Recently inspired by this thread on the Vortex about panoramas, I decided to give it a shot myself.
Swear to God, in less than 20 minutes, I downloaded the ArcSoft Panorama Maker trial software, installed it, went outside and set up the tripod (overkill), took the pictures, downloaded them onto the computer from the camera, and then let Panorama Maker 3 do it’s magic.
Here’s my first attempt as a compressed .jpeg. It has some obvious flaws in it, but you can see the potential. If I took a few more pictures with more overlap, it would’ve been much better. I only used 6. And with a subject that’s more interesting than our scrappy backyard, results should be better in future attempts. (And yes, we still haven’t painted over the masterpiece entitled Millie.)
Not impressed yet? Well check out the backyard Flash movie (gasp!) and QuickTime {oops, no links… The QuickTime is 60m and the flash is 12m. Sorry!}. For a trial version of the software, that’s a pretty cool feature to throw in.
Two thumbs up for Panorama maker!
dc
One reply on “ArcSoft Panorama Maker 3 Review”
CAUTION, be forewarned by my experiences: the three ArcSoft products I own have all been exercises in frustration, wasted time and effort, and failure to function.
ArcSoft sells BUGGY software. For example, PhotoBase 4.5 & Photo Impression 5 both fail to install on an HP PC running Windows XP Home Edition. Panorama Maker 3 installs and opens but gives error messages when trying to work with albums and files.
ArcSoft DOES NOT SUPPORT their products. They do not answer emails or phone calls. Their internet knowledge base is very spotty and incomplete. When downloads are available, ArcSoft instructs customers to have no confidence in them: “Program patches/updates … may or may not work, and may actually cause your program(s) to function improperly.”
ArcSoft intentionally designs their software to be USER-UNFRIENDLY. For example, there is no help feature and no display of version number in Panorama Maker 3. If users go online to the ArcSoft knowledge base and search, they will find a listing of 5 steps to go through to discover a version number. The manual and knowledge base have no index and no list of errors or ways to troubleshoot them.