Best software for Stitching lots of images

[Tin Can]

Bryan, Installed ICE. Thanks for the heads up.

Looks good, but still a single point collator.

My iPod makes single point panos handheld instantly. 180 degrees is all I can do, but it's plenty. New iPhone is way better.

Here's my Alma Mater, a 4 story huge brick 1895 College gone. My favorite Darkroom was in the basement. The Pano shows where it was, dead center. The cupola is all that is left.

Both the 4X5 and Pano were shot from the same position. A very sentimental place for many. I shot this for the Facebook Barat page.. Ha ha! May it live, without me.

Barat HP5 4X5 by moe.randy, on Flickr

Barat empty iPod Pano by moe.randy, on Flickr

[Tin Can]

Had to look that word up. Still reading!

Microsoft Ice does have the option for orthographic projection, which is what you want. For PTgui, there is not an orthographic choice, at least there wasn't in the versions I used. A workaround is to specify the lens used as having a very high focal length such as 10,000mm.

You can also do this manually, if you want to avoid any geometry manipulation. Line up the stack of images as layers in a file. Pick the most important one as the base layer. Change the blending modes of all of the others to "difference". Turn off the visibility of all layers but the background layer. Turn on the first layer. Move it using the move tool, using the arrow keys at the end to move the layer one pixel at a time. When the overlap turns gray, then then image is aligned as well as possible without transforming. Change the blending mode of the moved layer to "normal". Now move on to the next frame.......rinse.....repeat.

I would try Photoshop first, if you have it. Next, ICE, as it's free.

[Jac@stafford.net]

So, I'm in a goofy mood. Here is a Photoshop 'panoramic' photo made without panning the camera.



See how we are?

[Tin Can]

Like!

so, i'm in a goofy mood. Here is a photoshop 'panoramic' photo made without panning the camera.



see how we are?

[Willie]

Another for Auto Pano Pro or their Giga program. They are designed for the bigger files and do a better job than Photoshop when it comes to fine detail and exposure variation blending.

Photoshop does a nice job if it is not too tough but when you get going it does come up with odd placements too often.

[Jac@stafford.net]

Another for Auto Pano Pro or their Giga program.

Is the Giga program dependent upon the hardware they promote?

[Mexipike]

So to answer a couple of questions. The camera did move the whole time. Basically, the camera was on a slider taking over lapping images while moving straight across. The lens used was a 24mm, because the space was very small where he could set it up. He also used polarization on the flash and on the lens so the lighting is even and flash glare isn’t a problem.

Photoshop when we tried it didn’t handle it.

He wants the most quality, but I agree that maybe we can eliminate some images and the quality would still be incredible. The question is how much they overlap. I’ll start looking into that.

[Delfi_r]

A freind used PTGui to stitching some hundred images taken like a plane flying over the image to reproduce a old map with great results

[Joshua Dunn]

For my digital capture I routinely use PTGui. It is by far the best software for stitching that I have used. Photoshop is fine for small panos, not big ones. If you look at my website you can see some examples of the work I do in multiple row, HDR, focus stacked panoramas. Go to my blog section (woefully out of date!) and you can see some of my work to scale. I capture hundreds but often thousands of images that I first process as HDR, then focus stack and then I use PTGui to assemble the image. Only after that do I start using Photoshop.

-Joshua

www.joshuadunnphotography.com

[Ted R]

The software HUGIN panaroma stitcher may offer what you seek perhaps?

https://sourceforge.net/projects/hugin/