Stitching images

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dnmilikan

Stitching images

Postby dnmilikan » Mon May 12, 2008 10:25 pm

For those who may be interested in selling prints aside from Proshow productions, I want to mention that stitching multiples of digital images is a way to markedly improve print resolution, tonal gradations, and the ability to print larger prints than may be possible from a single digital image.

In my experience I have shot 27 exposures using my 85 mm Canon lens and stitched those into a single image using Ptgui stitching software. This effectively increased the 12.8 MP of a single exposure from the 5D to a 345 MP image. This does require a special tripod head that allows the lens to be rotated on the axis of it's entrance pupil. This is done to avoid paralax.

This is not the limit of what can be accomplished with either the hardware or of the software. Others have made images of gigapixel dimensions (one billion pixels).

As I said at the outset, this may not be of interest to those whose primary emphasis is on slide show production...it is undoubtedly the way to improve print image quality to the level of large format cameras and beyond.

All for your information.

Best regards,
Don

Stumpy

Re: Stitching images

Postby Stumpy » Tue May 13, 2008 10:44 am

I tried that a while back with my old Fuji F5000 when i was photographing the Forth Road Bridges at Queensferry in Scotland. I'll agree, it did improve the quality but i couldn't get it to match up just right...there was always one detail or another that gave it away.

Now i've got my Canon A640 that problem is a thing of the past. There's a feature on there for stitching images together. After taking the first shot, the image is kept on the left of the screen so i can set up the second shot before taking it. Then it's just a case of adding them together in Photoshop and 'Bob's your Uncle'.

Makes you wonder where digital cameras will go next :?

Stuart

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Re: Stitching images

Postby im42n8 » Thu May 22, 2008 10:14 am

I use Autopano Pro ... it takes care of much of that paralax problem for you (no dire need for a panohead). You just need to ensure you have enough overlap between images that it can do something with it. I've stitched 70+ images without a problem. Very impressive program. It even lets you crop the image once the stitch process is completed (or to remove images that you don't want in the final image).

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Re: Stitching images

Postby JARHTMD » Mon Mar 02, 2009 11:46 am

I use (old version 3) ArcSoft Panorama Maker. I like this $20 program better than Photoshop CS3. It's much quicker & less hastle. Occasionally, there's some touchup needed, but that's rare.

Frequently, when my wide lens just isn't wide enough, I'll just shoot several images & stitch them together. I never use a special tripod head. In fact, I often don't even use a tripod. Last year in China, I hand-held 9 shots in 10 seconds of a large city plaza, full of moving people. It stitched together beautifully.

Overlap 1/3 and keep the horizon straight. Shooting verticals has worked best for me. If possible, "average" the overall exposure & shoot manual. A really wide shot can have a sizeable exposure range & automatic can cause different exposures for the various shots, which are noticeable in the stitched image. Of course, some images are better/easier to work with than others . . . a rather close up panorama of the Air Force Academy Chapel completely confused all of the panorama stitchers that I tried. None could decide which of the roof peaks to match up.

My file sizes are not nearly as large as Don's, but panoramas (large or small) can definitely add a new dimension to your photography . . . and it's a lot of fun too.

Jim
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Re: Stitching images

Postby xchopsr » Fri Mar 06, 2009 1:25 pm

You may want to take a look at Microsofts free Image Composite Editor

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/

quote: What is Image Composite Editor?
Microsoft Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. The application takes a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location and creates a high-resolution panorama incorporating all the source images at full resolution. The stitched panorama can be saved in a wide variety of formats, from common formats like JPEG and TIFF to multi-resolution tiled formats like HD View and Silverlight Deep Zoom.
Features
State-of-the-art stitching algorithms automaticaly place source images and determine panorama type
Advanced orientation adjustment view allows planar, cylindrical, and spherical projections
Support for different types of camera motion
Excellent exposure blending using Microsoft Research fast Poisson algorithm
Automatic cropping to maximum image area
No image size limitation - stitch gigapixel panoramas
Native support for 64-bit operating systems such as 64-bit Vista
Output in a wide variety of image formats:
HD View
Silverlight Deep Zoom
TIFF, JPEG, PNG, and more un-quote"


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Re: Stitching images

Postby BenM » Sat Mar 07, 2009 4:19 am

Photo stitching to make a panoramic landscape is one of the hallmarks of some of my travel slide shows. I use 10-12 photos, sometimes more, stitched with Photoshop. This works better than the free Canon software that came with the camera. The panorama is then inserted into the show, slide time is around 20-30 seconds and I set pan from one end to the other. With the right kind of music it is very impressive.

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Re: Stitching images

Postby Frankie » Sat Mar 07, 2009 6:03 am

dnmilikan wrote:In my experience I have shot 27 exposures using my 85 mm Canon lens and stitched those into a single image using Ptgui stitching software. This effectively increased the 12.8 MP of a single exposure from the 5D to a 345 MP image. This does require a special tripod head that allows the lens to be rotated on the axis of it's entrance pupil. This is done to avoid paralax.

Don


Hi Don,
I love the info you send in on photography. Thanks.It's always very helpful information. I just checked the forum this morning and, as fate would have it, was out practicing panoramic shots of the Hudson River yesterday. I was planning on stitching them together using Photoshop CS4. I'm assuming the workflow is to stich them together in the RAW format and then tweak for exposure, lighting and color. Right? Is the increase in mp the reason you prefer Ptgui?

Thanks again for sharing your expertise,
Frankie

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Re: Stitching images

Postby im42n8 » Sat Mar 07, 2009 9:46 am

I played a little with this program. It's pretty good for what it does ... darned good! It seems to reject images that don't fit (as far as it can tell) into the other images. But, you don't actually know which one that is (or ones are).

The cropping is not done so you can see it ... that is, you see where the cropping borders (that you can adjust if you want) but you don't see a (final) cropped image.

For quick and dirty this thing looks really good! I haven't had time to play a lot with it but thought I'd try it on a set of 9 images and see what came about. I used JPGs as the source images since they were already available.

I didn't try images (yet) the require more than one row of stitching ... curious as to whether it'll handle that as well as a single row. (their forum seems to indicate that multiple rows work).

Interesting anyway ... another option. I haven't compared to the Autopano Pro output yet either. Still, it looks pretty good ... and for cheap!

Dale

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Re: Stitching images

Postby Frankie » Sun Mar 08, 2009 6:15 am

I downloaded the trial version and did a side-by-side with the stitching program in CS4. PTGui did a much better job of keeping everything in perspective and was simple to modify. (Keep in mind though that I just upgraded to CS4 so some of that may be a result of operator error.) I used 7 photos oriented vertically and overlapping by 25-30%, and didn't have to crop at all with PTGui versus the usual cropping with Photoshop. I was also able to stitch them using my RAW files. The Pro version actually stitches HDR images as well. How cool is that! I'd say with this quick trial PTGui looks like a very handy tool to have around! I'm a student in a graphic design program so I'm checking to see if they offer student discounts. Thanks Don for letting us know about this.

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Re: Stitching images

Postby PhilipWeir » Mon Mar 09, 2009 10:02 am

Google recently added detailed images of some paintings in the Prado in Madrid to Google Earth. To do this they took many, many pictures of the paintings and then stiched them together using PTGui. For those of you who may be interested you can see a video of how they did it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1EOJr11bvo&fmt=18 - 2:55.

Philip

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Re: Stitching images

Postby Frankie » Mon Mar 09, 2009 11:25 am

Hi Philip,
That was great! OK, I'm sold. Time for me to pick up a copy of PTGui. Do you have it? DId you find that it was easier and faster than CS4 - it you happen to have that too?

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Re: Stitching images

Postby PhilipWeir » Mon Mar 09, 2009 12:18 pm

Frankie, I first looked at photo stiching software about 5 years ago whilst visiting Zermatt in Switzerland. The temptation to do some panoramic shots was unavoidable. I seem to remember researching about 5 or 6 different products and easily decided on PTGui and I've stuck with that ever since. Sorry, never tried CS4 but I'm really happy with PTGui and, when time allows, will try using it for HDR compositions.

Philip

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Re: Stitching images

Postby im42n8 » Mon Mar 09, 2009 4:05 pm

The difference between Autopano Pro and PTGui Pro is about $48 (ApP: ~$145, PtP: ~$193). Both will do multi-row stitching, both do tone mapping, both stitch HDR images,

Autopano pro will detect panoramics in a folder if you ask it too and will stitch the ones it finds for you. It'll iron out the color and exposure differences between images it's stitching, it'll try to remove ghost image (say someone moves location in the set of images you take ... it'll remove the ghost image), and it'll handle fish-eye lenses. It can create an hdr image from under and over stopped images. And it will stitch HDR images together. It'll analyze images to see if they'll fit into the pano ... they don't have to be level to do that (yep, the images can even be tilted!) (it stitches spatially and dynamically). It supports stitching jpg, tiff (8/16-bit), png (8/16-bit), many types of RAW images. And, like PTGui, will export to a layered PSD file for touchups. It'll import the hdr images

PTGui will stitch the images you tell it to stitch, including HDR images. Can export a multiplayered PSD file, as well as to JPG, 8 and 16-bit tiff or png files. It imports those JPG, tiff, and png only as well as HDR and exr. Doesn't appear that it can create an HDR file tho if it's not already an HDR source.

It appears that, for the most part, Autopano Pro does a bit more than PTGui for fewer $s. Both however are excellent choices!

Dale

http://www.autopano.net/
http://www.ptgui.com/

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Re: Stitching images

Postby Frankie » Mon Mar 09, 2009 5:27 pm

Hmmm ... Dale, now you've given me food for thought. I've looked around for reviews of both. I think I'll download a trial of Autopano, throw some images into it, and see how it measures up against my PTGui vs CS4 trial.

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Re: Stitching images

Postby JARHTMD » Mon Mar 09, 2009 5:51 pm

im42n8 wrote:Autopano pro will detect panoramics in a folder if you ask it too and will stitch the ones it finds for you.


Dale

Detecting & stitching "panorama parts" from within a folder is an amazing feature. That feature alone is bekoning me to buy. I shoot a ton of panoramas, simply because I've been so pleased with the relatively few that I have stitched. Most of them end up not getting stitched. When shooting I try to remember to "shoot my feet" before/after panoramas for the sole purpose of marking the panoramas & later rename the parts pan01, pan02, etc.

I can envision a workflow (especially after an extended photo trip) of letting the software run overnight just searching for the panoramas. Do you know if the input filenames are incorporated in the output filenames? Output from the trial version cannot be saved, but maybe I could do a hands on test on a small group of files.

For me it would be great if there was cheap/free software that would search the panoramas, even if it didn't stitch or if the output wasn't "up to snuff".
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