Image & Nature magazine has just dedicated a test to Autopano Pro in its 13th issue. This test is interesting because it quotes several arguments of Autopano Pro and tests them one after the other.

The 5 tested arguments are: ease of use, automatic detection of photos belonging to a same panorama, automatic correction of color and exposure differences, stitching of images having different focal distances, and stitching of images shot every which way.

Each argument was tested and positively validated by the magazine editors! Phew!

Image & Nature magazine begins by the program’s interface, which is “clear and intuitive”. About the automatic panorama detection, “it is amusing to note that the program often finds more stitchings that what you excpect”.

The conclusion of the test of color and exposure correction cannot be clearer: “the software’s capabilities in this field are totally impressive”! Performances in exposure correction “can be built on to perform HDR stitching (high dynamic range images)”.

The test of stitching images of different focal distances was quite advanced, since Autopano Pro could even “stitch a photo shot with a 15mm fisheye with a photo shot with a 35mm!”

Finally, no matter if the photos are shot vertically, horizontally or slanting, “Autopano Pro reorders all photos and gives the best possible stitching”.

The article concludes: “this program is the best pick! Simple and powerful, it puts panoramic photography at everybody’s reach, and enables even wider applications. A must-have!

This 13th issue of Image & Nature magazine also dedicated a test to the new Canon EOS-1 Mark III reflex camera. This magazine is currently being sold in French stores and on http://www.image-nature.com.

A 10-page article is dedicated to panoramic photography in the 34th issue of French magazine Declic Photo (nov. 2007), including 4 pages dedicated to photo stitching.

After listing the hardware that can be used in the professional panoramic photography, the article deals with the stitching process itself, and focuses on Autopano Pro:
“No need to beat around the bush, the best quality/simplicity/price ratio is hold by Autopano Pro, an amazing French software that automatically detects the photos to be stitched. (…) The advantage of a software like Autopano Pro is that he does not only stitches your images: it corrects the stitching defects, modifies the views’ exposure to make them homogenous, adapts the images tones, handles most of file formats, and can manage a large number of images to stitch.”

This article, written by Denis Boyard, is illustrated with panoramic photographs by Bertrand Bodin, to whom the magazine dedicates an interview:

“After having tested several perfectible solutions, I adopted the program Autopano Pro, developed by Alexandre Jenny, mathematician in Chambery (France). This software detects and stitches my photos with a stupefying speed and an incredible easiness, all this without any montage defect in most cases. While I used to need seven hours of work in Photoshop to stitch a panorama manually (it was the only available method when I started out), now it only takes me a few minutes to manage it! The whole thing does not need particular attention, since you only need a few clicks to perform a series of stitched images in an image folder. I can even launch a rendering and go and do something else when in the case of a very large format.”

Bertrand Bodin has just published his new book dedicated to the architectural work of Vauban, architect and urban planner of Louis XIV (Vauban les Sites Majeurs, available from Libris). The book is illustrated with numbers of panoramas by the photographer, and the texts are from Nicolas Faucherre, archeologist and historian. We will dedicate a further article to this book’s release.