What applications are you all using for panoramic stitching?

[shambrick007]

Hello. <p>

 

I've been interested in shooing some panoramics for a while now. I had

considering going the film route with either a 65mm on 4x5, a 90mm on 5x7 w/a

roll film back, or a swing-lens 35mm camera. But with today's high mega-pixel

SLRs, stitching software, and the need for scanning, the film route does not

seem practical any longer.<p>

 

What software are you all using for stitching your panoramics - both pay and

freeware? I've used the Canon software that came with my 5D once, and it

seemed to work out fine, but I was wondering if there was anything better.<p>

 

Also, what online services are you all using to get you huge prints made?<p>

 

I'll be shooting with a 5D, and I assume it's best to shoot the segments with

a "normal" focal length --> 50mm.<p>

 

Thanks in advance.

[les_gyug1]

A google search will turn up a lot of software. I have started using Autostitch for producing the photos (freeware) which is absolutely painless--no marking any points or doing any work at all, and it even recognizes which of the photos in a directory it ought to use. And I use FSPViewer (freeware) for viewing the panoramas on screen and rotating through them.

Cheers,

Les

[ethan_adler]

PTAssembler (http://www.tawbaware.com/ptasmblr.htm) is a good front end to a great free and open source panorama stitching tool. It takes a little effort to use, but I have found that it produces the highest quality results. Just read the online manuals/tutorials (there are a lot).

 

On this guys website he gives suggestions on techniques for taking the pictures, thoughts and considerations when taking pictures for a panorama and some good tripod hardware to improve the images.

 

I highly recommend this software.

[mark u]

You omitted one film solution - the Hasselblad Xpan which gets around many of the problems with stitched images, although you need a MF scanner for good scan results. The advantage with single capture is that you aren't limited to static subjects (remember clouds move, and wind blows leaves on trees) or kludges in post processing to try to cover up for movements or changes of light between captures.

 

If you really want to go the stitching route then for good results a proper panoramic tripod head is essential especially if your images contain any midground or foreground elements, along with the knowledge of how to set it up, although there is also this technique using a TS-E lens:

 

http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_58/essay.html

 

So far as lenses are concerned, there are no limitations, although if you are trying to get best detail it helps to have a lens that is going to require the minimum of correction in software for distortion, vignetting and CA (all of which make stitching harder to do). Max Lyons of Gigapixel fame regularly shoots with quite long lenses, such as 200 f/2.8, while others use half a dozen shots with an 8mm fisheye to make a 380x180 spherical VR panorama.

 

There are some expensive high end software solutions, such as Realviz Stitcher, but Helmut Dersch's Panorama Tools are now available in a full 16 bit version and are hard to beat, especially if you use one of the front ends (PTAssembler, PTGui, hugin). Pre-process images with PTLens. I have also tried using Panorama Factory, but the results aren't quite as good (at least in the version I tried), and it isn't as flexible.

 

I've no experience of farming out printing to commercial outlets for the results.

[davebell]

Canon Photostitch which somes bundled with most, if not all, canon digital cameras, SLR or not. Got a very good review in some or other magazine I read a while back, don't ask for reference because I won't be able to find it now.

[gdanmitchell]

You know, I've found that I can actually do pretty good stitches using only PS. start with

relatively well-aligned images shot from the tripod and adjust for lens distortion using one

of the available plugins. Then copy and paste the separate component images into a large

PS window in separate layers.

 

Manually align them as well as you can. Find decent pathes for the break between images

select and delete the part of the upper image you don't want. When you select, feather the

edges of the selection first - I usually go for about a 5 pixel feather, though I'll vary this

for different textures. (e.g. - wider for clouds)

 

I have made several images from up to 4 or 5 shots in which I can no longer spot the

dividing lines between the original images.

[michael_brant]

I am very happy with the job done by Panorama Factory.

[johnson_d.]

I'm impressed with AutoStitch. I get pretty impressive results with basically no effort on my part.

 

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

[wayne_campbell]

You probably know this already but Photoshop Elements has a Panorama assembler function that is just as easy as any above. It does all the work.

[EricBoehm]

I haven't used it myself yet, but a friend of mine uses PTGui and it produces AMAZING results. It's fully automatic, just feed it the images. Even handles hand-held panorama shots, adjusting the image sizes and overlap automatically.

 

Check it out at http://www.ptgui.com/

[funkag]

I've got to throw another plug in here (oh, no - possibly the worst digital camera pun ever) for the Autostitch program from U. of British Columbia. I've used it for 6.5x20 pans, and they look fantastic. My only problem with it is that to get maximum quality one must fiddle with the default settings, and sometimes my 1gb ram computer runs out of memory with really big images.

[x]

After using various programs over the years I've homed in on PTGui. The latest version does a brilliant job in its automatic mode and with those images that need manual intervention it has a very wide range of manual controls. The price is much more reasonable than most other Pano programs as well. PT Assembler is very good too, and cheaper.

 

I've never had much success with Canon Photostitch. Too many joins with faults when you look closely. PTGui gives you the control necessary to produce flawless joins for most images.

[swenson]

I tried about a half dozen and Panorama Factory is the best. Well worth the $70.

[grant g]

Lots of good answers above, but I'd like to add this:

 

The level of software required to make a good stitch depends on the quality of the equipment and method of capture used.

 

My preference is to get the shots done with either shift lenses (on the wide side) or lenses pivoted on their nodal points (in the normal to telephoto range) and use simple software like Canon's photostitch or PS using the simple photomerge option.

 

If you don't have such equipment or patience...then PTgui will work wonders and is an excellent value.