Stitching techniques/software

I'm an "old-school" PS user who learned stitching as a series of steps under the transform menu (e.g. scale, rotate, distort). I have been happy with the results, but understand that there are now quite a few programs available that will do what takes me an hour in a couple of seconds. What are you using to digitally stitch your photos? Is there any decent share/freeware, or will I need to shell out the $$$?

Thanks!

Jeremy

I have never seen a stitching application that can do it in a couple of seconds, but they do generally produce much cleaner and more accurate results than the manual process.
The best value out there is probably PTAssembler (http://www.tawbaware.com). The user interface is pretty rudimentary but you can run it in auto-mode and not worry about it. For a nicer interface and a more expensive package, AutoPano Pro seems to be the gold standard (http://www.autopano.net).

Guy

If you run a search here for stitching or panorama you'll find some other threads on this topic as well Jeremy. Good luck.

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/features/
Stitching now available in Photoshop CS3....and it has HDR support as well.
I believe it's only in the "extended" edition....as Adobe broke Photoshop CS3 into 2 separate products....regular and extended.

Autopano Pro is what I use and its great! I think they have a free trial version, so you can give it a try.

Another vote for Autopano Pro - have been well pleased with it. The new CS3 stitching appears to be pretty easy as well.

Thanks everyone! I'll check out the trial version of Autopano Pro and PT Assembler, though I may end up waiting on buying until I hear what people say about the PhotoMerge application that's built into CS3. It would be nice to have things integrated into one application.

Cheers!
Jeremy

Another recommendation here for Autopano Pro.

Jeremy, I use MGI PhotoSuite 4 which does a remarkable job for stitching images together. And it is reasonably priced.

Will
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada

I just wanted to follow up with a recent discovery. I friend of mine found another application PT GUI, which seems to do a remarkable job on stitching, and only costs $80. Here's a comparison of a relatively complex stitch done in AutoPano and PTGUI: http://www.pbase.com/benwiart/test

I hope someone else finds this useful!
JB

I happen to like Photovista based on its elegant stitching, there is no spherical aberration.

Thanks Charles, I'll have to check out Photovista. I've been running some tests on PTGUI vs AutoPano and come up with some interesting results. PTGUI was faster, sharper, and the image had more contrast. I didn't really find any ghosting in either but software. If anyone is interested in the results of the test, I could post? Just let me know?

Jeremy