PtGui

We've created a video tutorial to help new users get started using PTGui!The tutorial is split into two parts: first we give an overview of PTGui and show how to best take the photos for a panorama. In the second part we show how th...

After several months of beta testing PTGui 10 is now officially released!

The most important change is entirely under the hood and has been under development for over two years: PTGui 10 features a new stitching engine, rebuilt from scratch to get the best peformance on modern hardware. On computers with a recent graphics card (GPU) the new stitcher uses OpenCL for GPU acceleration, but regular CPU stitching performance has been significantly improved as well. For certain projects we've seen up to 10 times faster stitching compared to the previous version!

To complement the Publish to Website tool, PTGui 10 includes a spherical panorama viewer for local viewing. Spherical panoramas can now be viewed from PTGui without the need to install third party software. The viewer is a standalone tool: it can view any equirectangular panorama in TIFF or JPEG format stored on your computer.

Finally the Pro version includes a new tone mapper. The new tone mapper is easy to configure and gives very natural looking results. The tone mapper can now be enabled even for non-HDR panoramas, improving the quality of panoramas of high contrast scenes.

For an overview of the new features see What's new in PTGui 10. See the version history for a detailed list changes.

To download the new version choose Help -> Check for Updates or see the Download page.

The University of Plymouth will be organizing the ICCI 360 festival from Monday 13th to Saturday 18th September 2010. The ICCI 360 Festival arena consists of a huge 21 metre diameter dome incorporating a 62m x 6m high projection screen and a large performance space which uses cutting edge technology with surround sound and high resolution projection facilities to provide a fantastic immersive 360°, panoramic, digital experience.

More information: ICCI 360 Festival 2010

Version 9.0 of PTGui and PTGui Pro is now available for download. This is a major upgrade with several great new features. PTGui Pro now includes a Mask tool. Further the new Detail Viewer window enables zooming in the live preview. And there's a new Publish to Web tool to show panoramas on your website using the bundled Flash 10 / HTML 5 viewer.

For an overview of the new features see What's new in PTGui 9.

Also a new tutorial is available: Masking in PTGui Pro

To download the new version choose Help -> Check for Updates or see the Download page.

Florian Knorn of Pano.ie has posted an excellent series of video tutorials to YouTube on shooting a spherical panorama using a fisheye lens: Part 1: shooting the images Part 2: developing the images Part 3: stitching in PTGui

Thomas Bredenfeld has just published his new book (in German) 'Praxisbuch Digitale Panoramafotografie' and PTGui is covered in detail. About the book:

Erstellen Sie Panoramen wie ein Profi! Thomas Bredenfeld führt Sie in die Welt der digitalen Panoramafotografie: Erfahren Sie, welche Ausrüstung für das Erstellen von Panoramen sinnvoll ist, lernen Sie anhand von anschaulichen Beispielen die richtige Aufnahmetechnik kennen und wie Sie Ihre Vorlagen am Rechner perfekt zusammenfügen. Der Autor gibt Ihnen auch Tipps für die attraktive Präsentation Ihrer Bilder. Mit Schritt-für-Schritt-Anleitungen schaffen Sie schnell und leicht den Einstieg in den komplexen Workflow. Die beiliegende DVD beinhaltet außerdem unterschiedliche Stitching-Tools, so dass Sie Ihre Aufnahmen am PC gleich zu beeindruckenden Panoramen zusammenfügen können.

Website: Praxisbuch Digitale Panoramafotografie

PTGui Pro was used in the production of two commercials for the new 2011 Mini Cooper Countryman. All but 3 of the 317 vehicles seen in the spot are computer generated; PTGui Pro was used to create the HDRI environment maps used fo...

Factum Arte just published an interesting writeup of their workflow for producing extremely high resolution images of artworks: read more...

Marco Stucchi has written an extremely detailed Italian tutorial for stitching spherical panoramas with PTGui: Fotografia immersiva

That was about time! PTGui finally has a new website. The old site had been around since 2003 and had began to show its age many many years ago already. Apart from the home page, all content has been preserved under the...

VR photography pioneer Scott Highton's book 'Virtual Reality Photography' is now shipping. About the book:

From pioneering VR photographer Scott Highton, comes the long awaited and much anticipated book, Virtual Reality Photography.

Through twenty four detailed chapters, Scott shares his extensive knowledge about every aspect of successful panoramic and object VR photography. Richly illustrated, the book is a vast resource of tips, techniques, and instruction – chock full of both artistic and technical detail.

The book belongs in the hands of every multimedia author and photographer, whether part-time hobbyist or full-time professional, who has an interest in learning the secrets of good virtual reality (VR) photography.

Website: Virtual Reality Photography

We've just released PTGui version 9.1.9! Although it's a small update it does bring a few useful new features: Panoramas can now be geotagged directly in PTGui. Click on the Metadata button in the Create Panorama tab to open the new ...