I used to work with PTMac 4.1 since spring last Year, with good results.<br/><br/>But now I had a very hard job, I did a panorama of a small kitchen (6×5 Metres) which is tiled all over (hopefully the right word, I´m not english (German: Kachel)). So you will see »every« smallest mistake.<br/><br/>PTMac was not able to create a good Panorama, even with manual-points an fiddling around with all the variables in PTMac. After 2 Days I give up and tried Stitcher 5.5ProDemo. Stitcher was not able to find complete controlpoints by itself (remember mostly all the same looking white tiles on the wall), but it found some points for the first 2 Pictures (this is to autoadjust), now I was able to create manual controlpoints on the rest of the pictures (together 6 pictures and about 5 controllpoints per pair)). It took me about 5 Minutes to give Stitcher all the needed controlpoints. After this I adjusted the camera (which you just do when you read the manual, but it is needed!!! ) in Stitcher and than Stitcher rendered a perfect Panorama for me in 80 Seconds (PTMac about 200 Seconds).<br/><br/>After that I found in the internet a link to the allnew PTGui for Mac and installed the Demo 6.03.<br/><br/>After one Day fiddling around the Render-Results were absolutely the same like with PTMac, but PTGui was faster in Rendering(60 Seconds).<br/><br/>Now I tried Stitcher Express 2.0 Demo.<br/>It created the same very good renderquality like 5.5Pro »BUT« it needed »660« Seconds (11 Minutes) to render it!<br/>Maybe this is a problem or it is one of the »cheap-making« of Realviz, maybe as a better thing in 5.5 for the Proprice of Euro 300.- and the Euro 100.- for Express.<br/><br/><br/>Conclusion:<br/><br/>PTMac and PTGui were not able to create a usefull Panorama out of my 6 pictures even with alot of Handwork in both Programms. Also both Programms are very »deep and misty« (you can change alot by just changing some deeper Preferences) but even with this deeper adjustings the Render-Results were only usable with alot of very good Photoshop-Mask-and-Stencil-Work.<br/><br/>Stitcher 5.5Pro and Stitcher Express 2.0 give the same very fast workflow and phantastic results, but the Expressversion is by the factor 8 Slower than the 5.5Pro-Version. I also tested Stitcher 5.1, it is identical to 5.5Pro in Render-Quality, Workflow and Render-Speed.<br/><br/>I have the feeling that a comparison between PTMac/PTGui and Stitcher is a bit like compare Gimp to Photoshop.<br/>Stitcher use another math-system in creating Panoramas than the PTs (Helmut Dersch), so maybe both sytems has it´s advantages and disadvantages. I´m a big fan of the Panotools-Lenscorrect as PS-Plugin)<br/>Stitcher is in the Workflow much, much faster and accurate than the PTs, and in case of this Kitchen-Job – PTMac and PTGui were not able to create even near the results as Stitcher did.<br/><br/>BTW: I had always a very good Support by Kekus (PTMac) and till this last job I was very satisfiet with PTMac, maybe you never get a job like this Tile-Kitchen so than PTMac and PTGui will be fine for live.<br/><br/>Now all the facts:<br/><br/>Powermac G5 1.8 Mac OSX 10.3.9<br/>The Render-Results were always about 6000 Pixels in every Programm. Single-Row<br/>Nikon D200, Sigma 10-20mm (@10mm), 6 JPGs Portraitformat.<br/>Selfmade Nodalpointadapter (it´s accurate)<br/><br/>Cheers<br/>Aki<br/><br/>20.02.2007
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