallery as film rolls you can go to the Gallery and merge each of them, as previously described.
Now we use the Build pane of Panorama to merge the two columns together. So, in the Gallery pane click on the Build tab item at the bottom to open the Build pane. Since the panorama columns we made are "sideways" we turn on the option to rotate left the images when we import them:
Now click on the "Add Image" to go to the Photos Camera Roll, where you previously saved the left and right columns created above, and load them into the Build pane, choosing the left column first, and then the right column:
Now click the Merge button to join the left and right columns together:
After the merge the 2x2 2D panorama will appear in the Gallery:
Blending Montages (Table of Contents)
You can choose settings and options so that Panorama combines photos horizontally using gradient blending at the seams where they are joined, creating photo montages. You can also simply join photos together with no blending at all.
Photo montages can be created using any of the photos in your Photos Camera Roll.
Since Photo montages do not require the app to try and match images for registration to stitch them together, go to the Camera pane, click the Options button and select a Merge Quality of "Min." The Min mode does not try to compute a homography for warping images for stitching together, and the result is lower resolution.
Now...
1) To simply join photos together go to Settings in the Gallery pane and set "Use Translation" to OFF as shown:
Now go to the Blend pane of the Gallery, use the "Add Image" button to join photos selected from the Photos Camera Roll:
2) To blend photos together set "Use Translation" in the Settings pane to ON:
Now when you use the Blend pane to combine photos they will be blended together, over their right and left margins of about 30%, of a width determined specified by the "Blend Width" in the Options pane of the Camera pane.
Here is an example of blending over 100% of the margins:
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Here is an example of blending over 50% of the margins:
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Here is an example of blending over 25% of the margins:
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Here is an example of blending over 0% of the margins:
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Finally, remember this! You can always "undo" a panorama, blend or join in the Gallery, change options and settings, and then redo the merge in the Gallery.
High Res Panoramas (Table of Contents)
By default Panorama reduces the size of images using an option called "Megapixel Limit."
As you know, cameras are rated by the number of pixels in the images they generate, using a number called "megapixels". This is the number of millions of pixels in the image.
By default the option "Megapixel Limit" is ON, and this means that Panorama will adjust the size of the images being blended, joined or merged so that the final result size in megapixels does not exceed a built-in limit.
If you turn this option off, then this adjustment to the input images will not be performed, and consequently the highest resolution possible for the output will be achieved.
However, note that this will not only increase the amount of time required to perform the required processing, but may also lead to the app running out of memory.
Options & Settings (Table of Contents)
Camera Options
Merge Quality
These settings allow you to choose the speed of image matching by adjusting camera photo parameters that will affect the quality of the result. This is done by using lower resolution photos, and at the lowest value simply blending photos together.
Blend Width
This option controls how registered camera photos are blended together.
Decrease to reduce ghosting* in overlap, increase for more gradual transitions.
* Transparent double images in the areas of the panoramic photo where two adjacent pictures overlap.
Lock Orientation
Disable auto-rotation of the camera to take photos for a vertical panorama.
Otherwise you can take horizontal panoramas using landscape mode.
Lock Exposure
Locking exposure allows better blending sometimes, depending on lighting conditions. Turn it on when exposure change is moderate.
Photo Limit
Panorama, because of the homography stitching approach it uses, is best at stitching 2 and 3 images. Therefore the default limit on the number of photos to stitch is 3. When you try to stitch more than 3 images Panorama will stitch the in groups of 2 and 3 images, and then joing these stitched groups merely by blending them.
Restart the Panorama
Click this button to remove current images in the photo drawer. Then you can start from scratch.
Note that you can remove photos from the drawer manually also by clicking the "X" button on the photos, one at a time.
Merge Settings
Exposure Matching
These settings allow you to choose how Panorama modifies the images it is processing so that their exposure is similar.
None: Don't perform any matching.
RGB: Normalize the RGB (red-green-blue) channels of each image so their histograms are similar.
HSV: Normalize the HSV (hue-saturation-value) channels of each image so their histograms are similar.
B+W: Use the gray scale version of each image and normalize their histograms so they are similar.
This is not the same as "histogram equalization."
BAL: The approach tries to balance the average brightness of each image over the whole set of images.
You may need to apply trial and error. Note that in the Gallery you can undo and redo panoramas. Before redoing you can change settings.
Automatically Save
Automatically save panorama to the Camera Roll of Photos app after merging.
Megapixel Limit
Scale down images to conserve memory and merge faster.
This is achieved by restricting the total size of the merged image by a certain amount of pixels.
Use Translation
Overlap unregistered images by translation.
In other words if two photos can not be aligned by the stitcher they will be joined together by blending them together of the region of overlap.
Trim Artifacts
Crop stitch to bounding rectangle.
After images are matched they are perspective warped to align their common features in the region of overlap.
This produces blank outlier pixels, or artifacts. Trimming is performed so that these outliers are not seen in the final result.