SMcQ

There used to be an iOS app called Autostitch from Cloudburst Research (bought out by Google). It used the SIFT algorithm to automatically align images and render a 360 in equirectangular. Alas, that app was never upgraded to later versions of iOS. Current stitching apps for 360 are crap. The closure of Kolor by GoPro is an opportunity for Serif. We have Affinity for desktop and iPad with the panorama persona, yes, but it needs a little more work. There isn't a way to designate the format of the taking lens, such as full frame fisheye, or to designate the output to equirectangular or cylindrical projection. And the panorama persona cannot properly stitch full frame fisheye images or images taken with vertical diagonals. Of course, APG is (was) a desktop program. There never was a full function stitcher app for mobile operating systems, Autostitch, while a good stitcher, was limited. Affinity Photo for iPad comes close, and could even exceed in many ways the capability of desktop stitchers if it added a few features. There would be a lot of demand for an iPad stitcher that could make 360 equirectangular 2:1 images in the field, on assignment. Attention Serif: you may find that the founder and the team that developed AutoPanoGiga and AutoPanoVideo might be interested in helping you bring the panorama persona to the next level. The world needs an iPad based 360 stitcher that can work with any input.

Affinity Photo for iPad does a really good job stitching panoramas from sequences taken with my iPad, although the process is extremely awkward when using the camera within Photo itself. What frustrates me is that the panorama feature cannot handle full frame fisheyes taken with another camera, to make spherical 360 photospheres. I’ve imported sets from a Hero 6 Black and from a Sony Alpha 6000 with full frame fisheye, and the panorama functionality makes a mess of them. It doesn’t have the capability to re-project a fisheye to equirectangular prior to stitching. I think the panorama feature is using the SIFT algorithm to get really good feature matches from standard photos, which streamlines the stitching. For desktop and Mac, AutoPanoGiga uses this, also. There is nothing for the iPad (or any iOS device) that will fit full frame fisheye images (or any other lens) to stitch spherical 360 views. Affinity Photo should fill this gap, and it should be able to stay in RAW to make them so further processing in Photo can refine the image.

Some panorama rigs place a camera in an rotated orientation about the optical axis, setting the diagonal of the image frame to vertical. The effect is to tilt the picture. This is quite efficient and provides for integrated nodal alignment with the mount without need for adjustment. The attached pictures show what I mean better than words can describe. On a PC the best of breed AutoPano Giga can read this orientation without flaw, creating stitched panoramas that have no errors. However, Affinity Photo cannot do this, and makes a mess of an inclined orientation, rendering a garbage panorama. It also has a problem with full frame fisheye lenses. I have Affinity Photo for Windows and as the specs are the same for the iPad version, it would have the same problem. I want to use Affinity Photo for iPad Pro as my platform in the field when taking 360 photospheres. This will not be an option for me until Affinity can stitch a series of full frame fisheye images in rotated orientation (diagonal set to vertical during exposure). APG uses the SIFT algorithm to do this and I think the Affinity Photo panorama picture matching also uses SIFT. It should be a simple thing to program the matching so that an rotated orientation poses no problem.. This improvement would not only help with some photosphere rigs, it would also help with hand held photosphere input, which is often askew.