Tips for shooting panoramas
Practice makes perfect
Pano is an advanced tool, but sometimes you may not get the results you expect. We definitely encourage you to experiment and have fun; after your first few panoramas, you'll be a natural. Here are a few quick tips to get you going:
Distance
Pano works best when the objects in the scene are far away; this helps keep angles in line at the edges of each photo. It's a good thing ocean views and cityscapes make for fantastic vistas!
Don't move your iPhone
Try to keep your iPhone stationary between photos; it's best if the field of view pivots around a single point.
Okay, move it a little
Sometimes the best way to get a good match is to move the iPhone towards or away from you as you pivot.
Keep the Guide simple
The transparent Guide is where most of the processing magic happens; if you can plan your panorama so that these areas have simple features, you can get better results.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's new in Pano 3.1?
iPhone OS 3.0 Support! Hooray! If you're having problems with Pano on iPhone OS 3.0, please make sure you've updated to the latest version of Pano.
What's new in Pano 3.0?
We've added a few great new features to Pano! First, we've increased the maximum number of pictures per panorama to sixteen, allowing full 360-degree panos! Second, if you get interrupted by a phone call or if you quit Pano while taking pictures or during the merge, Pano will now let you continue where you left off. Third, once you're done making a panorama, we'll let you start over without quitting first (yay!). These along with even more stability improvements and interface tweaks make Pano 3.0 a fantastic update!
Pano crashes immediately or has problems on iPhone OS 3.0! Help!
Please download the latest version of Pano from the App Store and give it a shot.
Pano is crashing! Help!
First, restart your phone (press and hold the sleep/wake button for 5 seconds, then slide the slider). If it still crashes on you after that, try removing Pano from your iPhone, reinstalling it, and then restarting your iPhone. If that still doesn't work, we strongly urge you to contact us at support@debaclesoftware.com so that we can try to diagnose the problem together. We're committed to bringing you the best experience possible.
Pano is brilliant! How does it work?
For Pano, stitching photos together is a three-step process. First, it uses pattern-matching techniques to find out exactly how each pair of adjacent photos overlaps, and then it finds the best way to align them. Second, Pano applies a colour-correction gradient across each pair of photos to correct for the iPhone camera's autoexposure and white balancing. Finally, all the photos are blended together and the image cropped to a neat rectangle. Voila! All in a matter of seconds.
How long does the stitching process take?
Stitching a four-photo panorama will take under twenty seconds; just long enough for you to plan out your next panorama.
What is the maximum resolution for completed panoramas?
Due to memory constraints on the iPhone, photos are first scaled to 800 pixels high and then stitched together. The width depends on the number of photos in the panorama and their alignment (about 6000 pixels for a sixteen-photo panorama).
Why is my panorama slightly smaller than that?
Depending on how well the photos are lined up, Pano shifts the images up and down during the alignment phase. It then trims the excess off the top and bottom of the finished panorama to leave you with a clean rectangle. The better the alignment, the taller the end result will be.
When I look at my panoramas in my Photo Library, they look kinda blurry.
Because your panoramas are very wide, they are shrunk down to fit on your iPhone's screen when you view them in the Photos app. However, the way the Photos app works is to take whatever initially fits on the screen, whatever resolution that happens to be, and then blow those pixels up when you pinch or double-tap to zoom in. Don't worry, when you view your panoramas on your computer, they'll look sharp as a tack.
When I try to email a panorama directly from my iPhone, it comes out too small!
iPhone's Mail app limits the width of photo attachments, so a panorama with four photos will end up smaller than a panorama with two. Keep in mind that your panoramas are stored at full size in your Photo Library; you can always transfer them to your computer and send them out from there.
I see ghosts in my panoramas! Is your software haunted?
Ghosts occur when something in the scene (usually a person or other moving object) happens to be in one photo but not the other where the two overlap. You can alleviate this by keeping such objects out of the transparent Guide when you're taking your photos.
I wish there were some place where I could show off my panoramas to my friends and other Panorama users...
Oh but there is! Run, do not walk, to our iPhone Panorama Flickr Group and upload all your great panoramas. We'd love to see them!
Who made Pano?
Pano was made by Debacle Software, a three-man operation consisting of Adam Cohen (image processing guru), Julian Lepinski (iPhone coder supreme), and Eric Akaoka (rockstar graphic designer). Debacle is based in Kingston and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
You guys seem cool; let's hang out. Where can I reach you?
Thank you! You can send an email over to support@debaclesoftware.com.