Panorama Maker Review – Top 15 Panorama Stitching Software on Windows, Mac, and Online
Last Updated on January 8, 2022 by Peter Wood
Panoramas are increasingly popular for social media sites since these photographs provide unique perspectives to observe the world. However, taking a panoramic picture is not a simple task, considering professional panorama cameras are too expensive to afford.
It seems more feasible to shoot multiple photos and create a panoramic picture with them. So making panorama is a process of combining a series of images with overlapping fields.
With this method, next time when you need to get a wide-angle and high-resolution panorama, you do not have to purchase the expensive lenses again. All you have to do is to find an appropriate panorama stitching software, which can align and stitch photos or RAW files to panoramas free.
Once you have entered panorama freeware in a search engine, you will get hundreds of results. It is a waste of time to try every single program. Therefore, this article will introduce the 15 best panorama applications and the best way to make 3D or 360 panoramas to meet your requirements.
Best Panorama Maker - WidsMob Panorama
WidsMob Panoroama is a panorama creator for Windows and Mac. It adopts the advanced panoramic stitching algorithm, which enables you to create a panoramic picture with auto grouping and auto stitching.
The powerful features could give you a seamless experience for making panoramas. Just choose a series of photos and a stitching mode to make a panoramic photograph. Moreover, you can also edit panoramas with some basic parameters. Check WidsMob Panorama's main features below:
1. Read almost all photo formats and camera RAW files with the gigapixel panorama software.
2. Process the panoramas with different advanced algorithm photo stitching methods.
3. Tweak stitch points and blend parts manually to stitch panorama photos as desired.
4. Provide some basic panorama editing tools, such as effects, watermarks, and other options.
5. Compatible with the latest macOS Big Sur and Windows 10.
6. Stitch photos into panoramas horizontally, vertically, in tile, and 360-degree panorama.
How to Stitch Panoramic Picture on Windows and Mac?
Step 1: Once you have launched WidsMob Panorama, you can select photos or RAW files by clicking Add Photos button, or drag and drop the series of photos that you want to make panorama into the program.
Step 2: Choose a panorama-stitching mode, such as vertically, horizontally, in tile, or 360-panorama. After that, you can click Next button to auto stitch photos into a panorama within a few seconds.
Step 3: To adjust the stitching points manually, you can click Fine-tune button to select the desired blending part, then place the red, yellow, and blue arrows in the same stitching points.
Step 4: Click Full Screen to see detailed information. Then adjust Saturation, Contrast, Brightness, Temperature, and Tint parameters to balance the photo effects of your panorama.
Step 5: After that, press Save to the panorama photos. Once you are satisfied with the file, you can export panoramas to TIFF, JPEG, and JPEG-2000 files in an optimal quality before sharing them with social media sites.
Panorama Maker Online - Free Online Panoramic Solution
It should be an attractive idea to use a free online panoramic solution. You do not have to download any program to your computer. And it is easy to share information with others.
1. Clevr
Clevr is an Adobe Air-based panorama-stitching program that enables you to create panoramic images when Adobe Air is installed.
The online method takes your panoramic sources and stitches them into curved, interactive panorama for free. With this website, you can also zoom and pan around your image.
It is a kind of Virtual Reality or 360 Panoramas of the early days.
But it is not a completed free online panorama solution. The Free Clevr Panorama maker only works for up to 50 panoramic images. After that, you should consider another free panorama program.
1. Copy the snippet of HTML from the panorama and embed the interactive viewer in your own site or blog. Make sure you have enabled the Adobe Flash Air to view panoramas on your website.
2. Integrate with Facebook and MySpace that is incredibly easy to share your panoramas. Moreover, you can also send the files to your friends, or email the panorama photos.
3. Add interactive hotspots to your panoramas. It will provide more information, such as displaying notes, photos, or videos. The hotspot can also be used to link panoramas together into a full virtual tour.
4. Organize your panoramas into groups. Easily move between locations.
Panorama Maker Windows - Panoramic Solution on Windows 10/8/7
Actually, Windows provides some default panorama freeware. You can choose them to make panorama photographs. The default programs should always be the initial choice for you.
2. Image Composite Editor
Image Composite Editor is one of the best Microsoft panorama makers for free, which is a part of Windows Live Photo Gallery. The outstanding feature for ICE should be making panorama out from video files.
The free Panorama makers also support some exotic file formats, such as the Silverlight's Deep Zoom mode that lets you zoom in panoramas to ridiculous lengths.
For the program is released several years ago that you can only export the panoramas to a computer first.
The biggest advantage of this panorama windows software is free to use. Unfortunately, it is not available on Windows 10. Here are the principal features of Image Composite Editor:
1. Easy-to-use panorama windows software for an amateur. It seems simple for professionals without advanced settings.
2. Stitch photos together into a panoramic photograph and complete the missing parts automatically.
3. Read most photo files, including RAW and other photo formats.
4. Import hundreds of photos to create a panoramic picture. There is no quantity limit.
5. It will not constrain the size of output that supports a gigapixel panoramic picture with ICE.
6. Share panoramas with the built-in Photosynth service.
3. GIMP
GIMP is popular open-source photo software. Although it does not have the built-in panorama feature, a panorama plugin is available to GIMP. So you can use it as a panorama application on your Windows computer. Here are the principal features include:
1. Create panoramas with GIMP plugin application.
2. Allow you to control the panorama making process completely.
3. Provide control points to align and stitch photos together. Just add or delete control points to make the output perfect.
4. Customize blend size, color radius, and other settings.
5. Provide some auto adjustment options, like color balance, distortion removal, and so on.
6. Edit the panoramas in GIMP with more features, like crop, resize, and other filters.
4. PanoramaPlus
PanoramaPlus is not only a popular photo editor for Windows, but also a panoramic stitcher on Windows. It is a more appropriate method for beginners, because of its auto way to make panoramas.
There are different versions. The start one is free and the PanoramaPlus X4 price is at $28.5. Both of them provide attractive features to create stunning panoramic pictures and virtual reality movies.
1. Select, organize, and stitch photos automatically.
2. Detect the orientation of panoramic picture and apply it.
3. Has the ability to create a panoramic picture from video footage.
4. Provide some built-in editing tools, like crop, rotation, and so on.
5. Support JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and all other popular photo formats.
5. Autopano Pro
Autopano Pro is a unique panorama Windows software. The premium photo stitcher with an intuitive user interface can create panoramas within few clicks.
Just as the name tells, Autopano Giga can detect photos and stitch to panorama automatically. After stitching, if you delete the output and stitch the same photos again, you will get a different panoramic picture.
The masking tool and other multiple pre-stitching plugins supported more than 400 formats and the different types of 360 panoramas (spherical panorama and cylindrical panorama) should be the splendid features of this panorama software.
Autopano makes the creation of panoramas simple, efficient, and pleasant to use. Just learn more details about the excellent features of the Panorama Windows version as below.
1. It is easy to use photo stitching software, which only requires you to load photos for panoramas.
2. It will automatically detect and stitch photos into a panoramic photograph.
3. Provide multiple settings, such as control points, color anchors, geometry, and more.
4. To get a clear panoramic picture, you have to pay $130 to upgrade.
5. New color correction engine to create stunning panorama photographs.
6. Reduce drastically the time needed to open the editor for huge panoramas.
6. Panoweaver
Panoweaver is the panorama software to create Cubic, Cylindrical, Spherical, or a single fisheye project with normal photo formats, RAW files, and HDR photos. Automatic stitching and manual stitching are both supported by this panorama software.
When there are not enough matching points, you can also use manual stitching to match the points manually and create panorama photography.
The batching feature for stitching and publishing, and the enhancing feature to perfect the quality of panorama are only available with the Pro version of panorama software for $299.95.
1. Stitch Gigapixel panorama and GPU acceleration.
2. Support 300 group images batch stitching and HDR image stitching.
3. Easy publish to Flash, HTML5, SWF, and QTVR tours.
7. Windows Live Photo Gallery
Windows Live Photo Gallery is a photo editing software, which can also be used as the panorama maker freeware. You can easily select a series of photos to stitch to a panorama by the Make menu.
You do not have to fiddle with any settings with the free panorama maker to produce stunning files and share them online.
Based on the introduction above, you can select the appropriate panorama Windows software according to your requirements. If you are looking for a simple panorama Windows application, Image Composite Editor might be a good choice.
When you are looking for a panorama Windows tool with rich functions, GIMP is more suitable. For the free panorama software is not focused on photo stitching, you cannot find the different panorama stitch modes or adjust the effects of the panoramas accordingly.
WidsMob Panorama
WidsMob Panorama is professional panorama software to create panorama automatically. This panoramic image stitching software can stitch panorama and normal photos in easy steps with blazing speed.
Panorama Maker Mac - Panorama Solution on macOS (Including macOS Big Sur)
What should you do if you have a Mac operating system? Most of the free Panorama Makers for Mac also have Windows versions, you can learn more about features of Hugin or Autostitch.
8. ArcSoft Panorama Maker
ArcSoft Panorama Maker turns any series of overlapping photos of vast landscapes, city skylines, mountains ranges, lush forests, towering skyscrapers, and cascading waterfalls into dazzling panoramic pictures in just few seconds.
The software has 5 auto-stitch modes: Auto, Horizontal, 360, Tile, and Vertical. However, this software has no longer updated, so if you have any problem, there would be no way to fix.
1. Stitch both photos and video frames as a panorama.
2. Provide 5 different photo stitch modes for your exclusive needs.
3. Powerful media file management and photo editing features.
4. Easily print panorama photos with built-in online Print Service.
9. Hugin
Hugin, as the most popular free panorama maker, can be used for Windows, Mac or even Linux. When you first launch the program, you might find it as easy as imaged.
You can always find the control points and edit the parameter to get out the best result. It should be an all-round of photo stitcher that supports various projection types and editing features. Moreover, it is a free panorama software to stitch photos into a panorama.
Since it should be a little complicated to make panoramas with Hugin, you might have to start with the Simple mode. But once you get the hang of it, you are off and running. And it might not be suitable for putting a large number of photos together to a panorama.
1. Prioritize customizability and advanced functions support for both Multilayer and Gigapixel.
2. Correct shots that are wavy due to inconsistency of level.
3. Support various project types and HDR photo stitching.
10. Autostitch
As a free panorama software, it can be used to take multiple photos or RAW files of a scene and blend them together to make wide-angle photos.
It is very easy to use and is best for photos that are well planned. It allows entire panoramas to be constructed with no user input with just few steps to create panorama automatically.
You have to update panorama freeware to the Pro version with more features, such as the Cylindrical and Planar projections, or use the SIFT algorithm to match points with images.
11. PTGui
The batch functions of PTGui should be the most attractive features of PTGui. You can stitch multiple rows of images into a panoramic image with the panorama software.
The masking tool to fully control the stitched result, the spherical panorama viewer and web publishing tools make the gigapixel panorama more than attractive.
PTGui is only available in English. It should be a little difficult to use the program if you are not native English speaker. Sometimes it might be a little difficult to stitch photos into flat panorama files. It costs EUR79.00.
1. Due to the OpenCL GPU acceleration, PTGui can stitch a 1 Gigapixel panorama in 25 seconds on modest hardware.
2. Automatically figure out how to overlap dropped in photos.
3. Stitch multiple rows of images and support all lenses including fisheyes.
4. Create a fully spherical 360° x 180° panorama.
Panorama Maker App - Panorama 3D Solution
To create 3D panorama photos with ease, it is recommended that you can make panorama and add 3D effects within the same program.
You can check the following panorama maker software and learn how to create 3D panorama.
12. Photaf 3D Panorama Pro for Android
With Photoaf 3D Panorama Pro, you can use the build-in camera of Android to take panoramic photos, and then you program will automatically stitch the serial of photos to create a panorama, after that you can add 3D effects to panorama photo.
It should be a fun 3D panorama tool with some convenient features, instead of a Professional 3D panorama maker. The performance issues and its failure to consistently producing clean panoramic photographs should be the last straw for you.
1. Take images automatically with the phone’s accelerometer.
2. Offer Standard/HD/Super HD modes and auto-stitching of images function.
3. Support social network sites and Photaf’s gallery share.
13. Photosynth + Image Composite Editor
Using Image Composite Editor together with Photosynth should be another solution to create 3D panoramas. Image Composite Editor is a free Panorama maker developed by Microsoft. By uploading the finished panoramas to Photosynth website, you can view the panorama in 3D effects.
Photosynth offers two styles for creating immersive 3D experience. When you shoot a panorama by capturing everything from a single location with single zoom level. The 3D panorama makes you feel like to be in one particular place.
You can simply navigate left or right, up or down, and zoom in or zoom out to control the created panorama file. However, as Microsoft decommissioned the Photosynth website and services. You may only find the software on some download sites by searching the product name.
14. PTGui + StereoPhotoMaker
When you take some photos to create an ordinary panorama file with PTGui, you can convert the equire-ctanglars with StereoPhotoMaker to anaglyph 3D panoramas. It might be a little difficult to navigate between programs with different developers to create a 3D panorama.
You can learn more about how to create panoramic photography first.
Step 1. When you move the panoramas of PTGui to StereoPhotoMaker, you can create two folders with Original Left and Original Right, and then create another folder as Anaglyph or Side by Side.
Step 2. Rename the files for each photo with two names: 3D panorama 1-L, 3D panorama 1-R and so on. You can also rename the whole folder full of file in StereoPhotoMaker.
Step 3. Download StereoPhotomaker, and import the ZIP file to the same folder as the panoramas. Launch the program to import panorama images to create 3D panorama.
Step 4. Choose the Open Left/Right Images… option. Show the folders of the right images and left images to the program. After that, the panorama files will appear side by side.
Step 5. When you click Easy Adjustment icon, it takes you to a window that displays both images semi-transparently. You can then drag one until it lines up well with the other.
And then you can create the 3D panorama in anaglyph mode. You can also choose other 3D panorama files with StereoPhotoMaker in the similar procedure.
You might use other professional tools to go with 3D panoramas creation. Just make sure the device can work with 3D panorama before you choose the panorama maker and the photo stitch mode.
Then you can enjoy the stunning panorama with a 3D effect. It should be the best virtual reality experience for you.
Conclusion
When you come across the breathtaking sceneries, you do not have to replace the panoramic mirror lenses now, you can take series of photos with common exposure and that tripod level should be kept same during the capturing process.
And then stitch the images or photos into stunning panorama with the above panorama software.
The programs mentioned above can create stunning and professional panoramas with a breathtaking view. Do not worry if you are not familiar with the term of photo stitching, it should be much more easier than you think.
You can download the trial version or learn more detail about the program beforehand. If you have any question, you can post a comment. Just enjoy the free panorama makers now!