Panorama Photomerge Programs

[DANTPR11]

G'day All,

Just wondering if anyone can recommend any decent photomerge programs, the Adobe one I am currently using is useless at blending multiple images.
I am specifically looking for something that is able to match slightly different exposures as I am doing alot of sunset panoramas and find the exposure between some frames is slightly different.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dan

[katweazl]

Hey...I use PTgui which as its name suggests is a User Interface for Panorama Tools. Costs 59 euro.

Dunno if there are any good free ones.

Website here

Check it out

Joel

[nito]

I recommend panorama factory.

http://www.panoramafactory.com/

[baboo]

I second Panorama Factory.

It's a little pricey but I reckon worth the money, expecially if you're really into panos.

[antman]

For "free" software, try autostitch. Everything is totally automated and it produces some pretty good results. Unfortunately only allows you to work with jpegs.

Currently a free demo:

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

[avkomp]

I third the panorama factory.

you can try it free also. just puts a watermark on any saved images until you buy it

Steve

[mudder]

... I am specifically looking for something that is able to match slightly different exposures as I am doing alot of sunset panoramas and find the exposure between some frames is slightly different...

G'day,

I tried a couple and Pano Factory v4.x seemed to do a very good job for my stuff... makes the blending easy and matches exposures too, Autostitch is a good free one but only works on jpeg.

Lately I've been using PhotoShop CS2 and was tricky at first but found it to be easier now that I've tried it a few times...

You can adjust the exposure of each frame of the pano in PhotoShop though if that's what you mean by "the Adobe one"... Not sure, but you can either blend in one layer with advanced blending (but I don't think that once blended you can them move each section easily within the pano) which matches exposures, or you can blend "keeping layers" and just use a brightness/levels/curves adjustment layer over each section, and make each one of them "clipping" layers so they only affect that specific frame... Sounds tricky but try it and it makes it easier...

[avkomp]

panofactory 4.2 has native photoshop support now and I thought I read somewhere that it leaves the images as individual layers for additional tinkering within photoshop.

Havent looked for this yet or tested it.

Steve

[Alpha_7]

I was a user of Panofactory 3.3 and just upgraded to 4.2 and so far I'm loving the new version.

[mudder]

panofactory 4.2 has native photoshop support now and I thought I read somewhere that it leaves the images as individual layers for additional tinkering within photoshop.

Havent looked for this yet or tested it.

Steve

G'day,

Yep, PF can output to layers in Photoshop, tried that but each layer had the watermark (so lots o' watermarks ) and haven't purchased a licensed one without the watermark yet... I had better results with PF than PTGui using control points too, might have been just me driving PTGui wrong somehow though...

[avkomp]

.. I am specifically looking for something that is able to match slightly different exposures as I am doing alot of sunset panoramas and find the exposure between some frames is slightly different...

whilst panofactory has this feature,
I found that I had better success using full manual exposures keeping them about the same for the series, and of course taking them all as rapidly as possible so that I didnt get variations on the overall lighting.

might be a tad trickier if you were doing setting sun etc as the light would vary quite a lot over the sequence.

Steve

[rog]

I've been using Hugin, and quite seriously, of all the other tools I've used, I can think of no reason to look back.

It's free (as in beer and as in speech), cross platform (Linux, OSX and that other one ... erm ... windows, yeah that's it), uses the powerful panotools as a backend, and interfaces with other nifty things such as enblend, nona and autostitch to give the best tool for each step along the way.

In other words, it's better than ptgui without the price tag, IMHO.

It may be a bit harder to install than the others, occasionally has a quirk, and can be a a steep learning curve (like ptgui), but for the results, it's well worth it.

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

Google around for some tutorials, you'll likely need them.

[ozczecho]

I've been using Hugin, and quite seriously, of all the other tools I've used, I can think of no reason to look back.

It's free (as in beer and as in speech), cross platform (Linux, OSX and that other one ... erm ... windows, yeah that's it), uses the powerful panotools as a backend, and interfaces with other nifty things such as enblend, nona and autostitch to give the best tool for each step along the way.

In other words, it's better than ptgui without the price tag, IMHO.

It may be a bit harder to install than the others, occasionally has a quirk, and can be a a steep learning curve (like ptgui), but for the results, it's well worth it.

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

Google around for some tutorials, you'll likely need them.

Cheers mate, thanks for the link, will try tonight. I use a few apps hosted from sourceforge...

[Gordon]

I vote for Hugin too, I've posted a few panos on here lately, including 2 joined fisheye photos, with seamless joins.
As Rog wrote, a fairly steep learning curve, I spent a couple of days on and off until I figured it all out. Maybe I should have started with just 2 photos instead of 5
Now I have no reason to look elsewhere.

Gordon

[mudder]

I've never tried Hugin, and being a sucker for a nice high res pano I'll check it out... I remember the pano's in the creek and thought that was well joined... Thanks for the link and info...

[jethro]

Photoshop CS using layers is just as good! The more fiddling you do the better the result
Jethro

[rog]

Jethro, could you expand one what techniques you use in Photoshop CS? Are you just blending layers or doing more sophisticated things?

A lot of these dedicated tools do warping etc to eliminate lens distortion, parallax error, exposure differences, and all the other transformations that are needed to make a good pano.

[sydneywebcam]

Rog,

I recommend Panorama Factory (US$70, free to try for a month). It will save an image in PSP format with layers so you can fiddle with the result (paint on the layer masks to fix minor errors). It's especially good at blending the exposure so skies look natural.

I have been using it for a few weeks andhave gone crazy shooting large panoramas with up to 15 images to be stitched. I am very careful about leveling my camera on a tripod, shooting with everything set to manual, etc before I shoot them. The results are terrific.

Here is one of my latest http://sydneywebcam.smugmug.com/photos/ ... al&popUp=1

Check through my site for the last month (link below) there are several there.
_______________
Cheers,
Paul.

http://sydneywebcam.smugmug.com/gallery/1205211

[rog]

I tried panorama factory before moving to hugin.

Hugin also allows PP on a layered image, and it has the option of passing off the blending work to enblend (free, included with hugin), which has stacked up quite well for skies.

Love the choice of location in your sample pano. I've been nearby several times, and never thought to move closer to the bridge.

- Rog

[Osprey]

I'm also using Panorama Factory.

The first pano I put together with it was 19 shots on the vertical (180º) which can be found here: http://www.ospreyphotography.com/galler ... Panjpg.jpg
My latest effort was a fogbow in which I turned off the barrel distortion in the setup... worked much better than with it on: http://www.ospreyphotography.com/galler ... fogbow.jpg

Cheers, Helen

[zafra52]

I used Ulead Cool 360 that came with my privious camera and it was not all that bad, but I guess I wasn't using big photos either. Try Tucows.com for shareware or freeware programs

[zafra52]

I was going to recommend Ulead Cool 360 that came with my previous camera and it was not all that bad, but I guess I wasn't using big photos either. On the other hand, Hugin seems quite good and if it is free there is no harm in trying...

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[brembo]

What stitching method did you use? Nona, or PTStitcher? Also did you use autopano to generate the control points?

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[greencardigan]

I haven't had much luck with Hugin either.

Possibly because I haven't used it enough to learn it properly. I found it very unintuitive.

I'll have to give PTGUI a go too.

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[plugsnpixels]

I don't have patience for the manual methods (whether in Photoshop or in high-end pano apps); I've had good luck with auto-stitching in Calico on the Mac.

I've got some other tools to explore further, so my opinion may change .

[Yi-P]

I use the free program "autostich" for most of my panoramas.

Its not very user friendly or has many options, its free and does the job nicely, what else can I ask for?

[jdear]

Id recommend RealViz stitcher - if you are wanting the ultimate in Pano stitching software...

What is more important fundamentally IMHO is how you are shooting your panos... ideally you should be keeping the nodal point the same for your lense so your images dont suffer from parallax error and then stitching becomes increasingly harder - no matter what software you are using.

check out
"Really Right Stuff pano equipment". The omni-pivot package can allow horizontal and vertical alignment of images for mulitple row shot panoramas with the ability to create 200mb+ images... imagine how big you could print!

Its only my wish list anyhow

J