blog added 13/12/2006

This week Realviz formally upgraded Stitcher 5.5 to 5.5.2. Though, I am having issues with my two Mac OS X computers when running smart blend, Stitcher crashes early on in the render for some reason, I am waiting for support to help me on this one, since this still happens with the new version.

I decided to check the situation of running the software with the morph tool. Now this is only going to work if Realviz can cope the asymmetrical distortion some lens have. The Canon 15mm FE and the Sigma 8mm FE work well with the previous versions of Stitcher and the introduction of extra distortion parameters in the version 5.5.1 helped even more.

However, Nikon users often use the Nikon 10.5 FE lens and Stitcher till now did not cope with the distortion parameters of that lens. This issue can be overcome my using the smart blend tool or external enblend or smart blend plug-in since these packages smooth over area of poor distortion correction. In an ideal world it would be possible for distortion parameters to be correctly  set, so then complex blending options would not be required.

Well that time might have happened, compare the following:

1) RVS U 5.5 with internal morph render

http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/oxfordtour/stitchersupport/oxfordmarket55-morph.jpg

2) RVS U 5.5.1 with internal morph render

http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/oxfordtour/stitchersupport/oxfordmarket551-morph.jpg

3) RVS U 5.5.2 with internal morph render

http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/oxfordtour/stitchersupport/oxfordmarket552-morph.jpg

Render 1 was poor, render 2 had some distortion correction working but not that much better. BUT render 3 is light and day better than what we have seen before. There are a few errors in the morph render, but on the order of the issues with smart and enblend.

So WELL done Realviz the software can now cope with the Nikon 10.5 mm FE lens.

I'll report more in the near future with info about my Canon work-flow and speed test with this new version soon.