Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor)

[DaveN]

Any chance we will see a clone of Microsoft ICE's features into
PTGui? I especially love the ultra fast matching and rendering using
the graphics chip and also the live editor. I now only use PTGui for
tough stitches. The rest I do with Microsoft's free ICE program.

[Jim Watters]

I did not remember any live editor so I tried it again. I could not
find any kind of live editor except rotating and positioning the entire
stitched image. No way to correct badly stitched image pairs.
Yes the blending was good. Yes the speed was good.
Last time I tried with large multi image partial pano, it failed to
place some sky images leaving gaps.
Today I tried a full spherical with fisheye lens. It squeezed the
entire pano to be only about 90 degree wide, with images going out in
multiple different directions.
I can't see using ICE for anything as it is except small partial panos.
Jim

--
Jim Watters

Yahoo ID: j1vvy ymsgr:sendIM?j1vvy
jwatters @ photocreations . ca
http://photocreations.ca

[John Houghton]

I tried a stitch of 3 rows of 7 images taken with a 40D + 50mm lens.
At first sight, it appeared to do a very good stitch, but close
inspection revealed a few stitching errors. I have a perfect stitch
from PTGui. ICE did manage a reasonable full 360 stitch of 20 images
taken with a hand-held Coolpix 995, though. I'm grateful for the
precision and versatility of PTGui and don't feel a need for anything
else, but it's early days for ICE after all.

John

[ZeBoxx]

In general, the various panorama applications out there use much the
same algorithms for recognition, warping, stitching, blending and
output rendering; some use more advanced (patented) algorithms, but in
general they're all the same. So in the end a lot of it comes down to
various preferences in terms of the program's speed, capabilities,
ease of use, etc.

Although the matching speed of ICE is nice, I much prefer PTGui's
level of control and quality of output.

In addition, getting "Microsoft Image Composite Editor has encountered
a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."
just now (loading a 79-image 360º/180º pano) while hammering the CPU,
followed by much the same error message for "DrWatson Postmortem
Debugger" is not encouraging, to say the least.

That said, I do like the live editor's responsiveness over PTGui's,
and I hope that the general workflow* of PTGui is something that will
be reviewed for, say, version 10 (such a nice round number).

All in all, PTGui remains my choice of pano software, and I'm only an
amateur enthusiast.

~ Richard

* don't want to derail the thread, but to clarify a bit on workflow..
I find the Panorama Editor window of great value while working with
PTGui, and the new version doing a quick blend is absolutely great.
However a lot of PTGui is not centered around the Panorama Editor at
all - treating it as more of a preview window than an editor. I'll
detail the workflow issues some other time :)