Garden Gnome Software

Hi all, I've read some old posts regarding the "fuzziness" or "softness" of smaller flash panos, and I was having the same problem. I was wondering if any of you could post settings you've found to be the best for what you're trying to do. Again, this is for the smaller, 400x300-ish sizes with a goal filesize of ~300k or thereabouts. I've been happy with the larger fullscreen-size panos so far but the small ones are tough to nail down a set of numbers for. Some basic questions:

1. Is there an optimum source file width I should use, or is it simply "the bigger the better"?
2. What kind of cube face size/quality combination are you guys happy with?
3. Is my only hope to simply oversharpen the source images?
4. Preferred filters?
5. Are there any other tricks I should know (besides turning off anti aliasing)?

Thanks!

Edit: Crap, I put this in the wrong folder...this was meant for the "Pano2VR general" folder. Can an admin move it?

1. Focus manually. I use x10 liveview and manually focus

2. Flip up the mirror and wait before triggering the camera with a wireless shutter release.

3. Don't use too small of an aperture because you will start experiencing diffraction losses.

4. Color casts will make your image seem unsharp. Set your white balance before shooting.
Take the time to set a custom white balance by using something like an expo disc or something white in a normal mode such as daylight, cloudy, or tungsten.
a. Ensure not in AWB auto white balance mode or Custom
b. Shoot photo of expo disc or something white
c. Set the custom white balance to the photo of the expo disc or white thing covering the entire field of view.
d. Set the white balance to custom white balance
e. Shoot a grey card or color card so that you can check the colors in photoshop or camera utility such as ZoomBrowser

5. Don't move around before or during the shutter release and exposure.

6. Try and get a better exposure instead of tone mapping or exposure blending.

7. Use a fixed focal length lens (prime lens, focusing actually slightly changes the focal length)

There are other things as well, but I am tired

@castillonis - santo true