Stiching 4x5? Can I skip 8x10?

[Paul H]

I'd be interested in knowing why you prefer those two over Photoshop. I've just become fairly serious about panos and have been happy with PS5 but I'm always interested in improvements, especially when free.

I used to use Hugin due to the control it gave, but it went through a few versions of being buggy on a Mac, the most annoying of which was it wouldn't work if the source images were in a path that had spaces in the name. I didn't have problems under Windows or Linux.

I purchased Autopano Pro when doing some 50 - 300 image digital stitches, and it found it to be far faster and more stable than Hugin or PS (CS3). It is much more forgiving when doing hand-held stitches (less of an issue with large format!), and I've always had better results with areas that are featureless or where there are moving objects (like the sea). I did some stitches for a friend as a trial stitching a couple of 4x10 (IIRC) shots, and for another with three 4x5 shots.

Hugin is definitely worth trying - it does have a guided mode, but if you want to poke around under the hood, there's a wealth of manual options.

[wentbackward]

Stitching is fine so long as what you want is just to cover that angle, but it does not replicate an 8x10 image (or 4 x 10) unless you use an 8x10 covering lens and use rear shift to create the material to stitch (without moving the lens). If you are shifting the back only, then in theory the overlap is based upon the tolerance of your system, whereas normal pano/stitching requires a large overlap.

I also use autopano. It's the most mindless way to stitch (until it gets it wrong). For scans where you've shifted the back only, set the lens to a focal length of 1000mm .