Members' favorite photo stitchers?

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Does anyone have a favorite photo stitcher?

I want to dump several screen shots and auto-paste them into vertical .pngs (etc.) with the app taking care of merging the overlap.

I often use Tailor on the iPhone to join scrolled screenshots (two-to-three screen twitter thread, etc) but it’s failing me on some things and I want a bit more flexibility on the Mac.

If I’m going to spend $20, why not get something that can help with unusual panoramas captures and photo combining? “Unusual” meaning anything from putting together TWO camera panoramas (one high/one low) or eight photos taken at random w/ overlap … You know, “anything cool” :wink:
These would be screen shots from my iphone that I’ve imported or photos taken long ago; so no need to capture, just merge.

Doing some Googling; there is an app literally called PhotoStitcher and about a dozen similar apps on the macOS App Store.

Any favs rise to the top?

Thanks!

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Depends on your budget. I’ve never tried an inexpensive photo merging app on the Mac. Let us know if you find something good. I suspect for lower-res output and no printing you can find most options out there to be sufficient.

For serious image stitching PTGui is around $150 but does an excellent job with panoramas on Mac/Windows.

But if you already have the $10/month Adobe Creative Cloud plan you can use Lightroom’s Panorama Merge command. For more power photographers will use Photoshop though. File > Automate > Photomerge opens a window to which you add individual photos to be merged, choose the geometric projection, and select a few minor options. Once merged, the new file is a PSD file with separate layers for each image.

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I’ve had good luck with Affinity which is often on sale.

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PicSew on iOS. That’s what I use.

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Picsew’s “Scrollshot Recording” is super nice!

You won’t need to dump any individual screenshots…

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That’s what I also use for my iPhone pics, but the OP’s question is about a workflow using a Mac app.

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Mhm. But apple silicon is coming :slight_smile:

Jokes aside, I understand. But I thought putting that out there could be marginally useful.

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Hello everyone!

Thank you so much for the input!!

I can say the $19.99 “PhotoStitcher” did not work with the first set (of two!) objects I was trying to merge. Asked for a refund within 30 minutes of buying the app! It may work for interesting/complex panoramas; but I can try it later, if I get stuck. Several of you mentioned “don’t go cheap”!! – You were right.

Didn’t know Adobe or Affinity would do that automatically! … I finally upgraded (laptop and macOS) and can’t use my old 32 bit Photoshop w/o some effort … My version may also be old enough to not have the feature! Pondering getting the subscription. BUT, I do already own Affinity! Bought it on sale some time ago.

Watched a few YouTube videos and got some things to work – THIS video blew my mind! … If you’ve got 7 minutes to spare, you’ll see some magic being done in Capture One and in Affinity.

Affinity merged the first two I was working on perfectly and stubbornly refused to help me with the second two(!). But that’s due to operator inexperience. I got it done manually in Affinity, eventually.

Pondering going for the Photoshop (and some other parts) subscription; but I do so little photo-editing (until I don’t and then need to do some work, sigh).

One thing I love about Photoshop is, with every edit, there seems to be a little checkbox where I can see the photo with and without the adjustment. That’s priceless. I’ve seen people save layer-states and look at differences by making layers visible/invisible; but that’s a hassle, compared to that little checkbox!

Thanks to y’all in this thread, I tried and immediately bought PicSew(!). Very useful. Thank you to all who recommended it.

I’m fairly sure ANY program or app. is going to work perfectly in some situations and balk in another.

Going to work on my skills in Capture One, Affinity and some other software!

Off-topic from my original post: Evaluating the free version now of Apollo One (for photo viewing). Still looking for a Mac-friendly replacement for the long-dead CPIC photo viewer for Windows. It’s out there somewhere.

“Forcing myself” into the world of updated & currently available apps and software will be better for me in the long run. … At least that’s what I tell myself!!

Thanks again!!

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Didn’t see it mentioned but I’ve been using Hugin. http://hugin.sourceforge.net It’s free and based on Panorama Tools (same as PTgui). It seems to work better than the stitching software built into photo editors.

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Great video – thanks for the link!

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Hey everyone,

Just an update: Thanks to all who recommended Picsew! … Found the option in settings that allows easy deletion of the screenshots used to make the composite and that is a game changer for me!

–Tim