Tag Archives: software

AutoStitch – Building Panoramas on your iPhone Automagically

autostitch-icon.pngSo one of the coolest programs I’ve downloaded from the iPhone App Store is AutoStitch. It takes a bunch of photos and stitches them together. Alex Lindsey talked about this on MacBreak Weekly a few weeks ago. He spoke so highly of it, I plopped down my $1.99 and started using it immediately.

autostitch-screen-capture.PNGYou take a bunch of overlapping photos and it stitches them together, it does this completely automatically, there is no user intervention. You can use pictures you’ve taken with the iPhone but you can just as easily use pictures that you’ve synced with the phone. So this can work for the iPod Touch too, just sync some photos and when you’ve got some spare time, stitch them together. It does an amazing job.

I first used some photos that I shot on my Canon SD1100, it that just happened to be synced to the phone and did a great job of stitching them together. So you don’t need an iPhone, an iPod Touch with photos that you’ve synced works great too.

Above you can see a sample screenshot from the program where I chose 22 photos and it stitched them together (click it to enlarge). Remember all I did was pick the photos and a few minutes later it churned these out. All these photos were taken with the iPhone 3gs. If I cropped some of the edges of the photos, it’d look like I took there with a really wide angle lens.

Here are two samples:

detroit-cityfestjaggies.JPG
I chose this one specifically so you can really see how it pieces these together. It’s got gaps in it, (I think) this is the one I took 22 photos for the image; just the part with the people on the blanket in the middle is 3 or 4 images.
Click the image to enlarge to 2,500 by 800 pixels.


detroitcityfest.JPG
This one is more complete as I took many up and down photos to go with it. That’s the Detroit Fisher Building on the left.
Click the image to enlarge to 2,000 by 1,000 pixels.

These pictures were taken at CityFest in Detroit this summer.

I’ve used it multiple times and only once had a problem; it got confused when I did a 360 panorama when the same type of railing showed up several times, this was because all the condos where I live are similar so it really couldn’t match things up. There are some matching issues with color/contrast and people moving, but this is really great!

This software is well worth the $1.99! I think I got that much fun out of it in the first hour, let alone all the time since then. ZZZ

I bought the MacHeist 3 Bundle

macheist3So I tried out the MacHeist 3 bundle, it’s only $39 and has gobs of software in it; 12 applications (with additional games if you get in early) and even more if you convince a few friends to sign up.

Lot’s of graphics-type software this time around. Painting, snapshots, 3D animation, a cool recipe app (with huge fonts so you can read it from across the room and scroll with your Apple remote)

They say it’s worth $975+, but since you wouldn’t want everything it’s not worth that much. I think all the software are full versions, many will probably offer discounts to get you to upgrade to future versions. One application, BoinxTV, is a Sponsored Edition and “you only need to add a credit somewhere in each show stating that it was created with BoinxTV” (actually they normally sell this for $199, the non-sponsored is $499!)

I wanted the video camera switcher software, BoinxTV, which isn’t unlocked yet, but I jumped on since some networking board games were free for the first 25,000 people (you still have time). They unlock more apps as they make sales, encouraging you to promote it to other people. And if other people follow your suggestion to purchase, they give you a few more free apps.

World of Goo is a cool game for the bit I tried it. A slow puzzle game but the animations make it seem like it’s a faster game.

Lots of info on all the applications at the MacHeist 3 site.

Let’s see, what else? 25% of the sales go to charity (you can pick which one of ten) and they’ve raised $131,000 so far this sale! You can get EventBox for free, it manages your social networks, just go here and scroll down (I don’t think you even have to register).

HoudahSpot – mini-review (It could be free for you)

Here’s a mini-review of HoudahSpot it’s a piece of software to help you find files on your computer. First I have to ask: have I mentioned MacZOT.com before? They have a different piece of software way on sale every day with different marketing schemes. Today, a Mac OS X Tiger search program drops a nickel in price for every blog that mentions it. So it could be be free today if enough people mention it…

THEY’VE EXTENDED OFFER THIS THROUGH SATURDAY. It’s down to $4 and if you blog a mini-review it’s free.

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