Customer Reviews

Arcsoft Panorama Maker 3

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Software came as a package with my Lumix camera. An excellent package including the Panorama Maker 3 software. select picture to use then drag and drop and follow the simple directions. I have received numerous comments on the panoramic shots that I have put together of the St.Louis city-scape and others. Very pleased.

I was hesitant about this software because there's not much about it online. I brought a camera on my vacation that is capable of taking photos at 10 frames per second, so I used it to take about 150 landscape photos, each of 8-10 separate frames. After discovering that I no longer had a copy of adobe photoshop, and that gimp wanted me to install python support for an external plugin, I bought this software hoping for an easy solution. And it was easy, though time consuming. The user interface is very simple- so much so that I didn't need to read any instructions, just started constructing panorama photos. For 99% of my photos it worked great, only the shots with moving people had some trouble, and that was sometimes fixable using the tools. Constructing the panoramas is a little time consuming, probably 2 or 3 minutes per panorama photo, with no way to automate multiple photos. But it works well.

This product makes seamless panoramic pictures from my digital pictures. It is the best program I have used thus far.

Version 3 came with my Lumix camera. I run the software on a Mac G5. I found the software to be very good at what it advertises. It would be nice to have some more powerful tools included. Definitely a consumer targeted software, not for professionals.

This program was included with my DMC-FZ10 Lumix camera. I haven't used this software much before, but recently I visited a state forest with an observation tower during the the peak of fall season color. Many photos later, I had enough to stitch together a nice panorama shot that I felt would be of high enough quality to deserve wall mounting. I was able to create a 5500 x 1500 pixel panoramic image that, after a bit of Photo Shop magic, looks absolutely spectacular! I plan to have it printed out at a pretty big size and framed.

CAUTION, be forewarned by my experiences: the three ArcSoft products I own have all been exercises in frustration, wasted time and effort, and failure to function.

ArcSoft sells BUGGY software. For example, PhotoBase 4.5 & Photo Impression 5 both fail to install on an HP PC running Windows XP Home Edition. Panorama Maker 3 installs and opens but gives error messages when trying to work with albums and files.

ArcSoft DOES NOT SUPPORT their products. They do not answer emails or phone calls. Their internet knowledge base is very spotty and incomplete. When downloads are available, ArcSoft instructs customers to have no confidence in them: "Program patches/updates ... may or may not work, and may actually cause your program(s) to function improperly."

ArcSoft intentionally designs their software to be USER-UNFRIENDLY. For example, there is no help feature and no display of version number in Panorama Maker 3. If users go online to the ArcSoft knowledge base and search, they will find a listing of 5 steps to go through to discover a version number. The manual and knowledge base have no index and no list of errors or ways to troubleshoot them.

I have had nothing but problems with this program and they have lousy customer service and tech help. Surely there is a better way....