| Joined: | Thu Apr 19th, 2012 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 4435 |
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Eric wrote:
I use PTGui for panoramas.
I have the free demo and have used it a bit with the watermarks, it works well and provides a workflow which allows intervention to avoid some of the automated Adobe shortcomings like poor alignment and lens corrections which can cause wobbly straight lines in very wide single row panoramas (PTGui provides for pinning fixed alignment points in adjoining images and more).
However, I feel that it's priced somewhat high for just a 12 month licence, I know it's apparently perpetual but they only provide updates for 12 months. With the current advances in (Apple) Mac OS's, 12 months isn't long.
One OS update could cause the PTGui to lose some functionality, fail to open, or become unstable as a couple of my third party applications are at the moment. Necessitating an upgrade, not to mention keeping up with desirable advances in the PTGui software itself. I have considered the lower priced option but I think there are perhaps three functions included in the full package which I would feel are needed for 360º spherical pano's.
Perpetual licensing without perpetual updates isn't a sensible arrangement theses days, if it ever was? I much prefer the subscription model where you always have the latest software with little or no risk of incompatibility, than having to purchase updates periodically at half price.
I scarcely notice £7 per month for the Lightroom - Photoshop bundle but I baulk at £163 lump sum with prospect of £81.50 updates thereafter for minor software which is already partly available in the Adobe products, the Adobe stitching works remarkably well for 'flat' panoramas, especially for say two or three images to cover large subjects like the Kelpies which are difficult to frame in one exposure and keep the reflections.
My version was acquired before all this monthly licensing silliness. I've not encountered any loss of functionality through several operating system changes ....but of course that's Windows.
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Eric