Photo software Reviews Autopano Pro 1.4 Nick Veitch often finds himself with his back against the wall, but this time it’s because he’s trying to shoot a multi-picture panorama.

irtually everyone with a digital In brief... camera has tried it at some point. V There you are, the image of your Autopano scans dreams revealed before you – the most image collections for fantastic landscape/seascape/graffiti wall/ multi-image big hole in the ground, but you can’t fit it all panoramas, then in the viewfinder without being able to automatically assembles them for levitate over a cliff or something. The only you. The only Linux reasonable thing to do, you might think, is alternative is to take several photos covering the area of the manually assemble image you want to capture, then cunningly in Gimp! stitch them back together in Gimp later. It is only days later that the problems with this approach are apparent. In between pictures, the exposure, aperture, colours, white balance and any number of other things will have changed, reducing your chances of an effective panorama to something negligibly greater than nil. Graham Autopano Pro solves these problems, says... and plenty more, like magic, and it begins “The second even before you start making panoramas! largest digital Open up a folder full of digital shots in the Point Autopano at a folder full of your landscape images and watch it group them all photograph in twin-paned main window, and you’ll see together and discover lots of panorama options for you – as if by magic! the world (and that Autopano groups images using EXIF largest landscape data to make it easier to find your want a straightforward panorama, you image or the stitching process. It won’t panorama) was panoramas. In fact, it will go further and probably won’t have to. Part of the magic of take too long either – on our test machine stitched together examine creation times and image data to Autopano is the SIFT algorithm, which (a 2GHz duo Intel box with 2GB RAM) a 10- by Gerard clump together groups of shots. These picks out the key points in the images and image panorama took just 2 minutes to Maynard using nascent panoramas then appear in a list on merges them together, twisting, bending render at full size (approx 5000x4000 Autopano Pro in 2007. See www. the right side of the window ready for and blending the pixels as it goes. Various pixels). Not bad eh? harlem-13-giga tweaking. In practice, the auto discovery tools along the top of the window allow As it uses licensed technology, pixels.com.” works pretty well, although it can easily be individual images to be edited, or the whole Autopano’s never going to be free, but the confused if you take multiple panoramas of subjected to some global procedure. price tag means you’re going to have to do the same view (maybe from a slightly a lot of panoramas to feel like you’ve got different position). If that’s the case your money’s worth from the software. On There are plenty Simply wonderful of rendering though, you can easily add or remove Simple adjustments like colour balance are the other hand, if you do actually have a options, the only individual shots from the group. easy to do. Complicated procedures, like real need for the application, it is cheaper one you really need Click on the Edit button in one of the adjusting the position of an individual than buying a Mac and similar software – to pay attention to panorama groups, and you can now fine- image are a little harder, but obviously the there just isn’t any better way to do this is the file size! tune the images and settings; if you just whole procedure here is rather complex. sort of work on any platform. LXF Every effort has been made by the developers to save YOUR time and effort – there is even a handy auto-crop tool, which Verdict will square off the edges of the image to the maximum size. Autopano Pro 1.4.0 When you are happy with the preview, Developer: Kolor Web: www.autopano.net it’s time to do a final render; again, there Price: €99 (about £70) are plenty of options here, mostly to do Features 10/10 with the resulting file-format and image Performance 9/10 size. Obviously, the maximum image size is Ease of use 10/10 determined by the physical pixels available Value for money 8/10 in your original shots, but it is rare that you Creates outstanding panoramic photo would need a final image at full size. Even results with next to no fuss! scaling down slightly, say to 90 per cent, will help remove some of the artefacts (not Rating 10/10 that there are many) from the original

February 2008 Linux Format 25

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