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 panos, you'll be a natural. Here are a few quick tips to get you going:
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!
Try to keep your iPhone stationary between photos; it's best if the field of view pivots around a single point.
Sometimes the best way to get a good match is to move the iPhone towards or away from you as you pivot.
The transparent Guide is where most of the processing magic happens; if you can plan your pano so that these areas have simple features, you can get better results.
We have been looking into this issue since the phone came out; it looks like Pano (and many other photography apps) will crash if the LED flash is triggered. That means that you should be okay taking shots in bright light, such as outdoors. Another workaround we've discovered is that you can quickly lock and unlock your phone using the sleep/wake button and it may clear the issue.
This appears to be an issue on Apple's end, but as soon as we Canadians can get our hands on an iPhone 4, we will be doing as much as we can to fix this issue.
Yes! Panos created on the iPhone 4 will have a higher resolution than those taken with previous iPhones. Please note that in order to save on system resources and to reduce noise, Pano has always reduced the size of photos before processing them.
As soon as we Canadians can get our hands on an iPhone 4, we will be pushing the limits of its memory and CPU speed to provide the highest-resolution Panos possible.
We sure do! We just released a brand new Photography App called Self Image; it makes taking photos of yourself and friends with your iPhone a snap!
There is an issue with iPhone OS 3.0 on the iPhone 3GS wherein very large images (like the ones created by Pano) cause a bunch of problems. We have been working with Apple on this; it should be resolved in the iPhone OS 3.1 update, which should be appearing in the near future. For now, you can download the pano(s) to your computer, delete them off your iPhone, and then reboot your iPhone; this will get your camera and albums back to normal.
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.
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.
Stitching a four-photo pano will take under twenty seconds; just long enough for you to plan out your next pano.
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 pano and their alignment (about 6000 pixels for a sixteen-photo pano).
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 pano to leave you with a clean rectangle. The better the alignment, the taller the end result will be.
Because your panos 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 panos on your computer, they'll look sharp as a tack.
You may have told your phone not to allow Pano to save images to your camera roll. To check this, go to Settings » Privacy » Camera, and make sure that Pano is switched on.
iPhone's Mail app limits the width of photo attachments, so a pano with four photos will end up smaller than a pano with two. Keep in mind that your panos are stored at full size in your Photo Library; you can always transfer them to your computer and send them out from there.
Another good workaround for this is to go into your Photo Library, select your pano, and instead of selecting 'Share' you can select 'Copy' and then paste it into an email. The pano should be sent full-size.
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.
Oh but there is! Run, do not walk, to our iPhone Pano Flickr Group and upload all your great panos. We'd love to see them!
Pano was made by Debacle Software, a three-man operation consisting of Adam (image processing guru), Julian (iPhone coder supreme), and Eric (rockstar graphic designer). Debacle is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Thank you! You can send an email over to support@debaclesoftware.com.
Pano uses the libjpeg library to help us with our magic.