Microsoft ICE

[MarkL]

What are peoples' experiences with microsoft ICE?

I've just been playing around with it. Early impressions:

It deals with panos with different focus points (CS3 and 4 also do but ptgui, autopano etc. all throw a fit)
Managed to perfectly blend blue sky
The same or quicker than CS4

[BernardLanguillier]

It deals with panos with different focus points (CS3 and 4 also do but ptgui, autopano etc. all throw a fit)

Have you provided the good folks at PTgui/Autopano with sample images?

If you have not, you definitely should, they are very responsive and Autopano in particular is currently looking for tough sample to test proof their Autopano giga version currently in beta testing.

http://www.autopano.net/wiki/Lastest_Beta

I dont believe that the big guys are willing to invest what it takes to develop and maintain a top pano software in the mid/long term and would rather help the smaller players further improving tools that are already overall excellent.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Rhossydd]

I hadn't heard of it until this thread.
Having now downloaded it and thrown a few images at it, I'm pretty impressed.

Stitching seems mainly very good indeed for the samples I've tried it with.
Also seems to handle multi row shots without much drama.

It's a bit weird just dropping a bunch of files onto it and letting it get on with it, compared to many other stitchers, but the results do seem good.

I'll experiment with this some more....

[BernardLanguillier]

It's a bit weird just dropping a bunch of files onto it and letting it get on with it, compared to many other stitchers, but the results do seem good.

This is actually exactly how the two leading stitching programs, PTgui and Autopano pro, also work.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Rhossydd]

This is actually exactly how the two leading stitching programs, PTgui and Autopano pro, also work.

I've never used PTGui like that. I've followed it step by step, selecting images, monitoring control point selection etc. Not like MS ICE where you can only dump the files and leave it to get on with it with no user control of what's going on.

Autopano I've never tried.

[Panopeeper]

It deals with panos with different focus points (CS3 and 4 also do but ptgui, autopano etc. all throw a fit)

Are you sure you know how to use ptgui? PTGui too is Panorama Tools based, which deals perfectly with shots of different field of view (that is, what refocusing is about).

[MarkL]

Unfortunately I have found that ICE only outputs to 8bit at the moment which I guess isn't a huge deal if you have done most of the tweaking in RAW already but I prefer to have a 16bit stitched file to work with.

Are you sure you know how to use ptgui? PTGui too is Panorama Tools based, which deals perfectly with shots of different field of view (that is, what refocusing is about).

I probably haven't given it the time it deserves, the alignment and blending seems to go wrong with panos when some frames focused at different points which is often required for landscapes. In PS (and MS ICE) this this with no hassle at all and there is no messing about with control points etc. so I ditched PTGui.

[bill t.]

Pretty impressive, a good introductory tool for the new panoramist.

But the stitch quality and blending look top notch.  At least it can output TIF, and the 8 bit limitation will not be a major issue for most users.  Exemplary software design, from first use to outputting my first stitch took maybe 10 minutes, not bad!

Oops...just removed my comment about ICE not being able to do any perspective control, something PTGui and the others do quite well.  That's the big deficiency with CS4 stitching now, you can not easily perspective correct shots where the camera was tilted significantly up or down.  ICE can in fact handle that situation pretty well...with the "rotating motion" stitch option, you get a cylindrical projection with the verticals parallel.  The vertical elongation is somewhat exaggerated, but can be squeezed down if you like with a simple scaling along the vertical axis in PS.