Why did you remove the orientation selection in version 3.0?
The short answer is simplicity, speed and the assumption that people will always want the biggest possible shot that they can get (portrait).
We may have gotten this wrong and are happy to await your
feedback.
Why did you remove the resolution selection in version 3.0?
Because the latest devices can handle larger computations that earlier versions struggled with.
This is why we brought it in - because sometimes the app would crash when trying to stitch large panoramas together.
We also brought in a memory function so that shots would not be lost if the app crashed so we are glad to not have that overhead in the app any more.
Why did you take so long to update the app?
3 reasons:
1. We both went off to see if we could make our fortune on other projects.
2. The app still functioned and delivered a great result.
3. The features and functions in the app required a lot of re-configuration when apple came out with new hardware and operating systems.
It was pretty much a complete re-build every time.
Basically we did not have a very robust model. We assumed that new devices and operating systems would not require fundamental changes to our app - we were wrong.
So now we have simplified things to make updates a lot easier for us.
Not everyone is going to like the changes but hopefully people will understand the reasoning. It's been a very tough road balancing the needs of people who want additional features with thos who appreciate simplicity above all else.
Why do panoramas come out so small?
The email program in the iPhone re-sizes images before it sends them.
Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about this. In order to retrieve panoramas at full size, you will need to retrieve the photos directly from the device (i.e. synchronize photos through iTunes or retrieve them from a generic photo application by accessing the iPhone as a standard digital camera).
Is the panorama stitching completely automatic?
Yes.
All you need to do is to take the photos, which need to be only roughly aligned. Our app will then automatically (and accurately)
align and blend the photos for you.
What is the resolution of resultant panorama photo?
The size of resultant panorama depends on how many photos are taken. The more photos you take, the larger panorama you get.
From version 2.0 you can also take photos in either portrait or landscape mode and choose from 3 resolution options for the output image.
Does the application auto-adjust colour/exposure to match the
images?
Yes.
There's usually a significant difference in the level of
color intensities between two adjacent images, which needs to be
removed. We use a combination of methods for color blending/matching
which operate differently on lower and higher frequency components of
images. This method ensures a smooth transition between image intesities, and at the same time preserves detail information
in the output panorama.
Is there a limit as to how many photos we have in the panorama before we save them out?
In version 2.0, we introduced smarter resource management which now allows users to take as many photos as they like. It is now easy to create 360 panoramas (see an example on the homepage).
Is it just left to right panoramic's or can it detect 'stacked' images
(for example a group of 3 images across the bottom and 3 images across the
top?)
Just 'left-to-right' / 'top-to-bottom' mode at this stage, but we would
consider stacked scenarios for future releases.
The concept of starting by choosing the 'stack type' (i.e. 1x3; 3x3; etc) and them having the app line up the series of next shots sounds exciting.
Any future plans for the app?
In the future, we would probably like to include an extra step in the
automatic stitching process to reduce distortion of images caused by
the optics of the iphone camera.
We also think that at the end of the process, instead of seeing a static preview of the panorama just taken, it could be larger and aminated, playing through for the user.