1. Save the downloaded file into a folder on your hard drive.
2. In the folder, double-click the file name to start the installation.

Pixtra PanoStitcher Version History

Version 1.7.1.0: 02/23/2010
Flash Virtual Tour viewer:
- Tour wheel: Tour circle for movie/pan/zoom/next/prev; Compass ring to indicate view coverage and to pan/zoom
- Tour bar: include buttons of hotspot/sound/help/vistaBench/tourMap/fullScreen
- Tour map: new compass design; show vista label upon mouse-over.

Version 1.7.0.0: 01/10/2010
Custom Camera Info creation:
- CamCalibrate: A setup utility to calibrate a camera that has distortion/color aberration, launched from
menu bar > Setup > Calibrate Camera Distortion/Aberration.
- Runtime focal length calibration: After finished stitching a good photo set, select menu bar > Setup > Create/Update Focal Length to Camera Info File: "Create" when no Camera Info file in current stitching, while "Update" when Camera Info file as created for CamCalibrate is already used (to complete calibration with focal length).
Exif info (Exif~Exchangeable image file format): which is stored in photo files by the camera with info of comera model / focal length, etc. Exif info is now utilized in CamCalibrate, settings and stitching, for auto-consistency and robustness.
Smart Settings: with Exif info used from both photo set and Camera Info file, the seetings is validated/optimized when editing the Settings dialog and when start stitching, e.g., consistency of Camera Info file used with the stitching phto set. 
Stitch robustness: from Exif info plus custom Camera Info:
- A photo set with arbitrary zooming (focal length) changes and distortion can be stitched more robustly. 
Note that until now distortion correction was not allowed for a photo set with different focal lengths. 
- Image Pair Overlay method to stitch an image pair by visually adjusting their overlap: 
With focal length available in Camera Info, overlay method is always allowed even with arbitrary zooming.
This unique stitching feature is particularly useful with challenging scenes like wavy water.
Configuration: to customize stitch Settings. Added:
- Blend method: () Fixed (x) Elastic: Elastic does better blending but can be time consuming.
Flash Virtual Tour viewer:
- Smoother spinning
- Added head bar to tourMap/VistaBench
- Added foreground/background sound volumn controls 

Version 1.6.3.1: 10/31/2009
- Stitch robustness: more accurate auto-markers
- Blend: less memory usage

Version 1.6.2.1: 09/20/2009
- Flash tour: Beside Java tour, a tour can now be published with Flash tour player which is preferred, with its
resizable full-screen capability. 
- Level panorama: a new feature to straighten the horizon and make scene vertical lines upright. 
- Auto-stitch: Improved robustness
- New PanoTutorial with new Tutorial 2: Level panorama, where rules are derived to level real-world
panoramas from Louvre 360 experiments.
- Level/roll panorama effects are saved in project.

Version 1.6.1.7: 05/10/2009
Auto-stitch: 
- Improved marker pair matching acuracy
- Greatly improved speed with large photo sizes and large number of photos
- Fixed wrong stitching when image name index is not incremental in PhotoBench
- Fixed wrong stitching when images are rotated in PhotoBench
Fix stitch crash when choose Settings... | Focal Length | Different Unknown; 
Improved stitch accuracy when Focal Length is "Different Unknown"

Version 1.6.1.3: 4/7/2009
- Auto-stitch: greatly improved robustness - minimize need of manual stitching.
- Marker method: use auto-found markers at start - this provides chance to edit auto-stitching of an image pair.
- Image pair window: stitch error circles: markers with stitch error > 2 have error circle(s) drawn around it:
Circle radius is 5x error. Solid circle for image-pair stitch error; Dash circle for image-to-panorama stitch error.
- Blend: Add new blend engine: In Setting Dialog:
   (x) Elastic: new method with dynamic blend width depending on image features in overlap regions. Smooth sky region with large brightness differences is smoothed over a wider blend width, yet detailed features are retained with narrower blend width.
   ( ) Fixed: previous method that has fixed blend width as specified.
- Fixed rare stitch/blend crash when image set is taken with camera highly tilted.
- Virtual Tour: 
   Fix crash with non-Vista OS when launching tour authoring window.
   Remove latency of ~30sec of showing 1st vista at tour start

Version 1.6.0.4: Release date: 11/10/2008
Fix issues with Windows Vista: Registration / Save config in virtual tour 

Version 1.6.0.3: Release date: 10/18/2008
Fix: "Horizontal rolling" would not function after closing panorama window
Virtual Tour: remove viewer white flashing of embedded tour while browser is being resized or scrolled 

Version 1.6.0.1: Release date: 10/8/2008
Fix occasional large black background region in panorama
Add Stitch/Blend progress dialog bar 
Virtual Tour:
- New UI design 
- Encode panorama: So your work is protected against web piracy
- Smart streaming(TM): Virtual tour media content can be large. Downloading all content from the web 
can take some time. The smart streaming technology smooths web tour play.
- New navigation control buttons
- Starter page: add instruction to embed published tour page in another web page

Version 1.5.2.3: Release date: 4/19/2008
Fix launching problem with Windows 2000: "The procedure entry point MiniDumpWriteDump could not be located 
in the dynamic link library dbghelp.dll", by including dbghelp.dll in the installation folder
Add registration debugging
Fix problem when choose Settings... | Focal Length | Different Unknown

Version 1.5.2.2: Release date: 2/24/2008
Virtual Tour: Add applet low memory warning; Add tour diagnostics help page; Fix layout with tour title available

Version 1.5.2.0: Release date: 2/12/2008
Brand new feature: Create Virtual Tour
Fixed occasional random crashing during Stitch/Blend.
Add crash dump feature.

Version 1.4.1.13: Release date: 9/3/2007
Add more logging info.

Version 1.4.1.12: Release date: 8/29/2007
Fix occasional registration problem with Windows Vista.

Version 1.4.1.11: Release date: 10/12/2006
Fix crashing after saved a panorama with long path.

Version 1.4.1.10: Release date: 9/5/2006
1. Fix registration problem of launch failure after registration
2. Use lower-case for Registration Key to avoid confusion of certain letters with numbers

Version 1.4.1.9: Release date: 9/3/2006
1. More robust auto-stitching
2. Add to tool bar: new/open/save/project; save image at 100%/display resolution;
3. Add main menu | Edit | Turn on Logging: to help debug crashing

Version 1.4.1.8: Release date: 5/27/2005
1. Remember Image Browser settings of last stitching
2. Perspective view optical center can be adjusted off the image center
3. Add PanoTutorial #V

Version 1.4.1.7: Release date: 2/2/2004
Can stitch black-white images now. Fix memory leak in blending.

Version 1.4.1.6: Release date: 4/2/2003
1. Panoramas of very large sizes (>20000) can now be stitched.

Version 1.4.1.3: Release date: 3/22/2002
1. Applet can properly view panoramas of partial loops.

Version 1.4.1.2: Release date: 1/28/2002
1. Can make QuickTime MOV file with panoramas of partial loops.
2. Add more options in saving to MOV format.
3. Make panorama web page for QuickTime 5 plug-in.

Version 1.4: Release date: 6/25/2001
1. Add Overlay method for manually adjust an image pair.
2. Add applet plug-in for viritual tour web page authoring.

Version 1.3: Release date: 4/5/2001
Redesign GUI:
1. Replace PanoGuide menus with Stitch Toolbar and extra floating menu functions.
2. Consolidate to one "Stitch Settings..." dialog box.

Version 1.2: Release date: 3/5/2001
New feature highlights:
1. Express Stitching 
After the images are loaded and sorted, a single button click will create the final 
panorama. All these operations are achieved with buttons on the PhotoBench. If not 
satisfied the user can always use the features of the PanoGuide or Floating-menu
level to modify or to redo.
2. Image Browser 
It replaces the old "Load images" dialog windown for loading images. There are two 
modes to display images in a folder: Filename Mode and Thumbnail Mode. The modes can
be switched by turning on/off the "Thumbnail" checkbox. In Filename Mode, the image 
file names in a folder are shown and the thumbnail of one file can be displayed. 
In Thumbnail Mode, the thumbnails of all image files in the folder are displayed 
3. Auto-cropping 
After blending, the margin background region is automatically filled and cropped. 
If desired the user can always re-select region and re-crop.

Version 1.1: Release date: 1/24/2001

Besides offering even greater stability, many new features have been added in PanoStitcher 1.1. 
The following are highlights:
1. Manual brightness/contrast adjustment in addition to the Auto intensity balancing feature. 
Now a user has complete control over the complicated issue of smooth intensity transition 
between images (from auto balancing) and tweaking for preferred aesthetics. 
2. Configuration utility, which customizes PanoStitcher’s settings. 
3. Rotate/Unbend panorama, 
a powerful feature to level and straighten the horizon in a panorama. 
4. Vertical panorama: Create 90 degree rotated image after stitching a panorama. 
5. Visual printing utility automatically fits an image to desired number of pages for printing. 
6. Multi-resolution option when saving a JPEG file for web publishing. Pixtra PanoViewer 1.1 
can stream the corresponding panorama while downloading. 
7. Help manual: Advanced Topics are increased from six to fourteen, which cover many tricky 
problems of the real world and provide PanoStitcher’s solutions. 
8. PanoTutorial 1.1: This is a companion tutorial to PanoStitcher 1.1. Using three sample photo 
sets PanoTutorial shows how to tap the rich features of PanoStitcher to create panoramas 
step-by-step, from taking a photo set and making the panorama, to publishing it on the web. 
9. Distortion correction of any photo image: corrects distortions and chromatic aberrations even 
in individual unstitched images. 
10. Improved Marker Mode: better correction of any mis-registrations from Auto Mode stitching. 

Version 1.0: Release date: 11/24/2000