Hi Fred -
IMO, the best software is Kolor Autopano Giga ("APG") (
http://www.kolor.com)
How long does it take in post? Well, that is determined by a number of factors: how many images you're trying to stitch; how big they are; how powerful your PC is; whether you can feed APG an XML file that provides the yaw, pitch & roll for each image.
Crazy example? Over 4,000 separate 16 MP jpgs took my computer (i7 920, 24GB RAM) around 18 hours to stitch. That was however after I had spent several
days manually adding control points where the software had not been able to match images up. End result is a 180 gigabyte file.
But that's a crazy example.
If you're only looking to stitch, say, 10-30 images, and you were careful how you took them, then you're probably looking at just a few minutes with a decent PC to produce a perfectly stitched image. Beyond that, post processing is no different to any other image, except you'll be working with a larger file, and so you want lots of RAM, and fast disks.
Regards,
Gerald.
As I've never explored the stiching task, I'd like to know how long does it takes in post (an average) to obtain top results.
If it doesn't take too long and the processes and softwares are serious and stable, it could be professionally usable.
But if it's a DIY kind of process that takes days to get perfect results the painfull way, I won't get into it.
Thanks.
Ps: if someone could link here from experience the best software(s) currently available for this task I'd be very thankfull. And if the cherry on the cake is that if it's freeware, even better.