360 Camera News and Info

Kolor, makers of VR software Autopano and Panotour, is closing its doors

VR software company Kolor is closing
VR software company Kolor is closing

Kolor, makers of VR stitching software Autopano Video and Autopano Giga, and virtual tour software Panotour, announced that they are closing their doors effective September 14, 2018.

Kolor products will no longer be sold on Kolor.com, nor will the software be updated.  However, GoPro Fusion Studio and GoPro VR Plugin will continue to be available here.

Kolor was purchased by GoPro in late April 2015.  Its Autopano stitching software and Panotour virtual tour software have been among the leading products in the 360 and VR industry.  However, GoPro has been under a lot of financial pressure due to declining sales and its stock plummeted in August 2015.   Although GoPro’s stock has improved in the last 4 months, and even recently set a new high for 2018, Kolor’s closing appears to be a direct consequence of GoPro’s financial issues.

What is surprising to me is why GoPro didn’t sell Kolor’s intellectual property to Adobe or other companies (perhaps it might still happen).  Hopefully Kolor’s closure leads to a stronger GoPro and to increased business for PTGui and Mistika, and virtual tour software such as Pano2VR.

Thanks to Pepe Vazquez (360 Tips & Tricks) for bringing this to my attention!

About the author

Mic Ty

8 Comments

Click here to post a comment

Leave a Reply to Brian Richards Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • For Kolor Panotour users here is a comment and some good news from Klaus the developer of Krpano the core on which Panotour is based:
    https://krpano.com/forum/wbb/index.php?page=Thread&postID=76701#post76701

    What does this mean for krpano?

    From krpano side basically nothing will change or be different now. krpano was always fully independent and will be also in future. The krpano development itself is very good ongoing (although a bit slower than wished) and the next release is not far away and will bring some nice new features.

    Maybe one thing – I was already working on improving the krpano GUI editing functionalities for a long time and now without Panotour I will probably accelerate the development in that direction.

    What does this mean for Panotour Pro users?

    As Kolor closes there will be no official Panotour Pro development anymore, but using the software itself will be still possible.

    With the last Panotour Pro release (version 2.5.14) Kolor has opened the access to its previously internal template files to make it possible to edit or update them manually. That means some updates to Panotour Pro are still possible.

    I will try to use that new opened access to provide ‘update-packages’ for Panotour Pro when new krpano versions will be released. This should make it easier to use the latest krpano version in Panotour Pro and maybe also add some fixes to some templates when necessary.

    One important note here – Panotour Pro includes an exportable krpano license – and if you haven’t already exported that license, I would recommend doing that as soon as possible! The license export will be only possible as long as the license servers from Kolor are working!

    Finally I want to say:
    Thanks to the Kolor team for the last years and all the best wishes for the future!

    Klaus

    • Wow, I did a lot of research in early 2018 into doing 360 stitching and tours. I tried fusion and went with creating higher res 360s with a panohead, sony a6500, and a nice lens. I went with Kolor over the other options because it seems to be the best overall and the support was best even.

      After buying the gear I spent over a thousand dollars on all their software and making it brand free. At the beginning of the year I did a couple of tours and then took a long break from it. I have a very powerful computer but it was built on a first gen i7. So, I figured I would get right back into creating 360 content after I did a nice rebuild.

      Finally video cards have come down enough. And intel has come out with i9 processors. I have always been intel but someone suggested I consider AMD Threadripper. The AMD 1950x is less expensive but has twice as many cores and threads and benchmarks better overall. But, the intel has the best thread performance. So, I’m not sure which is more important. This brought me to the kolor site and learning they’re no longer in business.

      So, now I’m a little depressed about that. What do you guys think about which CPU I should get?

      Also, I suppose it’s safe to stitch with Autopano giga and create tours with Panotour, right? Do you foresee any issues for me to consider? I mean, it works, I may as well keep using it… I don’t know if I really understand what Krpano is but will my investment in all this kolor software transfer over to Krpano somehow?

      How do you go about exporting the Krpano license? I have a license for Autopano Giga 4, Panotour Pro 2, Livepano, and Branding Free Panotour Pro.

      • Run PanoTour and goto the Help Menu and the choose Licenses and then in the KRpano option click on the button that says Get KRPano License, enter you email address and it will be sent to you from KRPano.

        FYI KRPano is the engine, PanoTour is a GUI interface to KRPano, take a look at the KRPano site for morel details https://krpano.com/

        Kolor software still works fine and should do for the foreseeable future on Windows 10, and KRpano may issue some fixes if necessary for PanoTour.

  • these a-holes where lying to their customer for over a year.

    customers smell that something is wrong in 2017 but the employees lied through their teeth… denying that gopro is basically killing the apps.

    • Sorry to hear that Peter! I guess it’s hard for employees to say anything right in that situation. Do they tell the world we are dying, and then people stop buying, and it becomes self-fulfilling? Or do they hope to survive, so they keep silent about problems. I think the latter is the most logical choice. What else could they do…? Anyway just my opinion.

    • You aint kidding, I spent over a grand on Kolor software (autopano giga, panotour pro, livepano, branding free) not even a year ago and hardly got to use it. Now I want to but I’m afraid to… rrrr GoPro support both on phone and chat appears to know nothing.

      • There are two Facebook Groups that are good for support from kolor users, they are:

        Kolor Panotour & Krpano Users Group

        Kolor is closed. How to continue with Autopano & Panotour? Self-help group.