I've been using Camedia Master Pro 4.0 (Macintosh) for about three weeks. Sorry to have to say that I agree with all of the negative comments I've been reading in this forum. Some comments of my own:
- the interface, while pretty, is awkward and cumbersome. Example: you'd think in 2002 you'd be allowed to select multiple images and then batch rotate the lot with one click, right? No, for EACH image you must 1) Select the image 2) Click on the ROTATE button 3) Select the desired rotation from the drop-down list. That's simple compared to any saturation, brightness, contrast, sharpening, etc. you want to perform. Each of those requires separate actions, swapping screens, displaying changes (in thumbnail previews!) and saving each change separately. Very painfull.
- The panoramic stitching is full of glitches. Below is a copy of an email I sent to Olympus Tech Support:
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I’m having a problem trying to get either Camedia Master 2.5 or Camedia Master Pro 4.0 to properly stitch my panoramic photos. I’m using a new iMac with 1GB of RAM, running MacOS X 10.15 and MacOS 9.2.2. The problems I describe below manifest themselves under both OS versions, regardless of which version of Camedia Master I am running.
1) Sometimes it will display the stitched photo properly, but when I attempt to SAVE the results I greeted with a dialog stating ‘Cannot allocate sufficient memory’ and the saving operation terminates. Under MacOS X, there is not much I can do to allocate more memory manually, since the OS does that automatically, as needed. Under MacOS, I tried boosting the memory partition for 40MB, but that didn’t help – I still get the same ‘Cannot allocate sufficient memory’ message. This has most recently happened on an 10-part panoramic image (the limit of the C-700UZ Camera), but it has happened on a 7-part panorama, as well. I haven’t had the problem with 6-parts or less. I have this problem whether I try use the Auto Panorama or Free Stitch Panorama.
2) Sometimes the stitching appears to be horizontally fine, but vertically the lower half is not displayed and/or the top portion of the blue cropping rectangle appears in the middle of the image and cannot be adjusted, rendering further stitching operation impossible. Photos that display this problem do so whether I use the ‘Auto Panorama’ or ‘Free Stitch Panorama’.
3) Sometimes the stitching just doesn’t work at all. Under ‘Auto Panorama’, portions don’t line up at all, either horizontally or vertically. Using ‘Free Stitch Panorama’, I can line them up just fine, but when I press the button to ‘Stitch’, I get the exact same results as the ‘Auto Panorama’. I can see no apparent reason why the portions cannot line up – there is plenty of overlap to enable proper stitching.
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- Lastly, the additional features, like calendar, postcard, slide show, etc. are truely elementary. They're severely limited in their features and flexibility. Examples: The calendars produced don't allow enough room to hand write on your printed calendars; the slide show won't display movies - it just produces empty frames.
Bottom Line: The $49.00 price for this product is $49.00 too much. Even if it were free, it would be a disappointment. It's pretty, but useless, except for the stitching function, when it does work (about 75% of the time). I'm using the Olympus C-700UZ - it's such a FINE camera, it deserves much better supportive software. Olympus failed it's customers. Don't buy the product.
Note: I've tried Apple's 'QuickTime VR', and 'VR Worx', but they're nasty little critters in their own way. If anyone can recommend panoramic stitching software for Macintosh, I'd really appreciate it.
David Perugini
Can anyone recommend if it is worth the upgrade from Camedia Master
2.51 to 4.0? Recently purchased a C-4040 that came with V2.5. I
have read some negative threads on V4.0, so I was wondering.
Also, is there a trial version of V4.0 available so I can see for
myself before purchasing?
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David J. Perugini
