Stitching Software 2012

Some 1.5 years back I visited last time this topic. What are the current stitching software products in the market ?

There is not much movement in terms of new players (rather some disappearing), but the leading (2) existing companies keep their software updated and it is fantastic to see how much they still can improve (at least that ones I use).

From my point of view the important ones remain in 2012:

• PTGUI (curr. Version 9.1.2)
• Autopano by Kolor (curr. Version 2.6)
• Hugin (active opensource project, stable version 2011.4.0 from December 2011)
• Microsoft ICE (curr. Version 1.4.4 May 2011)
  I am not sure about their strategy, the tool is free as part of their research but the proprietary display software like HDView and Photosynth is based on Silverlight which is shelved by Microsoft for further development)

Others:

• Photoshop Panorama Merge Feature
• Panorama Factory (Jan 2011, ?)
• Easypano (still selling at a unreasonable high price, no further comment)
• Realviz (acquired by Autodesk, also expensive)
• iSeemMedia (?)
• Panavue (?)
• Some OEM software bundled with cameras
• A list of panoramic software apps for iPhone and Android
  (Personally I dont believe in phones making serious panoramic images)

Sideline: Seems, since the history of patent wars (creation of fisheye based panoramas) around IPIX (defunc since 2006) is closed, even the patent is owned by Sony now.

My recommendation: Stick to Hugin and ICE if you want to use something for free, otherwise PTGui and Autopano are great products at a reasonable price, up to you to decide which one you prefer, both offer trial versions.

Performance Observations Stitching Applications

It does not make much sense to qualify stitching applications by their speed. !! But for the fun of it I compared the render time for 1 project in Autopano Pro and PTGui (both in Windows XP and Ubuntu  10.04 on the same hardware, Core 2 Duo 8300 @ 2,4Ghz).

Source Images:
12 images (Panasonic MDC FZ28, F5, 1/800s, 9.8mm)

Autopano Pro in Ubuntu (native): 3'34
Autopano Pro in Windows (native): 5'09

PTGUI in Ubuntu (Wine): 2'25
PTGUI in Windows (native): 3'05

Result file: ~14.5 MB JPG , ~15659 x 3925

Remarks:

• All default settings used.
• I also tested a virtual Windows XP in Virtualbox for Ubuntu, but the timing were much longer (using only 1 virtual CPU).
• The test above are in no way a re objective reference or whatsoever. It wont give you any advice what product is better based on timings.Is merely showing you you get more performance with Linux ! Most important is stitching quality and ease of use !
• When using batch stitching it does not matter if it takes 10 or 12 minutes (or any other time) because you can leave it running over night(s).
• For serious large gigapixel projects you need to operate in different scales. To stitch 100's of images in one project you need lots of memory and CPU horsepower if you want to render in reasonable amount of time.

Panorama Software advancing

I remember back 10 years (more or less) with few software applications around to stitch images. That was before Photoshop learned stitching and the time IPIX was running behind Prof. Dersch and his famous Panorama Tools. You had good results only with perfectly setup nodal point on a tripod, not to think of a handheld panorama without sometimes spending hours adjusting control points.
Now, you just throw any overlapping imagery into the actual versions of the software and you get decent results. Just a sample here, a panorama I tried to stitched 3 years back (handheld 7 images, 24mm) and put it into the "forget-it" folder. I took it out again and fed Autopano Pro 2.0.9 with it.
See some details of the result (all auto, stitched in less than 10min) compared with the 2 years old "auto-mode" stitch (the red squares are the detail from the old version):

On Panorama Software

Todays' Stitching Software is more powerful than ever before. A very evolutionary process created some tools or features and performance that one would not have expected some years back.

My personal history of software I used over the years (in sequence):

• Panoweaver (Windows and Mac, fisheye only)
• Panoramafactory (Windows only, flat)
  
• Autopano Pro 1.x (Windows)
  
• PTMac (MAC only, similar to PTGui)
  
• PTGui (Windows and Mac, only reason to stop using it is the missing Linux version)
• Autopano Pro 2.0 (Windows, MAC, Linux)
  

I dont compare the applications with each other because I was using them at different times and each software had its feature(s) that made me using it for a longer period and there was a reason to move on (at that time, it might be different situation today though).

VR/Fisheye based work:
I stopped using Panoweaver and moved to PTMac because PW was not very flexible and only perfectly leveled fisheye shots would turn into a good VR and it was expensive to update to newer versions. I moved on to PTGui because most of my workflow was on Windows not on MAC.

Flat panoramas:
I started with Panoramafactory which was the first (Windows) stitching software I found, that allowed at least a half decent automatic control point creation. It failed with large panoramas (memory problem). I moved on to Autopano Pro because the stitching results were better without major control point cleanup. I started using PTGui because I eventually used it for VR work and it does a really great job, even for very handheld'ish and uneven shots. I still use it on Windows, but I use Autopano Pro now (again) because it runs on Linux (and I am migrating my complete workflow to Linux now).

Today:
I upgraded to Autopano Pro 2.0 (at a update price of 39.- Euro) and started it using the last few days. An amazing improvement of performance and quality since the last time I used 1.4. Thanks to the Autopano Team for creating a tool that runs under Linux. I will post some real life examples and results the new few days. I am currently feeding Autopano Pro with Mamiya ZD files (adding to huge panorama files).

Autopano Pro Website: www.autopano.net

Panorama Photography Generation Y (Z?)

Here we go.. Digital Panoramas are no longer a big deal. Even 7 year old kids can do it now with the help by Micorosofot..

GIGAPAN Chinese Garden

Another GIGAPAN made with the modified gigapan systems head and the Panasonic Lumix FZ28. 96 images stitched with PTGui to a 14.200 x 17.300 pixel image (245MP). Not sure if it reveals much more details than 4 Canon 1Ds images stitched together. Maybe I will compare for this sake.

See the complete GIGAPAN here (link)

Panorama Tripod a shoestring II

To follow up on the description of the simple mini panorama tripod, here some results:
LX3 @24mm (ISO80), F5, 1/250s (Shot in 16:9 format by mistake), 30 degree between the 7 images covering roughly 180 degree.
Resulting in a 10.300 x 3.600 pixel image. (below smaller jpg version)
LX3 @60mm (ISO80), F5, 1/250s (Shot in 16:9 format by mistake), 20 degree between the 17 images covering roughly 180 degree.
Resulting in a 19.000 x 3.800 pixel image. (below smaller jpg version and 100% crop)

Conclusion:
I am happy with the results for a 270g (tripod only, LX3 comes at another 275g) light tripod that fits into my daily bag.
It needs some finetuning for the nodal point for closer subjects, I used the pre-made holes in the L-shape bracket. All you need is a drilling machine.

GIGAPAN Tips and Tricks (Part 2)

This topic does not apply specifically to images created with the Gigapan system, but to all stitching practice in general. The gigapan gives you more control over the process than for example handheld shot panoramas or using a panohead without dents.

I am a perfectionist when it comes to stitching images. I dislike (creating or printing) panoramas where you can see obvious seams or moving subjects that show up half (usually referred to as ghosts).

Preconditions:
a) All images are shot with same camera settings (whitebalance, aperture, speed). Optional usage of RAW.
b) The more overlap the better (to some extend only!). I recommend somewhere 30..45%. This you set during the Gigapan Setup (FOV setting) or manually while shooting with non-gigapan gear.
c) The more images (or the higher the cameras resolution) you want to stitch the longer it will take, resp. require more memory in order to get results in a realistic timeframe. I am not sure what are the limitations of running Gigapan Stitcher under Windows 32.
d) Set the "Kepp projected images" option in the Gigapan Stitcher Options screen (see Img.1)

Img.1

Retouch/Post Processing:
With plenty of overlap I created the 2 images (detail crop img.2) of the same spot with the scene itself changing. The stitcher cannot take care of moving subjects like people or cars. You can se the result in img. 3 (upper part). To remove the ghost appearance you load the warped images with the overlapping scenes from the data/projected folder (applies only to gigapan stitcher) into Photoshop. If you use PTGui save the resulting panorama file either as image with all layers or save the layers as separate files. Now you copy and paste parts of the scene to repair from the warped images into the stitched "big" file (use 50% transparency to match the non-moving subjects like flagpole, etc.) and use the layer tools to reveal or hide the parts to repair. I find this as a very efficient and fast way to repair the ghosts and its way better than cloning and stamping subjects, background patterns or copy-n-paste-mirror-resize bodyparts. See he result in img.3 or goto gigapan.org (link) to see the fullsize version.

Tips for Photoshop:
(Big panoramas require lots of memory for a decent working speed.)
- Use Windows 64 with lot of real memory (not always an option due to availability)
- Terminate any other non-essential programs or services.
- Switch off the copy to clipboard function (see PS options/settings).
- Assign 75..80% of memory to PS (see PS options/settings).
- Reduce the PS history to 2 or max 3, worst case to 1 (see PS options/settings).
- Do a regular EDIT/PURGE/ALL to relief memory (seems to work for me).
- Be patient.

Img.2

Img.3

New Stitching application

During the last few years a couple of image stitching applications appeared on the scene and most of them matured well, means upgrades with faster performance, more functionality, better results and so on. Just to name a few (at leats these ones I ever used):

Panorama Factory (link)
Autopano Pro (link)
PTGui (link)
Hugin (link)

Today I prefer to work with PTGui with a truckload of manual functionality, as well superb results in auto-mode.

Btw, the Gigapan system is "shipped" with a stitcher as well. (link)

Microsoft Research just launched another new stitcher (ICE, Image Composite Editor) in the neighborhood of Deepzoom Composer and co. I just gave it a try and the results are pretty good. I will continue to test.

Some more info (link)
Download (link)