#PTGUI PRO VS ICE SOFTWARE#
#PTGUI PRO VS ICE FREE#

Third, doing a panorama with a longer focal length gives you far more detail in each frame, meaning your final panorama will not only be far bigger (pixel-wise) but also allow you to reduce the size of the panorama, reducing the noise. Also, check out this tutorial on how different focal lengths affect your final astro shot. However, I also like the sharpness of my Sony 55mm f/1.8 lens, but this obviously doesn’t capture as much of the landscape, so I need to do a panorama to get the same composition. For example, I have a Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens – a really nice fast lens. Secondly, you might want to take a panorama to take advantage of a fast lens, which will allow more light to hit your sensor, getting brighter pictures. Composition is a huge part of photography so getting the right feel to your final image may necessitate a pano. WHY EVEN DO A MILKY WAY PANORAMA?įirst up, why would you want to? There are a number of reasons – firstly, and most commonly, a panorama gives you the opportunity to create a composition that isn’t always possible with a single frame. I honestly haven’t had much success with Lightroom or Photoshop’s panorama stitchers, but you might have more luck! I generally start with PTGui, then move to MS ICE or Hugin if for some reason PTGui isn’t happy – but this is rare. Another option is Hugin, which is immensely powerful, but a little hard to get your head around first time.

#PTGUI PRO VS ICE FREE#

If you want to try a free option, consider MS ICE – a very powerful tool that works most of the time as well as being quite user friendly.

#PTGUI PRO VS ICE SOFTWARE#

The software I’ll be using to make my panoramas is PTGui – it’s not free, but suits what I do – it can also stitch RAW files, which works for me. If you haven’t done any astrophotography before then make sure you take a look at this awesome tutorial from Lonely Speck before starting. In this tutorial I’ll go through a couple of my recent panoramas and explain the process used to capture the frames and the software I used to create the final pano. We are about to head into the next stargazing season down here in the Southern Hemisphere – I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about something that many astrophotographers like to do but can seem quite complex – making a panorama of the Milky Way.

Ptgui pro vs ice