PanoWizard is an attempt to let a user create panoramas in a simple way. By using freeware already available on the Internet, PanoWizard tries to tie these existing components together.
The freeware available often assumes that the user is accustomed to DOS
commands, parameters and more. The PanoWizard was designed to make all of this
software work together in a simple way and to limit the user’s knowledge to
complex and advanced technology.
Due to the nature of PanoWizard, it s only a wizard, and all the functionality
available by the underlying software is not available here. However, using this
wizard will let you create astonishing results used in the right way.
In the right way means that you actually have to know a little about the
software being used. A Professor Helmut Dersch created some software (PanoTools)
in the late 90:ies that could stitch (or merge) several images together in a
fabulous way by "bending" them so the result would look like it was actually the
same picture (later versions are continuously being developed by
Jim Watters).
To do this, Mr. Dersch's software needed to know something more to join to images:
control points. Control points are simply points that point out one part of an
image to another. So, if we point out these points on all our images this
software would create good results.
To point out these point is a lot of work. It takes time. Alexandre
Jenny created a
piece of software that would automatically do this. This software was called
AutoPano.
By combining AutoPano and Mr Dersch's software
this wizard will actually create great results in little or no time at all!
When creating a full 360 degree panorama, there is another freeware
available on the Internet that is used by PanoWizard:
Pano2QTVR. This software
translates a 360 by 180 degree image to a virtual "movie" where you may you turn
left, right, up or down and view your surroundings. Simply press the LEFT key on
your keyboard and you actually turn left in real life! To view these movies
created by Pano2QTVR
you need QuickTime Player, also free and available for download on the Internet.
There are other applications available that serves as a front end for PanoTools. PTGui is one of them. It can do a bit more than PanoWizard but is not freeware. Another popular software is PTAssembler which is similar to PTGui. AutoStitch is a new promising software which is supposed to be a fully automatic panorama generator. I have not tried it much but if you get it to work it is the simplest tool to use. Despite of the previously mentioned applications, I hope PanoWizard justifies it's existence.
Well, this is an introduction to the world of panoramas and PanoWizard. Hope you find this software useful and it will meets your needs. Please, feel free download your version of PanoWizard!
Magnus Egelberg (magnus at egelberg dot se)
