A panoramic image producing apparatus provides an intensity image production unit which produces intensity images from an input source image captured by an imaging device, a reference image data storage unit for storing a reference image which is used to compute the motion data of the intensity image and its absolute motion data, an absolute motion data calculation unit which uses the intensity image of the target image by first computing its relative motion data with respect to the reference image and using its result to compute the absolute motion data with respect to the target image, an image stitching unit to produce a panoramic image by using the absolute motion data computed above to stitch together the input source images, and a reference image setting unit which sets the target image as the new reference image under certain conditions.