I’ve always had a passion for shooting and stitching panoramic images, so I recently checked out the App Store to find out what the “state of the art” is with respect to panorama photography.
There is quite a number of apps in the App Store that support panoramic photography. Among the more popular are (in no particular order) Pano ($2.99), Panorama ($9.99), Panoramascope ($4.99), Mosaica (1.99), Panolab (free or $2.99) and Panoramas ($1.99). Most guide you through the process of taking the images, getting at least the minimum amount of overlap and then stitching the panorama. Some also let you manually align the images or rotate them freely for improved alignment. Once stitched, the panorama is saved as one large JPG and can be viewed on the iPhone or downloaded into iPhoto or any photo editor of your choice. In addition, there’s a Flickr group dedicated solely to showcasing iPhone panoramas, so you can check out iPhone panos there.
However, I found a number of problems when using these programs – some serious enough that I would not really do the entire process on the iPhone. Instead, I might take the images on the iPhone, download them and then use Photoshop or a dedicated panorama stitching program. These problems include:
1. Screen Real Estate
The screen on the iPhone is small and stitching requires precision. I just don’t have the dexterity to precisely rotate and align an image with my fingers, so it exactly overlaps at the right angle with another image. Auto-alignment would help greatly, esp. with tough-to-stitch panoramas.
The various books, ledges and other objects present a tough alignment challenge for many iPhone programs. No problem stitching this with Photoshop or dedicated panorama programs on the Mac/PC.
2. Ghosting
A “ghost” is an object that moves while you take your images. For example as you rotate the camera to take your next shot, a pedestrian might move in the same direction, thus being in both pictures. Dedicated panorama software can deal with ghosting nicely, but not on the iPhone.
3. The iPhone camera.
The iPhone camera is good enough for panoramas, if the lighting is constant, but as the light changes (for example, in outdoor shots), you typically need to switch to manual mode. The iPhone does not support manual mode, nor does it give you any exposure control. As a result, even Photoshop could not blend a lot of the outdoor panoramas that I shot. Just check out the sky of the pano that I shot a few days ago while hiking on Mount Tamalpais. Unless I manually blend it, not even Photoshop can get this right.
Light fall-off in the sky after blending, seen very often in iPhone panos.
Similar to photo editing on the PC or Mac that is now leaps and bounds better than during its early days, we have high expectations that stitching panoramas on the iPhone will be much improved in the near future. Stay tuned and in the meantime, shoot some panoramas!
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