[HDRI] Photosphere 1.6 available

[Gregory J. Ward]

Hi All,

I just uploaded version 1.6 of Photosphere, both PPC and Universal  
versions to my website:

	http://www.anyhere.com

The made addition since version 1.5 is the ability to create  
panoramas from overlapping images.  It's not as easy to use as  
Photoshop perhaps, but the results are often nicer and best of all,  
it works with HDR source images.  The user interface to it is a  
little shaky, but it actually is fairly reliable once you get used to  
the concept.  Here is the item I appended to quickstart_pf.txt  
describing the process:

15) To stitch together a panorama, choose a set of images and open
them.  In each image, select a salient feature that is also visible
in the adjacent image.  Click the "Apply" button in the image viewer
and choose "Pano Orig" in the first image, then move to the second
image, select the matching feature, and choose "Pano Dest".  After a
moment, the selection box in the second image should disappear,
indicating these two images have been linked.  If the "Apply" button
is missing "Pano Orig" or "Pano Dest" in its pop-up menu, that means
the box is either too big or in the wrong image.  If you have
previously selected a set of anchors or created a panorama and wish
to start a new one, use the "Clear Pano" command that shows up in
the "Apply" pop-up when nothing is selected.  After each link has
been made, you may select the next feature for linking to another
neighbor, or choose "Make Panorama..." from the "File" menu if you
are done or wish to see what you have linked so far.  By scaling
down the output resolution, you can obtain a quick preview to check
your work.  You can always add new linked images or change existing
links via the "Apply" pop-up menu, or start over by selecting "Clear
Pano" or pressing the "Clear" button in the "Make Panorama" dialog.
It may take a few tries before you get used to the idea of selecting
image features, and some features definitely work better than others.
It's best to select a corner or prominence with high contrast.  Busy
areas make for poor feature matching, which can cause misalignment
in the results.  Trees and mountain peaks are good features.  Fields
of grass and waves on water are not.

Note that I did not design it to handle complex panorama  
assemblages.  It really only works for simple horizontal and vertical  
arrangements, with one feature joining each image in a chain.  You'll  
also find that it does not work well with fisheye or highly distorted  
images, as there is no unwarping operation applied.  Nevertheless, I  
hope it finds some use.

-Greg