Rating: 5

Version tested: 2.187

Autostitch can automatically join multiple consecutive images together to create a single, panoramic view. It does this automatically without user involvement or intervention.

In order to evaluate this program I took 46 snapshots constituting a 360 degree ’exploration’ of our living room and loaded these into Autostitch. You can see the result in the image above. All you need to do is start the program and load the images, and Autostitch will do the rest. Your involvement is limited to (a) providing the images, and (b) changing the program settings (which, aside from the output resolution, tend to be a bit esoteric such as ’blending method’, ’gain’, autocrop, etc). Here are some notes on the program.

• Autostitch was able to correctly ascertain the sequence of images on its own.
• Was able to process 32 high-res images (1 meg each) in a matter of seconds.
• The transitions connecting different images varied in their quality, although it was obvious to me that this is a function of the images/information that I provided the program to begin with.
• It decided to limit itself to approximately a 180 degree view; this despite the fact that my images went all around in a 360 degree circle.
• A lot of images/information was dropped. This was probably due to the fact that, instead of limiting myself to a point from which to take all snapshots, I did a lot of moving back and forth and exploring of specific details. (My recommendation: stay right where you are when taking all of your different snaps). Future versions will apparently be able to generate so-called ’fisheye’ images based on non-linear images.
• Provide Autostitch with all the information that it needs; try to plug all the ’holes’ that it may find (check out the example on the Autostitch home page). Also check out the impressive gallery on the Autostitch website.
• Although this program is labeled “Autostitch demo”, there does not seem to be a downloadable non-demo version at the time of this writing, and the demo version seems to be fully functional.

This is a fun little program; what I like about it is that it simply installs and runs, without labor-intensive user involvement. The results generated are very good and largely depend on the user-provided images to begin with. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that future versions will also be free and not handicapped or crippled.

Compatibility: WinAll.

Go to the program home page to get the latest version (approx 1.02 megs).