What are some software packages (Mac, Windows, or Linux) that make it simple to stitch thousands of photos together into a gigapixel image?
For my purposes, it does not necessarily have to have the ability to do 360-degree panoramas, just the ability to stitch thousands of photos into one long seamless flat image.
Microsoft ICE is free and is great for a one-shot attempt. Meaning, you give it images and you wait for the results. If it works, you're done. If it does not, you have to try another software because it gives you no control over the stitching process.
Autopano Giga is available for all three platforms you mention and has given me the highest success rate. The output is extremely high quality and you can tweak and set your own control points if it does not work using the automatic detection.
PTGui Pro is very popular and quite capable. It seems to work very well for full spherical panoramas but it is somewhat more complicated to use.
Try Hugin, it's free and easy to use. I've switched to it when Photoshop failed to stitch some of my panoramas properly.
I would venture to say quite a number of these packages exist these days. I've used in the past a previous version from the company that makes this more recent version. And it still appears to support Windows, OSX, and Linux (deb or tar.gz). You'll want a 64-bit version on a 64-bit OS. There's a free trial so you can see if it suits your needs.
http://www.kolor.com/image-stitching-software-autopano-giga.html
I have no association other than having an older version of their software on an older computer, and remaining a member of their forum.
Just because nobody mentioned it - if you have it, Photoshop CS and I believe Elements as well can stich panoramas.
I can also recommend ICE mentioned in a previous post. If I am not mistaken, ICE is included in the Windows Live Photo Gallery - but that is Windows olny.
