Product Reviews

RealViz has been known for its high-end panorama stitching software, aptly named Stitcher, for some time. It creates virtual interactive panoramic images from sets of still photos, and it has sat firmly at the high end of this market. The latest release, Stitcher 5.5, sees the product split into three, with Stitcher Express at the entry level for hobbyist users, Stitcher Pro for more demanding users, and Stitcher Unlimited for the panorama professional.

At all levels, the workflow is simple: photos are added to Stitcher 5.5's Image Strip palette and are then assembled into the composite image in the main window. The software can often put these together automatically by analysing each image and finding matching points in them. If this doesn't work, for example, when there aren't enough obvious congruent features, the semi-automatic stitch process can be tried by placing two images together, effectively leading Stitcher part of the way.

The Manual Stitch option lets you take a pair of images and select matching points yourself. Stitcher will then tilt and warp them as necessary to make things fit as one. Finally, the Force Stitch option just sticks the image down where you place it. It takes experience to get the very best results, but the process is fairly easy.

Stitcher Pro and Unlimited offer a progressively greater set of features. Some of these are quite significant, especially if you want to tackle panoramic image and movie production seriously. Both Stitcher Pro and Unlimited can work with 16 bits-per-channel (up to 48-bit RGB) images as well as regular 8-bit (24-bit RGB). This gives the software a lot more latitude when blending component images together. Even though Raw files from digital SLR cameras are generally 12bits at best, this still gives a lot of useful scope. Native Photoshop files can be imported complete with masks, and both Pro and Unlimited can also export layered and masked Photoshop files for further retouching in case of difficulties.

HTML templates are provided at all Stitcher 5.5 levels, but these are very basic and don't include any form of Eolas fix for embedding plug-in media, a feature that has become very important this year. The templates are not hard to use, but they could have been a little more up to date. Of course, any enterprising user can go in and edit the HTML templates to produce something more appropriate if it's important enough. KLM export is available too, so you can generate a georeference file to pinpoint the location of your panorama and link to it from Google Earth.

Stitcher Unlimited includes the ability to recognise and work directly with images shot using fish-eye lenses, a very popular optics choice among serious panorama photographers. If you use this kind of lens then it can make a significant difference to your workflow speed and also,

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in theory, produce slightly cleaner final results because there's no 'defish' image warping process required before the stitching process.

We tested Stitcher Unlimited with full-frame fish-eye images made with a Nikkor 10.5mm lens, probably the most popular lens among VR professionals. Stitcher recognised the lens from the Exif data and let us go straight to VR assembly, whereas with previous versions we've needed to run each image through a separate and time-consuming defishing process first. If this made you sit up and pay attention then Stitcher Unlimited is the version you need.

One of the other areas where Stitcher Unlimited steps out on its own is with exporting panorama content. All three versions of Stitcher 5.5 produce QuickTime VR panorama movies, but Stitcher Unlimited can be used to make hotspots within those movies for making the result even more interactive. On top of this, it also has export options for using non-QuickTime delivery methods, from pure Java solutions, such as Immervision's Pure Player to the ShockWave 3D-based Spi-V viewer. These are useful alternatives to the regular QuickTime delivery option, which can be very helpful if a client isn't happy about 'locking in' to QuickTime.

There's information about these other methods in the documentation as well as various choices in the export format menus, but, unsurprisingly, in Stitcher Unlimited as well as Stitcher Pro the Render dialog, which is used to generate your final composite panorama, is primarily designed around fine-tuning QuickTime VR panoramas or various forms of high-resolution flat images.

Actually, this last output option is well-worth noting. The results you create using Stitcher don't have to be complete 360 sweeps; they can be partial panoramas instead, and you can use this to create high-resolution panoramic images for print, not just interactive on-screen productions. As well as choosing different render distortion options for flat images there's even a Flat Stitch option for assembling sections of a large 2D image.

One question that has to be asked is why someone should use Stitcher rather than Photoshop's built-in panoramic assembly feature. The answer is, quite clearly, speed, precision and quality. Stitcher, whether Express, Pro or Unlimited, is dedicated to this task, and it has a many features that you don't get in Photoshop. Stitcher's workflow is quite intuitive, and the end results can be fine-tuned for many forms of output.

Having said all this, it can't be ignored that Stitcher's interface does need some improvement. Not so much with the actual image assembly, because that works well once you've got to grips with it, but the dialogs and pop-up menus have a quirky un-Mac-like feel. There were also some hiccups with the software's behaviour, but this didn't interfere with our ability to make panoramas from a variety of image sources.

Stitcher Pro is almost three times the price of Stitcher Express, but it should be seen as the entry point for professional and semi-pro photographers and designers looking to extend their abilities. At £214 it isn't pocket money, but you do get a lot for your cash. Stitcher Unlimited costs another £120 more, but it is aimed squarely at the panorama professional who wants to speed up their workflow. At just over £300, it isn't an impulse buy, but if you make panoramas professionally it will make a real difference to your work.