It's Wednesday, which means it's time to announce this week's photo contest -- and the winner of last week's macro photography contest. Before I do, I want to congratulate everyone on their awesome entries. We've got some talented iPhoneographer readers here at iMore and it wasn't an easy decision!

And the winning entry is...

...this awesome photo of a quarter by BuhdeeBoy! What made this photo stand out to me was strong focus on "In God We Trust". He also did an awesome job of using the rule of thirds on this focus point. BuhdeeBoy used an iPhone 4S and his brother's Olloclip to take the photo and edited it with Snapseed for iPhone. The black and white conversion was also a nice touch. Great work BuhdeeBoy! Now that you won your own Olloclip, you can stop stealing borrowing your brother's!

• Snapseed for iPhone - $4.99 - Download Now

This week's contest: Panoramas!

With the end of one photo contest, comes the beginning of new one -- this week we're going to completely shift gears and take panoramic photographs! There is no restriction on the subject. However, we expect a lot of entries to be landscapes, so it may help you stand out from the crowd if you get a creative and produce a truly unique image.

Apps for panoramic photography

The iPhone is does not come with the required software for panoramic photography, so to enter this contest, you'll need to head to the App Store and pick up an app for taking panos. Here's a couple popular ones:

• AutoStitch Panorama (my personal favorite) - $1.99 - Download Now
• Photosynth - Free - Download Now

If you prefer a different app for taking panoramas, please share it with us in the forums!

The prize: a Glif!

In addition to a thumbs up from the iMore crew and all of us yelling about how great of a photo star you are, the winner of this week's photography contest will have their photo converted into an official iMore wallpaper and we'll showcase it on the front page of iMore! But that’s not all! The winner will also receive a Glif tripod mount and stand!

The rules

The rules of entry are very simple. The photo must have been taken with an iPhone or iPad (we'll check the EXIF data of the original file to verify) and any edits must have been done with an iPhone or iPad app. No Photoshop CS6! If you have external lens accessories you are more than welcome to use them. You can submit as many photos as you'd like, but remember, this is a contest, so make sure you submit your best work!

Resources

Now, before you run off to take your panoramas photos, remember that it's not technical skill alone that will claim this prize. Even if you're not the best photographer (yet!), a great eye and a great subject can still get you the win. However, a little help can never hurt, so make sure you check out these articles from our iPhone photography series for some tips.

• How to create stunning panoramic photographs with your iPhone
• How to make your iPhone photography more striking with the “rule of thirds”

How to submit

Submitting your photos is easy. Just head over to the iMore Photography Forum and post your photos to the official contest thread. Don't forget to state which apps, if any, you used to edit your photo!

That's it! Now go out and get those beautiful panos!

ENTER NOW

Nestled deep within the iOS 5 beta code lies hints at Apple planning a panorama photo feature, allowing users to capture panoramic images without the need for 3rd party apps from the App Store.

PANO_OPTION = “Take Panorama”;

SAVING PANORAMA = “Saving Panorama”;

CANCELPANOBUTTON_TITLE = “Cancel”;

The feature isn't enabled in the current beta, and it's unclear whether developers will be able to turn it on for actual use, but this small bit of code may sound an alarm for some 3rd party panoramic app developers by adding one more category of apps that Apple is taking for themselves.

Would apps like AutoStitch Panorama and 360 Panorama become obsolete if Apple decides to roll out a native panorama feature for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch camera? Or would they see an opportunity for higher end, more professional apps like LockInfo's David Ashman and Instapaper developer Marco Arment?

[9to5Mac]

Jaadu VNC [$24.99 - iTunes link] adds support for cut, copy, and paste, remote copy support, and full screen view.

AutoStitch [$1.99 - iTunes link] includes cropping and support for higher resolution out for iPhone 3GS

PCalc [$9.99 - iTunes link] highlights include 3 and 4 line display modes, more memories, option to prevent rotation (Apple needs to add this system wide!), HP48-like mode, copy tape to clipboard, "easier to read" now even easier. to. read. and button easier to press.

QuickOffice [$12.99 on sale - iTunes link] now supports iPhone 3.0 cut, copy, and paste and shake to undo/redo, access email attachments, text wrapping, aligned overflow, and user-friendly indent and align control for docs.

Fring [Free - iTunes link] now offers Push Notification.

AutoStitch Forum Review by msbaylor. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!

AutoStitch is the only application in the App Store that gives the ability to stitch multiple rows of photos in any orientation in creating your panorama, meaning you don’t just get the normal one row, 360 degree view that Pano or the Panorama apps produce.

I was completely taking off guard when I found how utterly simple it was to use the application! Literally you “select & stitch” that all you do, no take one photo, stitch, take another photo, stitch, etc.

Overview

On the main screen you navigate to your photo album and tap to select photos, they don’t have to be in any particular order. The application will then load it into app (bottom half of screen) once that is complete; you can tap the “stitch” button. If there are photos you want to remove, just tap on the photos in the bottom pane and confirm that you want to delete it.

There is a progress bar at the bottom that I found quite accurate and you can watch you panorama build right in front of you.

Once the panorama is complete, it might be odd shaped, but you can crop it later via Photoshop or GIMP- one of the options that is really lacking. At this time you can also zoom in to view the stitching and if you want to replace a photo, you can go back and go through the process again.

There is a progress bar at the bottom that I found quite accurate and you can watch you panorama build right in front of you.

Once the panorama is complete, it might be odd shaped, but you can crop it later via Photoshop or GIMP- one of the options that is really lacking. At this time you can also zoom in to view the stitching and if you want to replace a photo, you can go back and go through the process again.

Once you are satisfied with your result, it’s time to save the photo

Here are some tests (4) that I conducted with the app

1) 4 “rows” of photos, 360 degrees horizontally:

I tool 57 photos and had it stitched into the photo below. Each iPhone (3GS) photo has a resolution of 2,048 x 1,536 (~1000kb each). The photo that I ended up with is 2,406 x 831 (784kb). So my end result is nearly smaller than the initial size of one iPhone photo – not cool. Test Grade: C-

2) 3 Rows of photos, 100 degrees horizontally:

Now the photo below, I took a total of 19 photos taken at the same resolution (obviously), ending result was a 2,350 x 851 photo – just as large as the previous panorama with less photos. I assume that the application is capping the size of the photo to reduce the RAM usage. Test Grade: C+

As In the first test photo I captured about 100 degrees vertical by 360 degrees horizontal, while the second one is only about 30 degrees vertical by 100 degrees horizontal. I am not a fan of this at all.

3) “Normal” one row panorama: The app did a good job at just creating a single row panorama Test Grade: B

4) “Really bad photographer” panorama

I decided to take a number of shots that were taken diagonally, horizontally & vertically. The result I was very pleased with: Test Grade: B-

At first, I thought this app was amazing, but after doing a thorough analysis of the app through the tests, I wasn’t happy with the results. I expected a little more on the resolution side of things. As a reference point, the photo below was created using the Panorama App – its resolution is 3,004 x 832 by combining only 5 iPhone photos, considerably better resolution over the Autostitch app.

If you are someone that’s likes taking panoramas occasionally or would like to get into taking panoramas, this is a nice app to start with; however, if you are a photography kind of person, this isn’t the best app – namely due to the resolution issue, it’s just too low to do anything “more” with it.

Conclusion

Overall I found this application to be groundbreaking on the iPhone, even if it’s not the first Panorama application to come to the App store market – it has raised the bar for other Panorama apps. The application is simple enough for anyone to use. My main complaint is the lack of cropping and picking of resolutions. I assume rendering into a larger resolution would eat up the RAM, but it would be a nice option, especially for the 3GS users. I noticed a lot of blurry areas in my pictures – this is caused by one of two issues – 1. I took a blurry shot or 2. The photo blending didn’t work out to well. Two bucks is a good deal for this tiny, yet powerful app.

Tips on Taking Panoramas with this app

• If using the 3GS, try to set the exposure on a foreground object (which initially appears darker) or vice versa
• If using the 3GS, try to focus on the furthest object, such as the horizon. Obviously this can't always happen especially if you are following the point above.
• Try to hold the iPhone as steady as possible in low light situations

Pros:

• Incredibly simple to use
• Don’t have to have photos in order to stitch
• Add photos all in one go
• Watch the building of the Panorama as it’s created
• Save to photo album is quick

Cons:

• No advanced options
• Alignment isn’t always dead on
• No cropping ability
• Resolution of panorama is low
• Only one resolution option

TiPb Review Rating

Autostitch is available for $1.99 from the iTunes App Store.