In Part 1, we covered the basics of Virtual Tours and introduced you to some of the players in the Virtual Tour Service arena. Here, I will introduce to you a company that is making waves in the industry with easy do it yourself software that any one with a digital camera can use.

iSeeMedia, Inc. is a newly formed software company specializing in the sales, marketing and development of rich, interactive imaging and zoomable content solutions for the Internet. Their flagship product, PhotoVista comes in three flavors, PhotoVista Panorama, PhotoVista Virtual Tour and PhotoVista 3D Objects. As a real estate professional, you are going to go with either Panorama or Virtual Tour depending on your budget and imaging requirements. 3D Objects is ideal for retail items such as vehicles, shoes, etc, so we'll skip that one.

First we will introduce you to PhotoVista Panorama. This is a really easy to use application that can help you get basic 360 degree views of your properties in a matter of minutes. You can download a PC version for $59.95 or an Apple Macintosh version for $79.95 from their web site at http://www.iseemedia.com. Now, they claim this version is for personal non-commercial use so you might want to opt for the Commercial Edition for $189.95 PC, $209.95 Mac. The Commercial Edition also requires an annual license of $99.00. The good news is there's a free trial period so you really have nothing to loose.

Once you have downloaded and installed PhotoVista Panorama, all you have to do at this point is grab your digital camera and stand in a center of any room of your home or office. Select a starting point where you want to start shooting the pictures, for example the door to the room is a good starting point. Once you have selected your starting point, shoot a picture, you'll want to analyze carefully where the picture starts and ends, for example, if there is a frame hanging on the wall that's cutting off the left side of your digital camera viewer, you know you'll need to start at the frame when you take your next shot. The idea is to turn your body in roughly a 30 degree turn for each photo you take, slightly overlapping the last photo you took, using the above example; the frame would then be on the right of your viewer instead of your left. For larger rooms or outdoor settings, you might want to turn 60 degrees instead of 30 since you are able to cover more space depending on the distance you are from what you are shooting.

As you turn your body, keep the camera horizontally leveled. Although PhotoVista Panorama automatically adjusts the photos vertically, the slightest shift up or down could result in a poor panorama. You should take anywhere from 4 to 8 (10 if necessary) photos. Once you have completed this task, simply extract your digital photos the way you usually do. Once the photos are in your computer you can startup the PhotoVista Panorama software.

When the application is open, you can simply select the photos you have taken, select stitch and watch it go to work. Like magic, it begins to take your photos and align them together, shifting them up or down automatically, getting the edges to meet perfectly right before your eyes. When the final product is complete you can select preview and see the finished panorama in your Internet Explorer or Netscape browser.

The beauty of it is there's no per image charges and its easy to use. I downloaded the product, installed it, took all the photos I needed and created my first panorama in less than an half an hour. My second panorama took just 5 minutes.

As for PhotoVista Virtual Tour, the new 3.0 version includes the above Panorama software plus Vista Organizer, Virtual Tour Maker and Vista Works. If your budget allows, we suggest grabbing Virtual Tour instead of Panorama. Virtual Tour goes for $249.95 or $499.95 for the Commercial Edition and it's worth every penny. The main difference is that Virtual Tour has everything for virtual tours besides the panorama support. It also includes hotspots on the panoramas to other panoramas for a complete property view. Your clients can click on each door of a home for example and view each room's panorama. Virtual Tour also has a zoom feature, hide hotspots option, reset feature, auto run feature for CDROM/DVD presentations and much more.

Whether on your laptop or web site, you will definitely impress your clients with PhotoVista Virtual Tour.

For more information on iSeeMedia products and services, visit http://www.iseemedia.com.