360 Panoramas in CS4 (not Extended)

[top_m...@adobeforums.com]

Ok, so I bought the worlds best photo program because I saw videos on Adobe TV showing all the wonderful things it can do, including one in particular where it demonstrated how to create a 360 panorama - woohoo! Imagine my disappointment when I realised on installing CS4 when I couldn't find a '3D' menu and discovered that this menu is only in CS4 Extended! What's worse is there is no upgrade path from CS4 to CS4 Extended.

So, my question is, is there a plugin I can buy for Photoshop CS4 that will do the job or are their any other options (bearing in mind I have a v.tight budget after buying PS)?

Thanks,
Mike.

[boblevine]

There are some hidden upgrade paths...give Adobe a call and find out
where you stand and keep in mind that you have 30 days to get a refund.

Bob

[top_m...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Bob,

I'm actually past the 30 day period but it's reassuring to here there still may be a way of upgrading. Can't get through to Adobe right now but will keep trying! Any ideas on what they charge for such an upgrade?

[boblevine]

IF they allow it, it would probably just the be the difference between
Standard and Extended. The only difference in the software is the serial
number.

Bob

[top_m...@adobeforums.com]

Sounds good but I don't like the 'IF' word! Thanks.

[Steve Sprengel]

The upgrade to CS3-non-extended to CS4-non-extended is $199.

The upgrade from CS3-non-extended to CS4-extended is $349.

The ugprade from CS3-extended to CS4-extended is $349.

I would guess you would need to pay $350, unless Adobe offers an option to rescend your CS4-non-extended serial number, then it would be $150.

Regarding panorama software, it is not a plugin, but I use AutoPanoPro soon to be AutoPanoGiga from <http://www.autopano.net/>

The Giga version which is in beta adds GPU support for the rendering which speeds things up if you have a GPU that is good enough for it to use.

AutoPano will do much better than CS4 for the initial 360 panorama as far a being able to fix things in the stitch and matching up photos with different exposures and even different white-balance, but CS4's paint-on-3D will work better for touching up the zenith and nadir areas.

[top_m...@adobeforums.com]

Just spoken to Adobe - apparently the only way that I can upgrade is by buying the full CS4 Extended software so that's another £868 on top of the £550 I've already paid! This means that someone who bought the latest version of Photoshop Elements can upgrade for less than I am able. I believe that's not just wrong, but criminal! I am now lodging a complaint.

Steve - thanks for the info about AutoPano - looks really good and much cheaper than an upgrade. Have you ever had problems with stitching in the program or does it do the job every time?

[Steve Sprengel]

If you can find someone to sell your CS4 non-extended upgrade to or take a class and get an academic discount that would be the cheapest way to get CS4-Extended.

AutoPano has a trial version so you should probably try that to see how well it works for you. The ease and quality of the stitch depends on the source images. All the images for a panorama are ideally taken from exactly the same point in space as measured by the optical center of your imaging system.

There are panorama heads for hundreds or thousands of dollars that let you do this well, like you'd need to if you were doing them people trying to sell their houses.

If you hand-hold and aren't careful then things will be less than perfect and you may need to work with the panorama to get things to mostly match up and hope that smart-blend will hide the rest of the issues. What makes AutoPano good is you can usually fix things.

I got a fisheye to cut the number of images down from 60 with a 18mm lens on a Digital Rebel to 8 or so. Of course with 60 images the panorama is much higher resolution than with only 8 but my machine wouldn't handle that many images, so a fisheye gives me something I can more easily work with. I have posted a few of mine on a section of my website:

<http://www.sprengels.com/qtvr/>

where you will see links to the other software and a cheap, only somewhat ok, wood and metal panohead, where I usually shoot handheld, anyway in a outdoor natural setting where dicontinuities are hard to see.

The new innovations in CS4 about finding the likely panorama images and the better blending across vignetting images are things tha autopano has been doing for a while, already. The main thing CS4 lets you do, easily, is paint on the panorama when it is wrapped onto the sphere.

The main competition to AutoPano is PTGUI which is a combination of payfor and open-source tools:

<http://www.ptgui.com/download.html>

[top_m...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks,

I downloaded the trial for AutoPano Pro but can't find how you turn a 2D panorama into a 3D virtual tour.

Love the panos on your site btw! Exactly the sort of stuff I want to do.

[Steve Sprengel]

There are various ways to "view" the 360x180 flattened panorama image as a virtual-3D scene.

I use Pano2VR which is the new version of Pano2QTVR that is linked at the top of my QTVR pages. One of the night-sky panoramas, the one with the comet, uses an Immersion (or something) viewer which allows hot-spot overlays which I used to show a larger-sized image of the comet. AutoPanoGiga has a flash-generator built-in but it is not as easy to just double-click on an SWF to view the panorama like it is an .MOV but if it's embedded in a webpage then you can link to whatever embedded viewer you want to, given the appropriate HTML.

My panoramas are pretty poor compared to most of what you'll find out there, on sites like: <http://www.panoramas.dk/>

[top_m...@adobeforums.com]

I was hoping to buy just one program rather than two or three though - seems like this is more complicated than I first thought! Stunning panos on panoramas.dk - see what you mean! I'm a web designer by trade so I'm looking for an all-in-one quick solution to show interiors of my clients' holiday cottages, premises, guest houses, etc. Perhaps AutoPanoGiga is best?

[Sandy Birrell]

--
Have you had a look at this. May be more than you want to pay but it
does what you are looking for.

http://www.360dof.com/products/vrbrochure-authoring-software/index.html

Don`t Worry, Be Happy

Sandy
--

E-Mail:- ne...@ftscotland.co.uk
Website:- http://www.ftscotland.co.uk
Looking for a webhost? Try http://www.1and1.co.uk/?k_id=2966019
Fishing Wild at http://www.wild-fishing-scotland.co.uk/

[Steve Sprengel]

I do panoramas for fun. If you are doing them for more than your own satisfaction, such as real estate, then you should probably research what other realtors do and take your time. Things are always more complicated and less perfect than they first seem. Interiors have many straight lines and regular patterns making any discontinuities obvious suggesting a need for a panorama head that works well. My Sigma 8mm fisheye cost about $600 so easy is not the same as cheap.

There at least used to be a free version of Pano2QTVR that makes .MOV files.

[top_m...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for your advice Steve - much appreciated.