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Revision as of 19:51, 26 November 2006
The Panorama Tools, also known as The PanoTools are a free suite of programs and libraries originally written by the German physics and mathematics professor Helmut Dersch. PanoTools provides a powerful framework for re-projecting and blending multiple source images into immersive panoramics of many types. An updated version of the PanoTools library serves as the underlying core engine for many software panorama GUI front-ends.
Helmut started development on PanoTools in 1998, producing some of the most professional and versatile software available for building panoramas and more, but had to stop development in 2001 due to legal harassment and claims of patent infringement by a company called IPIX. In 2003 he released some modifications to the Java-based online panorama viewer PTViewer. One involved a standalone .exe version and another version could display HDR (high dynamic range) panoramas.
Helmut continues to update the site and software with the most recent release being PTViewerME, a panorama viewer for PDAs and mobile devices. Due to the patent infringement claims, the site has no links to his older work on PanoTools, but some list members managed to make a copy of his old home page before it shut down.
After Helmut stopped developing Panorama Tools, the members of his mailing-list took over development, and began enhancing the software suite on their own. They started a Sourceforge page which is maintained by a group of volunteers and have fixed some bugs and developed additional functionality.
What software is included in the panorama tools
Quoted from Dr Dersch's original home page:
PanoTools is a collection of free tools for Panorama and 3D Object creation. It consists of:
| PTEditor | Java interactive Panorama Editor. |
| PTPicker | Java front end to panorama stitcher and other tools. It provides a graphical interface for feature point selection and position optimization. |
| PTCrypt | Java tool for scrambling pictures intended to be viewed online with PTViewer. |
| PTStitcher | Panorama stitching tool which remaps, adjusts and combines arbitrary images to panoramic views. |
| PTOptimizer | Optimizes positions and sizes of images using control-point data. |
| PTStereo | Creates 3-dimensional objects from 2 stereoscopic or more images. |
| PTInterpolate | Physically valid true view interpolator. Given two images of the same scene taken from different positions, this tool creates views from any intermediate position. |
| PTMorpher | Morphing tool. |
| PTAverage | Averages images to reduce noise and enhance density. |
| PTStripe | Combines images into movie-stripes for viewing in object-viewers (PTMovie extension to PTViewer). |
| Panorama Tools Plugins | Photoshop, GraphicConverter and Gimp plug-ins for image correction and remapping. Also compatible to many other programs that can use Photoshop plugins. |
| pano12 library | The underlying panorama library, currently used by several different panorama front-ends and command line programs. This may be called pano12.dll, libpano12.so, libpano12.dylib or pano12.lib depending on the operating system. |
To make working with PanoTools easier and to add functionality, many excellent interactive, graphical front-ends to PanoTools have been developed, both free and commercial, along with a variety of other companion applications, which in many cases make interacting directly with the programs in the original PanoTools toolset unnecessary.
Common GUI frontends for PanoTools
- hugin - free, open source, multiplatform
- PTgui - commercial, Windows and Mac OSX
- PTMac - commercial, Mac OSX
- PTAssembler - commercial, Windows
Other popular companion applications
References
- Helmut Dersch's home page current and actively updated
- Original PanoTools site mirrors a list of several mirror site
- PanoTools open source development from Sourceforge
External links
- Dr. Dersch's university page
- Panorama Tools at Sourceforge
- PanoTools community portal with news, mailing list (Yahoo! Groups), archive, wiki project, and more