is 64-bit panotools needed?

[Tom Sharpless]

Hi all,

I found a discussion (from June, in Pages) about whether one could use
existing 32 bit builds of panotools with the 64 bit version of PTGui
pro on Windows. The thread starter said he had gotten an error from
PTGui about not finding pano12.dll., and wondered if he needed a 64-
bit one. JIm Watters replied that he might try to build one. Now I'm
setting up to build open source s/w on a 64-bit Windows Vista system,
and I thought I might have a try at building 64-bit panotools for
Windows. Then I thought some more...

I'm running PTGUi pro on that system, and have seen no such message,
which means that pano12.dll is certainly not a prerequisite. It was
my impression that as from a couple of revs ago, PTGui no longer calls
into pano12.dll directly, but can still optionally run the PTstitcher
and PToptimizer command programs if you want them.

In that case I don't think there is any need for a 64 bit panotools
build at all, the 32-bit one will run fine under 64 bit Windows, just
limited as usual to about 3 GB of real memory, and 64-bit PTGui should
be able to use it if installed properly.

At present the panotools suite is not really able to exploit huge
memory or multiple processors effectively, so no obvious benefit would
result from building a 64 bit one.

Joost, can you throw some light on this question?

Cheers, Tom

[PTGui Support]

Hi Tom,

You are right, PTGui normally doesn't require the Panotools dll. But
pano12.dll is still needed in these cases:

- if 'Optimize using Panorama Tools' is chosen
- if 'Warp using Panorama Tools' is chosen
- and for the Correct function in the Source Images tab

I can't think of a good reason to still use Panotools for warping. But
the Panotools optimizer is still needed if you need to optimize line
type control points. PTGui doesn't call the PTOptimizer application (it
didn't exist yet when the first version was released) but rather it
calls into the pano12.dll optimizer function.

The Correct function may still be useful for correcting CA, although I
think there are better tools for that like Adobe RAW.

Joost

[John Houghton]

On Aug 31, 8:56 am, PTGui Support <supp...@ptgui.com> wrote:
> I can't think of a good reason to still use Panotools for warping.

It can sometimes be preferable to use interpolators in the Pano Tools
library. When PTGui is used for extracting a rectilinear view from an
equirectangular, editing it in Photoshop, and then remapping it back
for insertion into the original, none of the interpolator choices are
able to do this without a small but visible degradation of the image.
Do this with some of the Panorama Tools interpolators and you get no
degradation at all (just like PTEditor and PTAdjust can do). Sinc256
and sinc1024 both work very well when operating at the optimum maximum
resolution.

John

[Tom Sharpless]

Thanks Joost and John

So it does seem that people who run PTGui Pro on Win64 might find use
for a 64 bit panotools.

I am now a registered Panotools developer and will be working this
fall on improvements to the fisheye lens models, the optimizer and
probably some speedups for the warping functions. I intend to use
only the cmake build system because it works on all platforms, and
because I don't understand automake. As part of this work I shall try
both i86 and amd64 builds for Windows and Linux.

Regards, Tom