How To Create Panorama Photo With Hugin
Jaro 3. September 2007 :: camera, hugin, panorama
Hugin is a free, easy to use and convenient panorama stitching program. The best part is that hugin doesn’t need any expensive hardware like dSLR or tripod with panoramic head to stitch a decent panorama photo. In fact, mobile phone with camera should be enough. In this tutorial I will cover only basic use of hugin, but it will be well enough to start stitching panoramas (even 360 degrees ones).
You’ll need two pieces of software:
- hugin – http://hugin.sourceforge.net
- autopano – http://autopano.kolor.com
You will also need some photos to stitch. There are only two things you should know before taking photos for panorama.
First, the photos must overlap. Anything between 1/4 and 1/2 of
one photo should be included on the next (or the previous) one. Here is an example. Left overlap region is good enough, right one is not – it’s too small with no distinct points on both pictures.
Second, the photos must be taken in the same conditions. This means you shouldn’t change any settings (e.g. white balance or colour tone) during the shooting. Take photos as fast as possible, this will assure that moving objects (e.g. clouds) will have approximately same position. Don’t walk while taking photos just move/turn your palm.
Now you know the basics so let’s take some photos. Go out and take 3 or 4 photos following the rules above. Done? OK, no need to go out. For the learning purposes you can use these 4 photos below (notice how they overlap each other):
The next step is to setup our software. Any computer faster than 500MHz with at least 128MB of RAM should be enough.
Unpack hugin and Autopano and launch hugin by running hugin.exe. Go to File – Preferences and do the following:
1) in the Autopano tab check Use alternative Autopano program and choose autopano.exe
2) in the Enblend tab check Use alternative enblend program and choose enblend.exe (you can find it in hugin’s directory – \hugin\enblend\enblend.exe). Then in Additional arguments type -v -l 10 (the middle character is small L, not 1).
Let’s now stitch our photos together. Open hugin, go to the Images tab and add photos. If you have an older camera it will ask you to fill some information (modern cameras have all needed info stored in EXIF data of a photo). Set the lens type to Normal (rectilinear). Focal length should be filled automatically. If not, choose the focal length multiplier so that HFOV (v) will be set at about 50 degrees for landscape photos or about 40 degrees for portrait photos. Here is an example of settings for the Nokia E50 camera:
Now we should anchor one photo for position. For best result choose photo which is in the center of panorama (ie. second out of three) and click the Anchor this image for position button. We are not dealing with exposition here, so Anchor for exposure is not important.
The next step is to match photos. Set points per overlap:
- fewer = faster, but less accurate (e.g. 10)
- more = slower, but more accurate (e.g. 100).
Set something between 25 and 50 here (I typically set 50 or 100) and hit the Create control points button.
Now we must optimise our panorama. Go to the Optimizer tab and choose Positions and view (y,p,r,v) from the dropdown list. Hit the Optimize now! button.
It’s time for a first glance at our panorama. Go to menu View – Preview window. Projection will be Equirectangular but you can experiment here. Hit the Straighten and then the Center button. For now the black parts of the image must remain.
Let’s render a panorama. Go to the Stitcher tab and click on Calculate optimal size. If it’s too big, set your own width (2000 pixels is enough). Height will be adjusted proportionally. Stitching engine should be set to nona, interpolator to poly 3 (bicubic) and gamma to 1.0 (no luminosity change).
The important thing is to properly blend the pictures so there are no distinct seams between them. Set image format to TIFF, compression to none and check the soft blending. Why choose TIFF and not go for JPEG instead? Well, see for yourself. The first image is JPEG, the second one is TIFF.
At last click on Stitch now! and wait. Here is the final result (taken with Nokia E50’s camera and stitched from 4 photos). To see the original size click on the photo:
Feel free to post your results in the comments below. Can’t wait to see some more panorama photos!
Thanks to KHRoN for submitting this tutorial!
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Friday Photo
Jaro 13. July 2007 :: friday photo, panorama
Today’s photo is a little bit different than all the previous ones. It’s a panorama picture made out of 15 photos, all taken by Nokia E50. KHRoN has promised to write a guide on how to do the panorama pictures with Nokia E50. I’m personally looking forward to it because panorama photography is a whole new world to me. Thanks KHRoN for sending it in!
To view the panorama picture click on the photo below.
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