Panorama Tools ''(also known as PanoTools)'' are a suite of programs and libraries for

image stitching Image stitching or photo stitching is the process of combining multiple photographic images with overlapping fields of view to produce a segmented panorama or high-resolution image. Commonly performed through the use of computer software, most ap ...

, i.e., re-projecting and blending multiple source images into immersive panoramas of many types. It was originally written by German

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

and

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

professor Helmut Dersch. An updated version of the Panorama Tools library serves as the underlying core engine for many software panorama

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

front ends.

History

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 A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

by the company IPIX. Dersch released the core library (pano12) and some of the programs of Panorama Tools under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

. The rest of the applications were made available as

binary Binary may refer to: Science and technology Mathematics * Binary number, a representation of numbers using only two values (0 and 1) for each digit * Binary function, a function that takes two arguments * Binary operation, a mathematical op ...

executables only and for free without a copyleft license. The development of the source code of Panorama Tools was continued by some members of the original Panorama Tools mailing list. In December 2003 they initiated a

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

project which is currently hosted by

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...

. SourceForge requires that all hosted software is released under an

open source license Open-source licenses are software licenses that allow content to be used, modified, and shared. They facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative ...

. For this reason Dersch's unlicensed binaries are not hosted there, although they can still be found on mirror websites. On 5 August 2007, Dersch announced his intention to relicense the Panorama Tools source code.Alt URL
/ref> On 9 August 2007, Dersch changed the license to a

GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

Sub-components

Original release

PanoTools consists of the following components:Dersch's original home page ;PTEditor:

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

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 Stereoscopy, also called stereoscopics or stereo imaging, is a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any stereoscopic image is ...

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 Morphing is a special effect in motion pictures and animations that changes (or morphs) one image or shape into another through a seamless transition. Traditionally such a depiction would be achieved through dissolving techniques on film. Si ...

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 Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe for Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editin ...

, GraphicConverter and

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plug-ins for image correction and remapping. Also compatible to many other programs that can use

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. ^†Open source.

Further developments

In 2006 the functionality of 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. ^†Open source.

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 ), which in many cases make interacting directly with the programs in the original Panorama Tools toolset unnecessary.

References

External links

*
Helmut Dersch
author's current site.
Helmut Dersch old page
author's site last state before it was taken offline in 2001.
PanoTools.org
primary community page recommended by the SourceForge project {{Raster graphics editors Free software programmed in C Free photo stitching software Photo software for Linux