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Hi
I am trying to get into a bit of landscape type shots.
I'm keen to try panoramic shots. Is there a good free stitching program that I could try, and if I'm successful would be looking for a good program.
Any advice would be appreicated.

Jeff

Most paid programs come with a risk of sorts, great way to test them out work out which is best suited to you and your level of pping.

I use PTgui which has a gumby mode for when your starting and also an advanced mode for those complex projects or when you want some more control. It also has a hdr blending mode as well which I have used occasionally with some success.

Hth and good luck.

I use Auto Pano Pro....I have never had any problems getting it to work

I have PtGUI, and have occasionally used it to do HDR stitches, but for most of my pano work I just pump it through Photoshop. The "Photomerge" function came of age in CS3, and just keeps getting better with new versions. Both PtGUI and Photoshop will stitch in a 16-bit workflow (some stitching software truncates down to 8 bits).

I'm more than happy with the Photoshop quality for my images (I put that caveat in as for example I'm not doing things like stitching 180˚ fisheye shots, so there are areas of the product I haven't touched) and by combining it with CS5's content-aware fill to clean up the edges before cropping to a rectangle I've been able to get better and bigger photos than before.
In fact if you're using Lightroom or Bridge to manage your photos, the workflow with Photoshop's pano function is very easy, stitching directly from the RAW files (including the ACR adjustments). When using PtGUI, I do have to do a bit more work (exporting to intermediate TIFFs, etc) which isn't really a problem although it is nice to have everything integrated.

If you already have Photoshop, the pano stitching is "free" (well, "at no extra charge"). If you're a student or teacher then CS5 is very cheap (about the same cost as Photoshop Elements 8 for non-academics). In fact Photoshop Elements has decent stitching in it these days too.

There is a free one that my dad uses. I can't think of what it is called but it might be a microsoft program called composite editor or something like that. He is quite happy with it. I use autopano as well.

hi,
you mentioned free software, the one I used for sometime is HUGIN from open source

download from
http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

for example of results see http://www.photoshop.com/user/teetong
most albums has stiched panos

Thanks guys for your help . I will play around and see how I go.

Jeff

I knew I'd just read about the Microsoft one. Here it is - Microsoft Composite Image Editor.

Murray Foote wrote:Microsoft Composite Image Editor.

Looks like a quality free microsnot product!

Have has great success with ArcSoft Panorama Maker Pro, including extreme wide angle shots hand held.