Every so often, I find a new piece of software I was unaware of but that gets me excited when I discover and use it. Recently, I stumbled upon PanoVolo, a new Windows/Mac app for creating panoramas with a minimum of fuss that still provides very high-quality output.
Created mainly for drone photographers, the software quickly stitches multiple DNG or JPG images singly or in batches. It supports 360-degree spherical images, and in its latest update, it can fill in the sky that might be missed in ultra-wide shooting.
Although I found the automatic assembly and cropping algorithms worked very well, users can go to the Review tab to explore how individual images contributed to the final panorama. You can view the connections between the images, individual image boundaries, initial and optimized image alignments, and more. You can also adjust the central point of the panorama and fix stitching errors.
When a drone camera is pointed up or down during panorama image capture, a horizon may appear as a curve in the stitched panorama image. PanoVolo can automatically straighten such curved horizons by applying a geometric correction during stitching.
PanoVolo can stitch all drone panorama types, including 180°, wide angle, vertical, and sphere, and output several panorama projections, including Spherical, Cylindrical, Rectilinear, Mercator, and Stereographic—used for the “little planet” effect.
I talked to the author of the software, George Smith, and he told me about some of the advantages of PanoVolo. Typically, he says, panoramas are stitched by matching "keypoints" in the overlapping regions in the images. That works, but if there are no stable features (clear sky) or features shifting between images (waves), it leads to errors. PanoVolo uses both metadata from images saved by the drone with keypoint matching for more robust stitching. Nothing is 100% guaranteed, and PanoVolo can produce errors as well, but the chance of a successful stitch is much higher. And if there is an error, there is a way to manually correct it.
Using PanoVolo
To start, I pointed the software at a folder of images I took with my Mavic 3 Classic on a recent trip to Hawaii. I had 23 images to assemble. Without any adjustments at all, I got some excellent results.
This is a 21-image shot assembled by PanoVolo.
I used the option to save as a DNG file, so I could edit in my usual editors, Photoshop and/or Luminar Neo.
I also loved the 3D view that puts the position of your drone on a map and shows the field of view of your image, as well as the angle of your camera.
As mentioned, you can edit your image, and there are controls for pitch and roll if your drone camera didn't get it right. You can also see how the images were assembled.
Performance on my M3 MacBook Pro was very fast—under 25 seconds for a 21-image assembly.
Images I tried were seamless, obviously what you are looking for in a multi-image panorama.
I did try some batch files, pointing the app at six folders of panorama shots. It worked as expected, which was well and without issues.
What I Thought of PanoVolo
No gripes. It was easier to use than many panorama apps. I liked the results (speed and quality) better than Photoshop or Lightroom. I thought I got similar results using the panorama feature in Luminar Neo, but PanoVolo is faster and doesn't stop in the middle of the operation asking what projection you would like. PanoVolo figures it out for you, but there's still an option to change the image geometry if you like.
If you are flying drones and don't use the panorama feature much as it can be a hassle, then I'd strongly recommend you get PanoVolo. If you're a heavy pano creator, I think you'll find PanoVolo best in class for this task.
I didn't see any downsides to using PanoVolo, but I had a couple of suggestions for the author. The app wasn't preserving creation dates of panoramas, and I think most photographers will want the actual creation date left alone. I'd also like the ability to go from PanoVolo to whatever editor I specify directly, saving me a step. Most photographers won't be finished with the image once the pano is assembled.
I expect to see those features soon.
To purchase, PanoVolo is $29.99 USD. It's a perpetual license with free updates for a year. You can activate the PanoVolo license on up to two computers: either two PCs, or two Macs, or one PC and one Mac.
You can download a demo version as well, but the image has watermarks all over it, and it's a bit hard to see just how well the app is working.
Highly recommended.
