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06/01/2006 11:06:16 AM · #701
Originally posted by fracman:

Well, I think that this picture from the Badlands would definitely qualify for a luminosity horror story :-)



I've had the merge problems too, but the images were sufficiently crappy that I didn't ever keep them. Really obvious stuff, like a model's hand being offset from her arm by several inches, stuff like that. Tough to compensate for that in PP.

Something interesting about this pano is that the merge looks very good all the way across the entire image yet it looks as though there is no brightness blending whatsoever.

It is as though the pano software you used worked on the merge only and not the light blending.

What pano software did you use for stitching?
06/01/2006 12:00:51 PM · #702
I've used a variety of tools over the years. I started out with the stitcher that came from Canon with the S110. Laster, I grabbed Hugin). Some of the early versions of Hugin didn't work very well (in fact, I think this one was done with Hugin), but the current version of the toolset does a pretty good job. I've played with the stitcher in PS CS2, but to be honest, I'm happier with the results I get from Hugin.

As mentioned in an earlier post, the brightness variation probably way too high for the software to deal with, since it went from heavily overcast skies to full, bright June sun in between frames 2 and 3. I think that Hugin just threw up its hands and gave up.
06/01/2006 12:12:16 PM · #703
Originally posted by fracman:

Melethia, not to do to much "me2ing", but I also liked your shot. I was impressed with how much of a difference your cropping made and was rather astonished at both how much difference there was between the original and edited sky and at how "natural" your hyperprocessing looked.

Jon


Thank you kindly! I'm really having a good time learning Photoshop stuff. It's really helpful to have the good folks around here to learn from, too.

And on the discussion of panos - the only time I've ever tried it is with my Powershot A40 which has a pano mode and does the stitching pretty much automagically (with the Canon software). I may have to try it with my Rebel - Texas landscapes might look a lot better in pano.
06/01/2006 12:30:46 PM · #704
Originally posted by Melethia:


Texas landscapes might look a lot better in pano.


Hehe, I wouldn't count on it. Remember, wide angle shots tend to make make things look smaller and the horizon look more like a straight line. Given that in Texas, the horizon is already a straight line, you'll probably end up with something more akin to modern minimalist paintings.

On the other hand, Texas might be a cool place to do a 360 degree shot in the middle of a flat, recently-planted field of row crops. With a flat, uniform horizon with no discernable features, that might just be a cool shot. Hmm... Methinks a roadtrip might be in order :-D
06/01/2006 12:37:32 PM · #705
Originally posted by fracman:

I think that Hugin just threw up its hands and gave up.

That is what that looks like to me and early versions of pano software were not as good. Now pano software generally works both on the merge and on the blending.

I have dabbled with several pano softwares. I've played a little bit with Autostitch, Hugin, PTGui, Autopano Pro, Photostitch and it seems like another one. What I don't like is they seem to be an evolutionary cludge of different parts that do different things and whose internal interactions I do not fully understand and their documentation leaves much to be desired. Panotools always seems to be in there somewhere but I'm not sure what it does nor do I ever know I have the software setup properly.

Any comments from your experience?
06/01/2006 12:42:19 PM · #706
Originally posted by Melethia:


Please add me to your list of groupies. I think you did a super job with your hyperprocessed image. It is over the top yet looks very natural at the same time. Very nice.
06/01/2006 01:14:22 PM · #707
Originally posted by stdavidson:

Any comments from your experience?


To be honest, I'm a geek by profession and a photographer as a hobby. Part of my job is installing and configuring software, so putting all the cruft on my computer needed by Hugin wasn't too bad compared to some other software I've tried to install.

The current version of Hugin includes everything for stitching, but you need to install autopano or autopano-sift on Windows for automatic control point generation. If you don't mind creating the control points manually, then there is only one installer. Even with autopano, I think that it is just two installers to run, both pretty straight forward.

I know for certain that one of the problems I struggled with was the fact that I didn't even use a tripod for my panos. All the individual shots were handheld, and I pivoted on the vertical axis of my body rather than the midpoint of the focal length, so there's perspective shifts that really complicate stitching. I gotta get of my butt and build the pano adapter for my D50 to see if that makes a big difference in the pano shots.
06/01/2006 04:08:10 PM · #708
Wow, I just found this, and I am completely intrigued. Thank you, Robert, for giving a kid something to do during these boring summer days.
06/01/2006 04:43:34 PM · #709
Originally posted by fracman:

To be honest, I'm a geek by profession and a photographer as a hobby. Part of my job is installing and configuring software, so putting all the cruft on my computer needed by Hugin wasn't too bad compared to some other software I've tried to install.

The current version of Hugin includes everything for stitching, but you need to install autopano or autopano-sift on Windows for automatic control point generation.

All I gotta say is you must have to install some pretty crappy software.

I downloaded and installed the latest hugin version.
RED FLAG: The latest version is v0.5_beta3! Version 1 has not even come out yet and their major bragging on the download site is that it is stable.

That does not fill me with confidence.

I want to run it without having to set control points because... welllll... that is just plain dumb to have to do that. Photomerge, Autostitch and Autopano Pro don't require it.

It says it is a panotools front end and you need that and autopano-sift whatever those things are. It directs you to this web site - //www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~dersch/ - which of course isn't even active but directs you to yet another site. Whatever it is that you need from that other site and how to install it is a mystery.

Sooo....
What are panotools and autopano-sift, where do you get them and how are they properly installed to be used with Hugin?

When you import an image into Hugin 0.5 it asks this question:
"Enter Crop Factor for this image.

The crop factor is given by:
crop factor = 43.3 / diagonal

Where diagonal is the diagonal (in mm) of the film or imaging chip?"

What is this and why should you ever have to enter it?

I'm guessing I'll have more questions.

I was able to play with this software manually entering control points and ignoring the above cropping factor but that is a royal pain.

All suggestions how to properly install this software and all its associated parts are welcome.

Message edited by author 2006-06-01 16:45:23.
06/01/2006 04:43:46 PM · #710
Originally posted by jman255:

... boring summer days.

!!! Trade ya!!!
06/01/2006 04:47:20 PM · #711
I believe Panotools is some university-developed, open-source, software for performing the actual image manipulation calculations, for which different developers have made their own front-end or user-interface.

Download.com Search: Panorama

Message edited by author 2006-06-01 16:50:32.
06/01/2006 05:05:17 PM · #712
Originally posted by GeneralE:

I believe Panotools is some university-developed, open-source, software for performing the actual image manipulation calculations, for which different developers have made their own front-end or user-interface.

Download.com Search: Panorama

I know that. Hugin wants to link these two programs for pantools and autopano-sift: autopano.exe and autopano.win32.exe

I can see those links above but this should not be a scavenger hunt...

All I want to know is... where is panotools and autopano-sift that link with Hugin? I will then retrive them and put them in the Hugin directory to be used.
06/01/2006 05:35:01 PM · #713
In the meantinme I have a simple, single row of 5 pictures stitched together with three different software programs to share.

These pictures are not image processed in any way. They were only rotated and roughly cropped to their largest dimensions and shrunk to about 1/3rd full size for the web to show basically untainted output.

Photomerge (CS2):
//www.pbase.com/azleader/image/61148305

AutoStitch:
//www.pbase.com/azleader/image/61148282

Autopano Pro:
//www.pbase.com/azleader/image/61148258

First thing I noticed is that they all stitched together decently, probably because of the simplicity of the single row pano merge. My previous experiments with more complex panos showed merging flaws by everyone.

The next thing I noticed is that Photoshop's Photomerge utility is, by far, the worst at blending.

Lastly, though you may not easily see this with the 1/3rd sized images, Photomerge had the highest quality merge image. There other two had more color noise. Autostitch has the worst quality image of all. AutoStitch does something funky, it merges and saves the image as a .jpg file and opens it up again in your image editing software. I believe it is the extra .jpg save that causes it to have the worst quality.

Message edited by author 2006-06-01 17:35:17.
06/01/2006 07:37:39 PM · #714
Originally posted by stdavidson:


All I gotta say is you must have to install some pretty crappy software.


Yeah, I guess so. One thing is, software like this (Hugin, autopano, panotools, etc.) is free because it is being written by people who donate their time and energy to it. As a result, lots of free software comes out written for geeks who also take pictures. With my personality, I actually tend to prefer manual selection of control points, since I like to believe that I know what I'm doing better than the computer does.

Its been a while since I used Hugin, and going back to it today, I can certainly see how 90% of it would annoy the heck out of most photographers.
06/01/2006 07:56:20 PM · #715
Originally posted by fracman:

Originally posted by stdavidson:


All I gotta say is you must have to install some pretty crappy software.


Yeah, I guess so. One thing is, software like this (Hugin, autopano, panotools, etc.) is free because it is being written by people who donate their time and energy to it. As a result, lots of free software comes out written for geeks who also take pictures. With my personality, I actually tend to prefer manual selection of control points, since I like to believe that I know what I'm doing better than the computer does.

Its been a while since I used Hugin, and going back to it today, I can certainly see how 90% of it would annoy the heck out of most photographers.

Guess what... like you, I'm a long time computer programmer and it is annoying the HECK out of me too.

Some installation instructions that work would be nice. I found a autopano-SIFT package that I installed in the Hugin folder. The problem I have now is that I don't know how to install autopano-win32.exe and be able to use it. It just crashes Hugin right now. I have no idea how or where to install it.
06/01/2006 08:11:59 PM · #716
Originally posted by stdavidson:

Some installation instructions that work would be nice. I found a autopano-SIFT package that I installed in the Hugin folder. The problem I have now is that I don't know how to install autopano-win32.exe and be able to use it. It just crashes Hugin right now. I have no idea how or where to install it.


Hmm. I ran the autopano-SIFT installer first, installed it under c:\program files\autopano-sift. Then I ran the hugin intsaller, put that in c:\program files\hugin. On first run of Hugin, select File->Preferences from the menu bar. In the preferences window, click on the Autopano tab.

From the "Select autopano" dropdown, select autopano-SIFT. In the autopano-SIFT section of that tab, either enter "C:\Program Files\Autopano-SIFT\autopano-win32.exe" in the Autopano-SIFT field or click the elipses (...) button and browse to wherever you installed APS. Click the "OK" button, and it should (in theory) work.

I ran that pano from the badlands through the version I downloaded today and, while slightly better on the luminance merging, it still wasn't great. I went out and tried snapping some shots with the new camera to play with, but the combination of the wider angle lens and the lack of a pano head on my tripod created way too much paralax for any of the tools I have to deal with. Time to spend more money, I guess...
06/01/2006 08:31:29 PM · #717
Originally posted by fracman:

Originally posted by stdavidson:

Some installation instructions that work would be nice. I found a autopano-SIFT package that I installed in the Hugin folder. The problem I have now is that I don't know how to install autopano-win32.exe and be able to use it. It just crashes Hugin right now. I have no idea how or where to install it.


Hmm. I ran the autopano-SIFT installer first, installed it under c:\program files\autopano-sift. Then I ran the hugin intsaller, put that in c:\program files\hugin. On first run of Hugin, select File->Preferences from the menu bar. In the preferences window, click on the Autopano tab.

From the "Select autopano" dropdown, select autopano-SIFT. In the autopano-SIFT section of that tab, either enter "C:\Program Files\Autopano-SIFT\autopano-win32.exe" in the Autopano-SIFT field or click the elipses (...) button and browse to wherever you installed APS. Click the "OK" button, and it should (in theory) work.

Where did you get your autopano-SIFT package? Mine came from here:
//user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~nowozin/autopano-sift/

I installed SIFT in the same folder as Hugin and I did that after hugin install... neither are on C: drive. My Hugin is v0.5 beta 3 which is the latest. I will redo in your order and on the C: drive but I'll bet ya a beer it doesn't work. :)
06/01/2006 08:48:32 PM · #718
Yup... I was right... stupid Hugin install still doesn't work.

Install of SIFT went fine. No messages.

Install of Hugin had a long message ending with "Unknown Language Configured". I went forward anyway. Went to preferences and linked to the correct autopano and SIFT apps now in the C: directory in the default SIFT install directory.

Run the software. I still get this message on every image when I import it:

""Enter Crop Factor for this image.

The crop factor is given by:
crop factor = 43.3 / diagonal

Where diagonal is the diagonal (in mm) of the film or imaging chip?"

I leave in 0.0. And as soon as I try to generate control points the program tries to do some command line activity, immediately cancels. Same as before.

Message edited by author 2006-06-01 20:53:42.
06/01/2006 09:03:25 PM · #719
You guys are way too geeky. (And here I thought myself a pretty good geek!)

Try printing each picture and scotch-taping it on the back....

(hiding now)
06/01/2006 09:06:58 PM · #720
Originally posted by stdavidson:

Run the software. I still get this message on every image when I import it:

""Enter Crop Factor for this image.

The crop factor is given by:
crop factor = 43.3 / diagonal

Where diagonal is the diagonal (in mm) of the film or imaging chip?"

I leave in 0.0. And as soon as I try to generate control points the program tries to do some command line activity, immediately cancels. Same as before.


Odd. I don't get any of those messages at all. Are you sure you have the most recent version of Hugin? My version is 0.5. I don't think there's been a beta of 0.5 for six months or more. The direct download URL for the installer I used today is //easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/hugin/hugin-0.5.exe.

Oh, and Bear, if we've veered too far off topic, just say so and we can take this offline...
06/01/2006 09:09:30 PM · #721
Originally posted by Melethia:

You guys are way too geeky. (And here I thought myself a pretty good geek!)

Try printing each picture and scotch-taping it on the back....

(hiding now)


Hehe. My first attempt at stitched panos was a long time ago. I was up in Northfield, MN at St. Olaf College and wanted to get a picture of their chapel. My idea was that I'd just take regular pics of the whole thing, print them out, and tape them together. Didn't work. Believe me, for all the problems Hugin brings, it is still MUCH easier than scotch tape :-)
06/01/2006 09:12:00 PM · #722
Originally posted by fracman:


Odd. I don't get any of those messages at all. You don't get the message about crop factor when importing images?

You don't get the crop factor message asked on every image import?

I'm certain there is something else Hugin needs that you have and I don't. I'm ready to declare it a not ready for prime time official garbage software. It is v 0.5 and that tells me a lot. I can run it crippled but it is worthless without SIFT working properly. I still don't know if I even installed the right versions of the pantools and SIFT because what they supply in the Hugin package is incomplete. If I have trouble with it then others probably wil will to. The install instructions are confusing, hard to follow and just plain awful.

I will move on and try out something else a little later.

Message edited by author 2006-06-01 21:25:24.
06/01/2006 10:04:27 PM · #723
Here is the same St. Helens 5 image pano with a trial version of a commercial pano software called PTGui:

//www.pbase.com/image/61160024

Th trial software has some restrictions, the main one being it does not allow you to use Panotools and leaves a watermark. This uses strictly the built-in stitching and blending software.

Again it looks like the merge was good. I have not seen one merge with bad connections. I will probably have to try these with a more complex pano to test them more. It does a great job with the blend. Photomerge (CS2) is still way, way behind all the other tools.

Message edited by author 2006-06-01 22:05:13.
06/01/2006 10:53:03 PM · #724
Ok, I finally did my own comparisson of the tools I've got...

Autopano Pro
Autostitch
Photomerge (CS2)
Hugin

For all intents and purposes, Autopano Pro and Autostitch produced the same output. Neither one was able to automatically merge all 7 input shots, and I was unable to figure out how to give manual hints. What they did render, however, looks quite good. The only obvious stitching problem is in the handrail.

Photomerge from Photoshop CS2 is useless, in my book. Not only does it have obvious stitching problems throughout, there are also obvious luminosity failures as well. Furthermore, while I was able to force it to add in the last couple frames, I felt that the interface lacked the features necessary to get a good merge across the pano.

While Hugin wasn't able to automatically merge all 7 frames, since I could manually add control points, I was able to define the link between the two parts. Even though the link was made with only 5 control points (the rest had 10+) that were all based around the trees on the horizon, there's only two visible stitching problems (one minor one in the handrail, and the obvious line through the turbulent water on the right). Luminosity looks pretty good across the board, with one minor transition problem 2/3 the way across the sky.

Message edited by author 2006-11-14 15:53:46.
06/01/2006 11:07:43 PM · #725
Found a Pano software just updated just yesterday! Panorama Factory:

//www.pbase.com/azleader/image/61163216

Does a pretty good job except you have to set control points by hand. Believe me, it is a major pain in the behind when there are only 5 images. It forced to to go back again and again to realign the control points. It never got perfect matchups. I merged it as soon as it would let me.

Message edited by author 2006-06-01 23:08:17.
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