blog added 04/03/2006
PTMac v4 in beta - Workflow
Great news Kekus Software has now released a beta version of PTMac 4, for me the headline item is that it includes an automatic control point system and it works great. It even has an auto optimizer to speed up the process too.
Here are my screenshots of the workflow
1. Opening the software and initial file import, one thing I did do before importing was I merged the two nadir shots to produce a down shot without the panorama head arm, I could have removed this at the end using a masked Adobe Photoshop layered file, but I think this quickly at the beginning.

2. Lens Settings

3. Panorama Settings

4. Crop Settings

5. Image Parameters
- New feature here is the Arrange tool, this quickly allows you generate yaw, pitch and roll values for the photographs - this is great.

6. Control Points
- for me this is the best bit, the Auto match button, this generate control points quickly for all the photographs, so Xpoints is built in and works really well. New feature here too is the Auto optimize, which will run after the control points are set.

7. Optimizer

8. Create Panorama

The resulting QTVR file is excellent and with much less stitching errors the panorama Realviz Stitcher 5.0.x produced. Though the time to produce this file is considerably longer.
The QTVR resulting movie