I earlier used the software that came with Canon Camera for panoramic stitch and now WLPG does it better. This WLPG feature easily compares with the best.

I also discovered that Vista has done this every time I have done this un-plug/ re-plug in the past. In the past Vista must automatically reactivated itself because now if I want to do the activation it tells me this software has been installed too many times and that would have to call the Indian call centre for re-activation.

Again a prove that Vista was designed for the masses and not the professional Design community.

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

The quality of the output is amazing.

This confirmes at least some of the problems I am having. Particularly this post hits the nail on the head:

http://railgun74.blogspot.com/2007/08/windows-vistas-achilles-heel.htm l

I think the main problem is that Windows Vista a over enginneered introducing too many problems in the process. Microsoft would have been wise to go the Apple route and redesign Windows from the ground up and then simple offer software backwards compatability through Virtualization.

Look at OSX when it was first released. Pretty average in my oppinion and felt like too little too alte compared to Windows XP. Then came Tiger which was notably better and now finally Leopard. When you compare Leopard with Vista it’s like comparing a Porsche with the monster car Homer designed in one of the Simpsons episodes (nearly driving his brother into ruin).

With Windows you often have to look for solutions to a problem because of the way the whole thing is engeered. Just think of all those little extra software gadgets you installed on your computer to get this or that done. Because OSX was rebuild from the ground up a lot of these little gadgets are irrelevant because the entire usability approach is different. I have been trying very hard to put my finger on what it exactly is that makes it so different since on first glance it looks like just another OS. You have to work with Leopard for a few days to realize what I am talking about.

The bottom line is that I now seem to concetrate more on getting my work done rather than trying to wrangle the OS. I do go back to Windows XP and Vista on a couple of other computers now and then. The interesting things about that is that I am always stunned how snappy things feel in XP compared to Vista…. especially in Windows Explorer.

PS: If anyone could point me to a good spellchecker for Firefox that would be greatly appreciated.

I’ve been very impressing with the photo-stitching feature. You can see some of my results at http://flickr.com/photos/benosborne/tags/panorama/. As this article mentions, the biggest drawback is lack of exposure normalization. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that addressed in future versions.

Does Quicktime actually do the image stitching, or does it just display them? I created some 360-degree Quicktime VRs a few years ago, but I used a separate program to stitch them. Quicktime’s user experience is nice, but the best I’ve seen so far is Microsoft HDView. If you haven’t seen the 13-gigapixel panorama of Harlem yet, check out http://www.harlem-13-gigapixels.com/harlem_hdview.html. Of course that panorama wasn’t created with WLPG — I’m just pointing out the nice user experience of HDView. It requires an ActiveX control, but it’s worth it.

WLPG already embeds certain information into panoramas that it creates in order to optimize the creation of HDView panoramas. I would expect future versions of WLPG to have a easy way to create HDView panos.

Here are my panoramic pictures – http://chakkaradeep.wordpress.com/2007/10/29/my-first-panoramic-pictur es-using-windows-live-photo-gallery/

They do a good job in stitching panoramic pictures!

WLPG hahaha I can’t believe you think you have a chance… Why do you keep cloning everybody’s work and making
it worse?
–
Nicolas
nicolas.alvarez@gmail.com