NEFITS: Open-source software worth considering
Give your opinion on this story? For most computing tasks, you can probably find three or four programs, many of them free, to do the job. So how do you choose only one?
Simplicity and
features matter, but it’s also worth looking to see which programs are
“open source” - that is, anybody can download, read and rewrite the
source code that makes them tick.
You don’t have to be a programmer to benefit from that freedom: Open-source programs often get security fixes and other improvements faster than their commercial counterparts. Compare, for instance, the progress of Mozilla Firefox versus Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Digital cameras pack in all sorts of goofy and often impractical picture-taking modes, but a panorama mode that fuses a series of shots into one 360-degree view is worth trying anytime you’re in a place with wraparound scenery - Yosemite National Park, Moscow’s Red Square, St. Peter’s Square in Rome and so on.
To use this option, you normally select panorama mode with the dial atop the camera or from an onscreen menu, then take each picture in sequence.
The camera should put the previous photo on the screen next to a preview of the next shot, allowing you to line them up as closely as possible. Some cameras, such as recent
Kodaks, will then suture the photos together on their own.
With others, you have to use an add-on program; for example, Canon supplies a program called Photostitch, which can also generate an interactive QuickTime VR movie of the panorama.
