Shawn Blanc recently posted about one of his favorite iPhone camera apps called “Pano”. He mentions that it’s so easy anyone could use it. I’ve tried Pano before and yes, it is simple, but the results I got from it didn’t impress me. For example, take a look at this photo Shawn took of his office using Pano. Notice the sharp angle on the baseboard on the wall on the right and then see how the wood floor has a bend in it in that same location. That’s the result of the app not handling the change in perspective well enough. While everything’s lined up, the transitions from photo to photo leave much to be desired.

Now take a look at this quick shot I took of my office (click for full resolution):

This is stitched together with another panoramic iPhone app called AutoStitch (iTunes Link). It’s a composite of about 6 or 7 photos. Notice how well AutoStitch handled the wood floor in our area. Granted, the perspective-handling produces a bit more curvature to your environment, but I prefer that than to have any noticeable “seams” where the photos intersected. Also the tighter the environment you’re shooting the more obvious the curvature will be. If I was shooting a mountain range it would be much less noticeable.

AutoStitch is arguably even easier to use. All you have to do is snap photos, select the ones you want to use from you camera roll, and hit “Stitch”. You have a few options at your disposal such as the ability to crop the final shot, change the resolution, blending quality, and have the app attempt to adjust the exposure automatically. I’ve found the results from AutoStitch to supersede all of the other panoramic apps I’ve tried on the iPhone.

Here’s a valuable tip when making panoramic photos. When taking your photos, imagine the camera is attached to a tri-pod and thus can only rotate around a fixed axis. If you move your hands or arms then you’re dramatically altering your vantage point and your photos will not line-up as well. You’ll also notice in my photo above that as well as this app did, you’re almost always going to have ghosting with people if they don’t sit still. Unless you can control who’s in your shot and tell them to sit still, ghosting will be an unfortunately unavoidable result.

I created iPad versions of my World Cup iPhone Wallpapers. These are designed for the lock screen while the Football Pitch wallpaper I created last week is made for the home screen. I don’t have all 12 as I did last time as some of the logos I had for the iPhone versions weren’t large enough for the iPad. However just like with the iPhone wallpapers I’ve posted the PSD so you can create one for your country. If you do, please post a link to it in the comments for others to enjoy.

Argentina
Brazil
England
Germany
Italy
Mexico
Netherlands
Portugal
Spain
USA

I made an iPad version of the football pitch iPhone wallpaper I posted yesterday:

Football Pitch – iPad

If you’re already running iOS4 and therefore have the ability to add a wallpaper to your home screen, then grab this wallpaper of a football pitch as a companion to my World Cup wallpapers:

Football Pitch

I created this one at the new size of 960 x 640 since iPhone 4 is coming before the World Cup ends. Not sure I’ll have time to recreate the country wallpapers at that size, but if by chance I do I’ll be sure to post an update.

A little over a week ago I entered one of Cameron Moll’s iPad contests and found out yesterday that I won the 2nd contest with my entry! This morning he made the announcement public. Obviously I’m beyond excited about winning and getting an iPad. I’m also happy to hear that my entry drove the most traffic to Cameron’s Colosseo promo site, so it’s a win-win situation!

Once the iPad gets here and I’ve had adequate time to use it I’ll post my thoughts. I’m also anxious to build out some custom iPad wallpapers which I’ll be sure to post for download.

Thanks again Cameron for a great contest and to my competitors who kept it fiercely competitive to the very end.

The iPad is almost here and I’m excited to see what people do with it, much like the example in the above video. All those extra pixels. So many possibilities!

SCW, aka Sweet Cheeks Willie, posted a link to this video in a comment he left on my iPhone Photography article showing a “not yet released” iPhone camera app called “RetroCamera FREE”. This app looks pretty feature rich, but it’s hard to tell from the video what the quality will be of the photos once they’ve been processed. Plus the UI elements on some of the filter options look a little overwhelming to actually interact with and it’s hard to tell if you can fine tune any of these adjustments. But the app has yet to materialize, so I’ll reserve judgement until it actually shows up. It does continue to show off what the iPhone is capable of as a computing platform.

Oh and yeah, I recommend the mute button.