Panorama Tools (also known as PanoTools) are a suite of programs and libraries originally written by the German physics and mathematics professor Helmut Dersch. Panorama Tools provides a powerful framework for re-projecting and blending multiple source images into immersive panoramics of many types. An updated version of the Panorama Tools library serves as the underlying core engine for many software panorama GUI front-ends.
Dersch started development on Panorama Tools in 1998, producing software available for creating panoramas and more, but had to stop development in 2001 due to legal harassment and claims of patent infringement by the company IPIX.[1] Dersch released the core library (pano12) and some of the programs of Panorama Tools under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The rest of the applications were made available as binary executables only and for free without a copyleft license.
On 5 August, 2007, Dersch announced his intention to relicense the Panorama Tools source code.[2] On 9 August, 2007, Dersch changed the license to a GNU Lesser General Public License.[3]
Sub-components
An example of Panorama Tools' ability to remap images shot with a fisheye lens into rectilinear perspective.
PTEditor
Java interactive panorama editor.
PTPicker
Java front end to panorama stitcher and other tools. It provides a graphical interface for feature point selection and position optimization.
PTCrypt
Java tool for scrambling pictures intended to be viewed on-line with PTViewer.
PTStitcher
Panorama stitching tool which remaps, adjusts and combines arbitrary images to panoramic views.
PTOptimizer†
Optimizes positions and sizes of images using control-point data.
PTStereo
Creates 3-dimensional objects from 2 or more stereoscopic images.
PTInterpolate
Physically valid true view interpolator. Given two images of the same scene taken from different positions, this tool creates views from any intermediate position.
PTMorpher
Morphing tool.
PTAverage
Averages images to reduce noise and enhance density.
PTStripe
Combines images into movie-stripes for viewing in object-viewers (PTMovie extension to PTViewer).
PanoTools Plugins
Photoshop, GraphicConverter and GIMP plug-ins for image correction and remapping. Also compatible to many other programs that can use Photoshop plug-ins.
pano12 library
The underlying panorama library, currently used by several different panorama front-ends and command line programs.
pano13 library
Current version of the library. No longer compatible with programs for which no source code is available.
Further developments.
In 2006 the functionality o.f PTstitcher was reproduced by the developers of Panorama Tools. Its functionality was broken into several program, in an attempt to modularize it:
PTmender
Remaps one image at a time
PTblender
Implements the rudimentary colour correction algorithm found in later versions of PTstitcher
PTmasker
Computes stitching masks. It implements the ability to increase depth-of-field by stacking images
PTroller
Takes a set of images and merges them into a single one
PTcrop
Crops an image to its outer rectangle.
PTuncrop
Opposite of PTcrop: takes a cropped file and creates an uncropped one.
PTtiff2psd
Takes a series of input images and creates a Photoshop PSD file where each input file is a layer.
Front-ends and applications.
To make working with Panorama Tools easier and to add functionality, many interactive, graphical front-ends to Panorama Tools have been developed, both open source (e.g. hugin) and commercial (e.g. PTgui and PTMac), along with a variety of other companion applications (e.g. smartblend and enblend), which in many cases make interacting directly with the programs in the original Panorama Tools toolset unnecessary.
Screenshots.
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