My very first intro to panorama stitching photos was back in the late 1990s with a program for Windows called PhotoVista. You have to remember that digital cameras had only just appeared and I was playing with one of the very first Nikon Coolpix models with a H-U-G-E 3 megapixel sensor.
Living on the Northern Beaches of Sydney at the time, and it being around Christmas, I decided to head down to North Head to photograph the Sydney to Hobart yachts sailing past, give the camera a test run and also put this software through its potential paces.
I had the camera on a tripod, and just took a selection of images as the tripod was turned. Easy.
Upon returning home adding the images to the software, waiting for the processing (it took around 3 minutes back then for a dozen images), it was amazing to see a perfect 180° degree panorama, albeit with one issue. In the approximate centre was a giant seagull’s head cocked on its side looking square at the camera.
It must have flown directly at the camera just as the shutter released!
Fast forward to 2025 and of course digital cameras are well advanced over ones back then. And we can take photos and videos not even thought of with the advent of drones, specifically in many cases from DJI.
Today, after what seems like weeks of rain and wind, I managed to sneak a trip into “town” down to what is known locally as Lighthouse Beach but correctly called Wyalup / Rocky Point.
From this location it is possible to get a half decent panorama shot of the main centre of Bunbury, its beaches and of course, the lighthouse.
For the purpose, I used a MAVIC 4 Pro and while I know this can internally stitch the images into a panorama, I was keen to try out some new software I have received called PanoVolo. You are not restricted to using a drone for the source imagery by the way. Any sequence of photos taken on any camera can be used.
In Operation
PanoVolo is dead easy to use; after loading, simply point the software to the folder holding the individual pano shots and within a few seconds it will have created an image you can then later tweak at will. And I do mean seconds; it is very fast.
The tweaking includes experimentation with different projection types including the “little planet” effect, reviewing individual images and changing the centre points and stitching points plus a special mode where you can explore your drone’s position on a 3D map.
In the attached images you can see where I have changed a stitching point to compensate for a moving vehicle that in the original automatic stitch, looks like it has been sheared off (in the lower right).
You have the option of using either JPG or DNG (RAW) images to create your panoramas with DNGs being the preferred option due to the higher dynamic range. You also have the added advantage when saving the final image to save as a 16 bit TIFF file which being lossless compressed retains all of the resolution and dynamic range of the original source images.
PanoVolo also say they purposely save the TIFFS as flat and soft meaning there is no extra contrast or sharpening applied thus allowing more fine tuning in post processing with apps like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom.
DNGs do have their drawbacks though in that processing takes longer and file sizes are much larger. For example a fully spherical panorama saved as 16 bit TIFF format can occupy over 700 MB of disk space!
Availability and Cost
PanoVolo is available for both Mac and Windows and at USD$29.95 it is somewhat of a bargain – and there are no subscription fees which is a bonus. You’ll also get free updates for the current major version.
You can get a trial version here but be aware images are watermarked and panoramas cannot be saved.