Kekus Digital, LLC, has released a new shareware product called PTMac, which creates panoramas (cubic, cylindrical, and flat). The US$49.95 app, based on Helmut Dersch’s Panorama Tools, works on Mac OS 8.6 and higher, including Mac OS X.
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PTMacs stitches images to create spherical and QuickTime Cubic panoramas, cylindrical panoramas, and high resolution mosaics, said Kevin Kratzke of Kekus Digital. It also corrects lens distortions.
“Panorama Tools, or PanoTools, are GPL licensed free tools that are powerful but are also very difficult to learn,” he added. “In addition, Helmut stopped development of his tools on the Mac platform with Mac OS 8.6. We picked up from there to create an easy to use front-end Classic Mac OS and also ported the tools to Mac OS X.”
Kratzke said that, unlike many other stitching programs, PTMac/Panotools can correct barrel and pincushion distortion in wide angle lenses; the severe distortion in fisheye lenses (users can even re-compile the core program to use fisheye images of more than 160 degrees); light fall-off that often happens in very wide angle lenses; color shift; and more.
You can download PTMac at the Kekus Web site. The company also promises Mac OS X Photoshop 7 plug-ins for PanoTools in the next week or two.