iOS6: Panorama mode against Microsoft Photosynth

One of the stand-out features Apple promoted with iOS 6 is a new Panorama mode in the Camera (available on "all dual-core iPhones and iPads" - effectively only iPhone 4S and 5, and the retina iPad).

I'm interested in this because for a couple of years now I've been using the actually quite excellent (you've no idea how much it pains me to admit that) Microsoft PhotoSynth app to capture panoramas.

Functionally, there's no point in performing a comparison: PhotoSynth can take full 360-degree horizontal and vertical panoramas and can post them online using a viewer app that corrects for distortion and allows for interactive display. Whereas the iOS native functionality just captures a horizontal 180-degree strip as a single wide photo. So there's no way I'd ditch PhotoSynth just yet anyway.

Having said that, though, I am still interested in the technical differences: Very often with PhotoSynth the choice of stitch points and overlaps is less than perfect (or in English: You Can See The Joins). I've used this a couple of times to deliberate effect (a favourite of mine being capturing a helicopter taking off twice; less favourite being the appearance of my daughter no less than 8 times in a single panorama), so it's a Bug that's also a Feature. But it makes casual use harder.

With Photosynth, the gyroscopes / position sensors are used to detect the orientation of the camera; when it's moved sufficiently outside of the current frame another shot is taken (with plenty of overlap). For mostly horizontal scans this works well enough (although one does have to remember to only rotate the iPhone and try and avoid moving one's body or even just arm in an arc). The orientation sensors work less well taking deep vertical shots and tend to mis-align shots straight up or straight down, although the app's tap-to-take feature mostly allows one to work around this.

The iOS app works by just getting the user to follow a horizontal arrow across the screen held in portrait mode from left to right. There's no discrete shot-taking going on, it operates more like a video mode. As long as one rotates at the correct speed and keeps the camera horizontal, the shot works. Attempts to move or rotate the camera vertically either abort the panorama (big moves) or just clip the top and bottom of the vertical movement (small moves): the end result is always just a horizontal panorama with centre point and height determined by the starting position.

So really the only meaningful technical comparison that can be made between the two techniques is to compare the accuracy of the stitching and the compensation for focus distance and exposure across the apps.

I captured the same (or nearly so) 180-degree panorama sat on a bench outside my local leisure centre yesterday on a bright sunny day, moving from down-sun at the start straight into the sun at the finish. Because of orientation glitches and PhotoSynth's auto-start, I've had to crop the PhotoSynth panorama at top and bottom to reflect approximately the same strip as the iOS Panorama. As I took my time with both apps (particularly PhotoSynth which I more normally use in a discrete rotate-shoot-rotate movement), there was less difference in the results than I was expecting (or in English: I got better-than-normal stitching from PhotoSynth this time). But what I do find interesting is that both modes of panorama have considerably more softness to the results than I was expecting.

Here's the PhotoSynth capture (Scroll right for more of it):

Taro Leisure Centre 2012-09-21; Microsoft PhotoSynth, cropped to close to iOS Panorama output dimensions

And here's the iOS Panorama (pretty much untouched from as-taken):

The Same, only taken with iOS 6's Panorama function

My verdict (yours may vary): iOS does a better job of blending the frames together (there's some obvious exposure differences in the PhotoSynth example whereas the only obvious example on the iOS panorama can be explained away as Lens Flare if one's of a mind). Focus is also sharper in the iOS photo, although to be absolutely fair I may have over-cropped the PhotoSynth example and we're seeing some interpolation instead. I prefer the colour balance and exposure of the iOS example except for directly into sun which is better handled by PhotoSynth (which is taking multiple shots so can adjust the exposure to suit).


I don't have a conclusion: I thought I'd ignore iOS Panoramas as they're nowhere near as versatile as PhotoSynth, but the difference in quality is enough to make me reconsider for certain use cases.

£0.02 on the Latest and Greatest Software from Apple

Everyone else has an opinion, here's mine.

Upgrading both the Mac (OS X 10.8.2, iTunes 10.7, iPhoto 9.4) and the iPhone (iOS 6) at the same time was a mistake. It's made determining which side of the equation is glitching harder.

I did both late last night, so this is preliminary. In particular I may be mis-assigning glitches:

OS X 10.8.2

1. I got prompted on login to supply a password for "Back To My Mac". I've never enabled that before, so this was a surprise. Not as much as being told I was using the wrong password over and over though (As it's the same iCloud account that works for everything else....)
2. Attempting to change an iCloud account setting caused System Preferences to hang. Killing it and launching again got a pop-up about changed terms of service. And "Back to My Mac" now enables (although it doesn't appear on icloud.com; should it?)
3. Facebook integration's a bit intrusive, isn't it? 

iPhoto 9.4

1. Seems to have improved performance over previous versions; it navigates faster than the previous point-release on my library, which is welcome
2. Not sure if PhotoStream agent is working; I had to kill the previous incarnation due to it sucking up bandwidth during the patch download, even though it was uploading photos. Reboot / relaunch and the new agent is sitting there idle making no attempt to upload. We'll see, we'll see.

iOS 6

1. iCloud settings appear to have gotten messed up a bit: Reminders weren't syncing to the cloud. I thought that was a Mac problem but changes/updates made on the iPhone weren't appearing on icloud.com either. If you're affected, disabling the service (Settings -> iCloud -> Reminders OFF in my case) then re-enabling seems to cure it
2. Maps is hopeless, isn't it?
3. I'm mightily annoyed that Podcasts have completely disappeared from the iTunes Library. I've got the Podcasts App, and the latest version is moving closer to working territory but for years I've used a smart playlist in iTunes to manage what and how I go through Podcasts and now that doesn't work.
4. Whilst Podcast loss on the phone itself is irritating, it's a real blow to me using it in the Car: my car's iPhone integration pulls across playlists from iTunes on the phone. So now I've lost that, and if I'm lucky the override "just act like aux in" option will let me use the podcasts app as a substitute.

iTunes 10.7

On balance, most of my issues with this update lie here, particularly with syncing:

1. Photo syncing got mightily screwed up. On first attempt I ended up with duplicates of about 1,000 random photos in the iPhone's library. Not stuff that was also on PhotoStream, stuff that's older than that. Had to turn off all syncing, which left me with only the "orphan" duplicates, then sync to a blank directory to wipe those, then turn iPhoto Library syncing back on. 
2. Even after this, I've got 20-30 phantom Events appearing in iTunes's Event List. I sync "last 3 events" plus some favourites and this is now broken because I have 10 entries saying "20 Sep 2012" with no photos in (all newer than the latest actual events in iPhoto itself). I don't know what got messed up but I've checked and there's no empty events in iPhoto... Doing  Repair Library in iPhoto doesn't seem to fix this either.

3. Similar sorts of Orphan Data glitches with Music syncing. e.g. my Voice Memos are set to sync, but don't appear in the library any more. I've turned OFF Music sync to wipe the library and start again, and I've still got (empty) playlists on the phone.
4. After initially contacting but not completing a sync (for some reason), WiFi sync just flat out would not work last night. This morning it's back again. My best guess is that the uPNP port assignment magic got screwed up on my router; it's got a time-out for all that so leaving it for a bit sorted it out. 

Edited 2012-10-02: iPhoto '11 9.4.1 update, just applied, fixes the phantom events problem nicely.

Done a bike ride.

Inspired by @ChateauGateaux's epic rides and prodded not too subtly by @henleysmissus to do some sodding exercise, I took to the bike this morning. Several things were learned:

1. 6 weeks is far too long to leave between rides...but...
2. The difference between "less unfit" and "very unfit" is state during and after the ride. I still average 20km/h.
3. I still don't have my seat position correct (oww...)
4. East Hampshire has become less flat in the last couple of months
5. There's a LOT of East Hampshire I've never seen, even after close-on 20 years here
6. There's a lot more military presence within 10 miles of my house than I was aware of
7. Our country lanes suffered a lot with the poor weather this year
8. They're still suffering from some odd drilling and other maintenance activities leaving crud all over the roads
9. Just because someone in a 4x4 on a tiny road nearly runs you over doesn't mean they're a bad man. He even pointed me in the right direction at a crossroads.
10. My god it's beautiful out there.