The Panorama Factory

Panorama Factory is a pretty robust program for creating panoramic images. Like other programs, you can use a guided step by step, pretty foolproof method, or do it all manually. The program can automatically detect camera rotation, focal length, falloff, plus warp, align and fine tune the image, blend, sharpen and automatically crop.

Like most wizards, Panorama Factory's wizard works best if everything is as close to perfect as possible (level tripod, etc.). If not, you'll have to play around and try different combinations of settings. I have a hard time getting good results from "neckstrap" panos.

It's one of the less expensive programs available (Windows based only) and pretty speedy. You can create partial or 360 degree single row panos.

You can add hotspots and create virtual tours (see their website for examples). The hotspot editor is one of the nicer ones I have seen to date. It's simple to use and has a lot of options including target frame � rare to find!

You can also create your pano in a variety of formats:

• QuickTime
• iSeeMedia
• PTViewer

or create one of the following file types for further manipulation:

• Layered Photoshop image
• single images: TIF, PNG, JPG

The Panorama Factory is shareware and comes in different languages, a trial version is available but places watermarks in the output files. The older version 1.6 (much less in the feature department) is free.

--Add360.com 02:40, 30 Oct 2005 (EST)