The interviewed photographer Cédric Girard sees Autopano as “a must-have for any photographer wishing to create panoramas regularly”. “In addition, it is affordable to buy and very ergonomic to use”. You can read the full article in French just below.

Looking for other Kolor and Autopano reviews? Check the links below:

Kolor Press Review Kolor Customer Reviews

Download Autopano Pro / Autopano Giga 3.0.5

OR — Discover Autopano 3.0

Discover just below the changelog of this version.

The change log

Main changes

Update of some languages

German, Polish, Turkish, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, Italian.

Fixes in 3.0 stable channel

Version 3.0.4 had an issue with computing the needed size for rendering layers. So rendering layers was often not allowed.

We quickly addressed this issue and are releasing the fix today.

Fixes since 3.0.4:

- 0001825: [Editor] Pano disk space estimation is wrong when rendering layers.

Jump to 64 bits

Today’s cameras generate images that become bigger and bigger and require more power to process them, as well as a better memory management. Autopano is available in 32 bits or 64 bits to be compatible with all computer types, but you should definitely favor the 64-bit version if your operating system can handle it. This will increase the memory usage capability of Autopano and therefore get round the memory leak issue.

What is the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems?

On 64-bit operating systems you have access to essentially unlimited RAM, because these systems offer a wider address system and data path. On 32-bit systems, each application is limited to 4GB of RAM (in practice this number is actually smaller). More RAM means applications can manipulate larger pieces of data, cache more information and handle a wide range of tasks more efficiently. Autopano Pro is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit systems, but we highly recommend you to use a 64-bit system if you are planning to create big image stitchings.

What do I need to do to upgrade to a 64-bit operating system?

• On Windows :
If your computer has a 64-bit processor, then you can upgrade to a 64-bit version of Windows. If your computer does not have a 64-bit processor, you may upgrade to a new computer. Refer to your computer dealer for more information.
• On Mac :
Mac OS X Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion are already 64-bit capable, which enables leveraging of more than 4GB of RAM. If you intend to create huge image stitchings, you can just add some RAM and you will start seeing the benefits of the 64-bits support in Autopano Pro.

Modify the use of the graphics card if you notice a performance decrease

The GPU (= graphics card) mode uses the resources of the graphics card of your computer while Autopano processes something, instead of the processor’s resources. This mode is activated by default since Autopano version 2.6 and enables a better user experience in the panorama editor. It may happen that your graphics card is not powerful enough to perform the tasks asked by Autopano (this is particularly the case for graphics cards integrated on the motherboard). If you are not satisfied with the performance of Autopano, please perform the following 3 solutions:
• Install the latest version of your graphics card driver
• Try the compatibility mode for the old graphics cards
• If the above solutions don’t better the performance, deactivate totally the use of the GPU. You will then work only with the power of the processor, not the graphics card. This will facilitate the operations in the panorama editor and slightly increase the rendering speed, but you won’t be able to use some tools anymore, like the panorama move.

Modify the file browser

If Autopano crashes when you open a file browser (for instance when you click on the “Analyze a folder” icon or when you save a project), this is due to a conflict between Autopano and another application. To solve this problem, deactivate the use of the system file browser in the Preferences window, General tab. In this way you get round the conflict causing the crash and activate the use of a specific file browser proper to Autopano. This file browser is similar to the system one, but with some limitations: no contextual menu (right-click), no display settings for the files and folders, no thumbnails and network browsing.

To go further

A special page lists the troubleshooting solutions answering most of the issues you may experience in the use of Autopano:

Discover Autopano’s troubleshooting solutions

The forums help you share your experience, ask questions and get answers to your specific cases:

Forum: using Autopano Forum: Autopano bugs

You can also get technical support by contacting the team of Kolor.

Download Autopano Pro / Autopano Giga 3.0.4

OR — Discover Autopano 3.0

Discover just below the changelog of this version.

The change log

Main changes

Fixes in 3.0 stable channel

We are doing a lot of work to get solve most of the crashes reported. Nevertheless, most of them are related to graphics drivers, so please don’t forget to be up to date on this part of the computer. Also, if you create big panoramas or using big images, you should definitively switch to 64bits of our products, it is free and solves some memory issues.

Some Windows users have crashes when using system file browser. These crashes can happen when you just try to open a folder to select some images. If you do have crashes in these part, you are having some issues with either network drives, shortcut on this folder, other software acceeding to the folder like antivirus, etc. To prevent these crashes, we added a new option in general settings to tell autopano not to use the native file browser, but using our own file browser that doesn’t suffer from these issues. It should prevent any crash coming from strange cohabitation with external software accessing folder.

New raw support

Last RAW formats have been integrated like the Nikon D600, the Canon 6D, etc.

New supported cameras

• CANON
  Canon IXUS 1100 HS (Powershot ELPH 510 HS)
  Canon IXUS 115 HS (Powershot ELPH 100 HS)
  Canon IXUS 125 HS (Powershot ELPH 110 HS)
  Canon IXUS 220 HS (Powershot ELPH 300 HS)
  Canon IXUS 230 HS (Powershot ELPH 310 HS)
  Canon IXUS 240 HS (Powershot ELPH 320 HS)
  Canon IXUS 310 HS (Powershot ELPH 500 HS)
  Canon IXUS 500 HS (Powershot ELPH 520 HS)
  Canon IXUS 510 HS (Powershot ELPH 530 HS)
  Canon IXUS 140 (Powershot ELPH 130)
  Canon IXY 31S (Powershot ELPH 500 HS)
  Canon Powershot ELPH 510 HS
  Canon Powershot ELPH 130
  Canon Powershot A1400
  Canon Powershot A2600
  Canon Powershot N
• FUJIFILM
  Fujifilm X100S
  Fujifilm X20
  Fujifilm FinePix HS50 EXR
  Fujifilm FinePix SL1000
  Fujifilm FinePix S8200
  Fujifilm FinePix S8300
  Fujifilm FinePix S8500
  Fujifilm FinePix XP60
  Fujifilm FinePix T500
  Fujifilm FinePix T550
• NIKON
  Nikon 1 S1
  Nikon 1 J3
• OLYMPUS
  Olympus Tough TG-2 iHS
  Olympus TG-630 iHS
  Olympus TG-830 iHS
  Olympus SZ-16 iHS
• PANASONIC
  Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS30 (DMC-TZ40)
  Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS5 (DMC-FT5)
  Panasonic Lumix DMC-XS1
  Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ30
  Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ3
  Panasonic Lumix DMC-FH10
  Panasonic Lumix DMC-F5
  Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS25 (DMC-TZ35)
  Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS25 (DMC-FT25)
• PENTAX
  Pentax MX-1
• SAMSUNG
  Samsung WB800F
  Samsung WB30F
  Samsung DV150F
  Samsung ST150F
  Samsung NX300
• SIGMA
  Sigma DP3 Merrill
• SONY
  Sony Cyber-shot DSC-WX80
  Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TF1
  Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H200
  Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W710
  Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W730

Fixes since 3.0.3:

- 0001793: [Editor] Crash at exit if neutralhazer computes something
- 0001804: [UI behavior] Create stack by N
- 0001798: [UI behavior] progression bar of the group doesn’t hide after a jpeg read error message
- 0001800: [Neurone ( optimisation )] Matrix optimization : focal, dPitch and dYaw badly computed
- 0001792: [Editor] Mouse cursor is not restored when leaving the crop tool
- 0001789: [UI behavior] wrong rendering times
- 0001739: [Unclassified] Installer failed cheking autopano instance
- 0001776: [Cortex ( rendu )] Wrong memory estimation for gigapan testcase
- 0001777: [Crash Dump] protect history management after pano optimization
- 0001667: [Unclassified] Add symbols for plugins
- 0001774: [Editor] Import wizard + autodetection off = no usage of xml image position
- 0001766: [Crash Dump] GroupsManager::OnAbort crash
- 0001696: [Crash Dump] null matrix in FindPanorama::KdTreeThread
- 0001715: [Crash Dump] ImageDef::GetThumbnailFromHighRes
- 0001757: [Image I/O] Wrong EXIF size interpretation
- 0001765: [Crash Dump] NullKImage in RenderBlocKic ?
- 0001764: [Crash Dump] WHGrid::UnitPixel crashes
- 0001720: [Crash Dump] Link editor item update
- 0001751: [Image I/O] Integration cameras.txt / lensid.txt
- 0001742: [Cortex ( rendu )] Memory leak during quick preview
- 0001761: [Neurone ( optimisation )] Review random algorithms
- 0001744: [Crash Dump] Image does not exists in RTPRenderFullToKImage
- 0001686: [Crash Dump] Crash when trying to report error to user
- 0001681: [Crash Dump] Unhandled exception in thread context
- 0001763: [Image I/O] pink line on nef D600 decoding
- 0001748: [Crash Dump] Division by zero during SIFT
- 0001684: [Crash Dump] Null matrix in KOSAC_Similarity
- 0001716: [Crash Dump] Crash when editing temp dir list
- 0001725: [Editor] Add description of %F in render name template
- 0001755: [Unclassified] Wrong URL used on registration failed message
- 0001740: [Cortex ( rendu )] Anti-ghost not finishing ?
- 0001758: [Crash Dump] Allow Qt file dialog to be used instead of system ones

The photographers (De Graaf Photographes) have hidden 7 Easter eggs in the panorama, 5 of them are related to the history of Lyon. The visitor can therefore spend some time finding the surprises and discovering the famous monuments of the 3rd biggest city in France, such as the Fourviere basilica (19th century), the Saint-Jean Cathedral (15th century) or the historical courthouse (19th century).

The shooting took place during the winter; the same panorama will be created over the 3 other seasons.

Download the press release

The stitching in Autopano Giga 3

The 3956 photos composing the panorama have been imported via the VR Drive II module of Autopano Giga.

The stitching has last 20 hours on a Mac equipped with an Intel I7 processor (2x 4 cores) of 3.6Ghz, with 36Gb of RAM, a 400Gb SSD drive (raid 0) and a 3 Tb drive (raid 0).

The .kro file exported from Autopano Giga weighted 360Gb. Quite a nice size.

Zoom on Lyon

> Download Autopano Pro and Autopano Giga 3.0.3.

The change log

Main changes

Fixes in 3.0 stable channel

Version 3.0.2 had a serious issue with the cache manager that prevented the use of the application with some hardware configurations. This bug typically happened while using the GigaPan import plugin.

We quickly addressed this issue and released the fix today. We advise all customers not to use version 3.0.2 anymore and directly update to this one.

Fixes since 3.0.2:

- 0001724: [Editor] Image mismatch when gigapan importing

- 0001723: [Synapse ( detection )] Hard links don’t link hard

> Download Autopano Pro and Autopano Giga 3.0.2.

This update, free for users of version 3, brings bug fixes. The new bug reporting system recently introduced in Autopano is very effective as it enabled us identify some bugs with precision, and solve them quickly.

The change log

Main changes

Fixes in 3.0 stable channel

Since the stable release, we getting some new reports about some issue found in some cases. We continue to stabilize everything in these rare cases and we are pretty confident about having now a really stable version. Among the fixes, some of them needs some explaination:

• It seems that the way we balanced the memory reserved between rendering and input image caching was not optimal in some configuration. We added more memory reserved for pictures displaying and reduced a little for rendering.
• Local optimization was broken since early in beta stable. It didn’t create any problem as general optimization was still working, but we get it back. You should see nice speed up in optimization stage.
• This version has also some updated translation and one new translation: Polish.

Crash reporter

Most recurring reports have been fixed. Some crashes are not easy to prevent and depend on the computer:

• Try to update you graphics drivers. Many reports are still showing crashs in graphics drivers and not in autopano.
• Always use the 64bit version of autopano ( when the OS allow it ) for using big pictures or for rendering large panoramas.

The troubleshooting page for autopano support has been updated with all the solutions found. Have a look there it you have still recurring crashes with the software : http://www.autopano.net/wiki-en/action/view/Autopano_Solutions

We will continue to work on this stable channel. Nevertheless, the work on next engine has already been started. Autopano Engine v3.1 is all about color correction engine improvement.

Fixes since 3.0.1:

- 0001701: [Unclassified] Crash report UI, link to common page

- 0001707: [translation] Added Polish language

- 0001710: [Editor] Images disappear when control point is deleted

- 0001694: [Crash Dump] Crash when reporting GFL error

- 0001706: [Image I/O] Editor preview needs lot of pitcures reload

- 0001705: [Cortex ( rendu )] Antighost in HDR mode

- 0001700: [Editor] Folder detection find groups with only 1 picture

- 0001703: [Crash Dump] Crash during preview

- 0001699: [Image I/O] EXIF : Description field prevent simple Google+ upload

- 0001679: [Editor] meshing display is not correct

- 0001680: [Crash Dump] Null pointer in UIPanoEditor

- 0001678: [Crash Dump] QPixmap conversion

- 0001682: [Crash Dump] Null pointer in KImageVirtualLayer::Close

- 0001675: [Crash Dump] Crash during WHLinkEditor Paint event

- 0001695: [Crash Dump] Null KImage cause crash in control point editor

- 0001686: [Crash Dump] Crash when trying to report error to user

- 0001691: [Crash Dump] UI group contextual menu : many crash when group is empty

- 0001690: [Crash Dump] GroupsManager : m_pCurrentCommand bad threaded access

- 0001685: [Crash Dump] Uncaught exception in UIWPClauss::ParseConfigFile

- 0001380: [Neurone ( optimisation )] Optimization with orphan images

- 0001668: [Crash Dump] ImageDefCache2 crash in free

- 0001676: [Crash Dump] Crash in KCacheDiskManager::getUniqueFilename

- 0001674: [Neurone ( optimisation )] Local optimization does not work anymore

- 0001664: [Editor] Force every images in one panorama breaks the stitching

- 0001672: [Crash Dump] Uncaught exception during sift

- 0001673: [Crash Dump] Fix weight computation for rendering

- 0001663: [Crash Dump] Exception thrown when loading pano not caught

- 0001669: [Crash Dump] Out of bounds access causing crash in mutex lock or deadlocks

> Download Autopano Pro and Autopano Giga 3.0.1.

With the release of a new stable software, there is always a lot of bug reported in early time as many people are now trying the software on several computer / platform. So, it is normal that we got report, but as the beta / RC stage was nicely done, there are no critical bug, only some crash that can only be reproduced in some circomptances. We had some other bug report through email or forum. Quite all have been done! (see change log below). This free update brings updated translation and new translation too.

The change log

Main changes

Fixes since 3.0.0:

– 0001634: [Unclassified] mac version downloader
– 0001662: [UI behavior] icon size and styles of pano editor not saved on OSX
– 0001661: [UI behavior] Orphan window in the main window
– 0001543: [Import plugins] VRDrive II plugin, support for zenith / nadir
– 0001651: [Crash Dump] Failed to allocate KIC Pool
– 0001657: [Crash Dump] KDTreeThread : Access out of bounds
– 0001652: [Crash Dump] Crash during detection (Bad index when preparing linked list)
– 0001629: [Crash Dump] Crash when opening editor & link editor before optimization finished
– 0001630: [Crash Dump] Crash during control point editor update
– 0001648: [Crash Dump] [MACOSX] Crash in mutex locking
– 0001656: [Image I/O] reload picture is not working
– 0001631: [Import plugins] Crash during panotools import
– 0001645: [Crash Dump] Improve compatibility with intel GPUs
– 0001646: [Crash Dump] Crash during graph cut
– 0001644: [Crash Dump] Crash in PanoDef::ProjectFullFilename
– 0001653: [Editor] Render notification sound not saved
– 0001628: [Crash Dump] Crash when deleting windows hooks
– 0001654: [Crash Dump] IOBlock : exception in destructor
– 0001649: [Doc] Doc/Soft mismatch on Clip/Unclip value in images settings
– 0001647: [Crash Dump] Crash when aborting a group processing
– 0001642: [Editor] Handle decimal point variants (, .) in image properties field
– 0001638: [Image I/O] Selecting images doesn’t work when German is set
– 0001639: [translation] German translation prevent loading images
– 0001637: [Crash Dump] Null scale factor during texture creation
– 0001635: [Editor] Layer dock wiget cannot be moved on the left dock area
– 0001624: [UI behavior] drag and drop location
– 0001621: [Shell Integration] Linux – “Open .pano with Autopano” only launches Autopano
– 0001623: [Unclassified] pano file version
– 0001619: [UI behavior] Tooltip on mask tool
– 0001627: [Editor] Crash on close since pano ask for update when saving
– 0001626: [Neurone ( optimisation )] Crash during optimization
– 0001620: [Editor] Linux Editor (CPU mode only) – Mouse over images always highlights the same image
– 0001617: [Cortex ( rendu )] wrong overlaps estimation on antighost
– 0001625: [Neurone ( optimisation )] Crash during optimization (Papywizard import)
– 0001622: [Editor] Add contextual menu to vertical line tool to suppress line

As a reminder: anyone can try Autopano 3.0 in the demo mode, and users having a legitimate registration key of version 2 can use it in this RC version of Autopano 3.0, that expires at the end of December.

Download Autopano Pro / Autopano Giga 3.0 RC 1

Change log

Main changes

This is release candidate version of Autopano Engine v3 and hopefully the only one. So one version before final release.

Memory optimization

Since beta 3, we are using the newly created crash report to fix and improve memory use for the application. We found some memory leak and some issues that will improve globally the engine.

Using during beta stage

We believe in our community and in our customers that have been supporting us for a long year on this version. The quality of a software application doesn’t come only from the quality of the developer ( come on, still a bit ), but from the quality of the communication between you and us. So for the v3, we decided to do the following:

• You can try all alpha, beta of Autopano Pro/Giga for free during the pre-release stage of the products. You can even remove the watermark as soon as you have a legitimate v2 key.
• All betas are limited in time. This Release Candidate version will expire end of December.

With this approach, you can already start to use v3 in production work ( at your own risk, of course ). I hope that you will enjoy the v3 and report a lot of feedback on our forum about it.

Roadmap to the release

We are now in RC stage, so this mean bug only correction. We are still aiming a final version for end November.

Fixes :

- 0001582: [Image I/O] Rendering in .psd with incremental suffix doesn’t work

- 0001579: [Image I/O] Bridge 2.6 and 3.0 compatibility

- 0001553: [Cortex ( rendu )] Linux crash at render startup

- 0001563: [Import plugins] Aperture, Lightroom, Bridge plugins to call autopano v3

- 0001414: [Shell Integration] Sign application for mountain lion

- 0001578: [Editor] Crash on close – MacOSX

- 0001576: [Editor] Local geometry analysis is not local anymore

- 0001570: [Editor] Quick preview is done in 2 steps : reverted because not compatible with move mode

As a reminder: anyone can try Autopano 3.0 in the demo mode, and users having a legitimate registration key of version 2 can use it in the beta versions of Autopano 3.0.

Download Autopano Pro / Autopano Giga 3.0 Beta 3

Change log

Main changes

This is the third beta version of Autopano Engine v3. We are in the stage where we don’t add new features, we only corrects bugs.

Crash report system

To help us to stabilize more this software ( it is stable enough ok, don’t make me say what I didn’ ). So, to help us in some strange bug report, we introduce in this version a real crash report engine that is cross-platform. So if you have reproductible crashes, this report can be send to us for analysis. It will allow us to find the real reason behind the crash. In the next few month, this report system will be introduced in all our softwares.

Several fixes

• We spent a lot of time on one complicated linux bug : it has been found and will improve PSB file support on that platform ( needed only for gigapixel ).
• Camera and lens database has been upgrade to support all latest cameras : Nikon D600, Canon 6D, etc.
• Windows : this version is the first version that is signed, so you won’t get anymore warning issue when installing under Windows 8. The work will be done on Mac too, but not finished.
• Integration of all our communication channels under ‘F1′, help shortcut. So please, hit F1, just once to see it. Nice, no ?
• After optimization, the layout of the panorama could switch back to default one scrambling the adjustement you did to make it straight. It should now be better in this area.
• Support of image offsets were added in file format that supports it. This is cool but really only for image geek. What does that means ? If you export the panorama and reprojected images in rendering, the size of images which are part of the panorama is not the same as the panorama. In the individual images, you now have an exif tag that says the offsets X, Y of this image to the zero of the panorama. This is quite nice to post-process individual images after autopano.
• GPU support cleaning. We are quite happy now with the latest shader code as it supports several hardware and driver versions.
• Some other minor fixes.

Using during beta stage

We believe in our community and in our customers that have been supporting us for a long year on this version. The quality of a software application doesn’t come only from the quality of the developer ( come on, still a bit ), but from the quality of the communication between you and us. So for the v3, we decided to do the following:

• You can try all alpha, beta of Autopano Pro/Giga for free during the pre-release stage of the products. You can even remove the watermark as soon as you have a legitimate v2 key.
• All betas are limited in time. This beta 3 version will expire end of November.

With this approach, you can already start to use v3 in production work ( at your own risk, of course ). I hope that you will enjoy the v3 and report a lot of feedback on our forum about it.

Roadmap to the release

We are still in beta stage, so this mean bug only correction. We are aiming a final version for end November.

Fixes :

- 0001570: [Editor] Quick preview is done in 2 steps

- 0001527: [Shell Integration] Sign under Windows 8

- 0001569: [UI behavior] unregistered drag and drop

- 0001566: [Editor] External stack processing does not work well with Enfuse

- 0001499: [Image I/O] [Linux] Photoshop PSB files not compatible to PS

- 0001532: [Cortex ( rendu )] linux rendering rgb channel issue

- 0001560: [UI behavior] Antighost error message to change

- 0001539: [UI behavior] Clean UIHelp / social network integration

- 0001556: [Unclassified] Integration cameras.txt / lensid

- 0001559: [Editor] Editor settings : focal truncated from lower integer value

- 0001538: [Qt] Qt 4.8.3 (ygilquin)

- 0001497: [Image I/O] VRDrive 2 focal source

- 0001548: [Cortex ( rendu )] GPU test failed on latest nvidia driver

- 0001552: [Editor] Add a progress bar when dropping image in an existing group

- 0001550: [Editor] After optimization, the layout of the panorama is not the same

- 0001547: [Editor] Render to embedded layers issues

- 0001549: [Cortex ( rendu )] wrong antighost capabilities

- 0001535: [Cortex ( rendu )] Offsets supports everywhere