Autostitch is a very old kick-ass fully automatic photostitcher which totally craps on other simple panorama software I’ve tried (mostly Canon rubbish). You just select a bunch of source photos, tell it which way up they are and click go. Although the UI needs some work the underlying algorithm appears very robust.

Below are some sample composite images I’ve just created using the free downloadable (click for large versions).

One Tree Hill, Auckland (yes the one in the U2 song)

These wide shots were created with hand held camera shooting in multiple sweeps, ie at least two rows of source images to make up the final shots. Before cropping and scaling the composites are quite huge and ragged, depending on what your coverage is (click here for a large uncropped version of the first one, created from 79 shots taken in rapid succession with fairly narrow zoom). There are of course some ghost people and two-headed sheep in here as a result of time passing between shots.

My Flat (360 degrees)

Apologies for the messiness– this was a test done while in the middle of a late night clean up (you can see a big pile of tech crap on the floor on right, various cables, keyboards, mice etc, most of which will be thrown out or given away). The stitching here has a few minor alignment errors in it; this is partly because of the camera’s center of focus not matching the centre of rotation (I panned using a swivel chair).

Hmmm… That really is a horrible blue color…

Unfortunately the Autostitch software does not output Quicktime VR, but there must be something out there [for free!] which can take a jpg and convert to QTVR… right?