I bought the upgrade from stitcher unlimited 5.5 to 5.6. and all i can say to that »upgrade« is that i feel robbed about the behavior of selling a very buggy beta-version of a new software for real money.
 
topics therefore are:
 
- stitcher crashes through rendering or image alingning in the image strip (!) with a probability of 50% (by using a mac pro 2.66 with 9 gb ram).
 
- no more force stitching for mac users? i need the force stitching to stitch skies and waters, as example. without it, the software is just useless to me!
 
- no more shortcuts for mac users? no working drop-down menus for mac users on right click anymore?
 
- the arranging of images in the image strip simply does not work. it arranges the icons in one row. how stupid is that? and: is there no detection and memory-function for using a second monitor for the image strip?
 
i really regret to bought that version of stitcher and i am very disappointed. maybe it's the right time now to try another stitching software.

Hi marcOS,
 
- stitcher crashes through rendering or image alingning in the image strip (!) with a probability of 50% (by using a mac pro 2.66 with 9 gb ram).  
 
Are you using Smartblend? If so, try rendering using Morph then if that works, try Enblend. See here:
http://forum.realviz.com/realviz/D [...] 2745_1.htm
 
- no more force stitching for mac users? i need the force stitching to stitch skies and waters, as example. without it, the software is just useless to me!
 
Did you download and test the demo before you bought? I'm not yet fully up to speed on using a Mac with Stitcher, but woud have thought if this feature was important to you, running the demo would have helped you to test suitability for your needs.
 
- no more shortcuts for mac users? no working drop-down menus for mac users on right click anymore?  
 
Can't input here as I don't have a Mac to test.
 
- the arranging of images in the image strip simply does not work. it arranges the icons in one row. how stupid is that? and: is there no detection and memory-function for using a second monitor for the image strip?  
 
This is, as far as I know, how the image strip has always worked. No, I don't think you can output the image strip to a second monitor.
 
I don't think you should give up on Stitcher. It's a great product overall and I know the development team are working on updates all the time. Plus the forum here is a good place to get additional information.
 
My advice is stay with Stitcher and you'll see how the software will become everything you want it to be.  

"Did you download and test the demo before you bought? I'm not yet fully up to speed on using a Mac with Stitcher, but woud have thought if this feature was important to you, running the demo would have helped you to test suitability for your needs. "
 
This seems a kind of silly thing to say since they guy obviously had the program already. RealViz deleted some functions that were there. Why would anyone expect to lose features from one iteration of the app to the next. I don't get the Photoshop demo just to see if it's gonna work, I expect it to work as it did (maybe a few changes to workflow for the better) with a couple of new things added. I wouldn't expect to lose the marquee tool just because they made the lasso tool better.
 
"no more shortcuts for mac users? no working drop-down menus for mac users on right click anymore?"
 
I just checked through the program and the right-click menus are there. You might have a setting for your mouse or trackball that's not activating the right click properly. However there are several items that have been dropped from various contextual menus from 5.5 to 5.6. It's disruptive to an established workflow at the very least.
 
"the arranging of images in the image strip simply does not work. it arranges the icons in one row. how stupid is that? and: is there no detection and memory-function for using a second monitor for the image strip?"
 
RealViz seemed to change some things on how they draw windows. The Image strip can be moved off the first monitor onto the second just as it could before, but because of the changes to how they draw windows, it's a lot more like XP. There is however a problem that I agree with that the Image Strip used to be able to be moved to the second monitor (still can) and remember the location from program launch to program launch. This is no longer the case. The window drawing routine is not writing the location to a pref to remember this.
 
"I don't think you should give up on Stitcher. It's a great product overall and I know the development team are working on updates all the time. Plus the forum here is a good place to get additional information."
 
I do agree with this statement for the most part. Stitcher has it's foibles, but the last few releases have had some stability issues as well as some very peculiar pricing structure and upgrade policies. It's a little disappointing at times, but once a workaround if found for your workflow it works pretty well. I just kind of wished it worked like it 'seems' like it should work.
 
I give the program another rev to see how long before I look for another solution. I'm just not disappointed enough to do so yet.