[Gigapan Stitch Efx Free 12l
Addison Mauldin
GigaPan Stitch panorama software stitching automatically corrects the darkening around the periphery of input images, due to lens optics, so that images do not show vertical banding (vignetting) that would otherwise occur. You don't need to do anything to get vignette correction in Stitch; it's automatic!
With vignette correction:
Without vignette correction:
Stitch can now better handle 360 degree panoramas that include the zenith, has improved horizon-leveling, and uses advanced algorithms to accurately estimate lens focal length for optimal alignment whether you're using a long lens with tele-extender or a wide angle lens for quick shooting.
GigaPan Stitch software provides quick and precise stitching for your gigapixel panoramas. With automatic alignment, projection and blending, GigaPan Stitch will help you create high quality panoramas in less time than ever before. Stitch, preview and upload your images to GigaPan.com with one powerful and easy program.
For panoramas with several hundred input images, stitching can be as fast as shooting (just seconds per input image). GigaPan Stitch can do stitching, viewing, uploading, and exporting simultaneously, if desired.
GigaPan Stitch is easy to use with a simple interface. Our stitching software does not require the user to indicate corresponding points manually; alignment is determined automatically. GigaPan Stitch also corrects for radial distortion (if your camera lens has some barrel or pincushion distortion). Works with the images from virtually all cameras, from 1 megapixel (MP) cell phone cameras to inexpensive point- and-shoot cameras to 50+ MP professional DSLRs.
Better results, faster! Edit and make contrast and color adjustments right in GigaPan Stitch.Efx with an easy-to-use interface and advanced color correction options. Achieve beautiful, high- quality adjustments to your gigapan, accomplishing in seconds what would usually take minutes or hours to do in Photoshop. Use the following options within the Stitch.Efx color adjust feature:
With GigaPan Stitch it is easy to upload an image you've stitched to GigaPan.com, for sharing with others. Uploading is now three times faster than with Stitch version 1.0. The software tells you your network throughput in megabits per second, and gives estimated time to completion.
Select the images whose blending you want to fine-tune, save their projected images, use Photoshop to retouch their masks, and then upload to GigaPan.com using our free Upload application. Learn more about Upload.
GigaPan Stitch and Stitch.Efx can now better handle 360 degree panoramas that include the zenith, has improved horizon-leveling, and uses advanced algorithms to accurately estimate lens focal length for optimal alignment whether you're using a long lens with tele-extender or a wide angle lens for quick shooting.
On most computers, its memory use is modest enough that other applications, such as web browser or email, can be running simultaneously, and not be slowed too much. If desired, stitching jobs can be paused and resumed.
GigaPan Stitch is designed to process panoramas with up to 2,000 images, taking advantage of multi-core processors and more memory. However, image stitching does not require state of the art computing equipment.
GigaPan Stitch does automatic alignment, projection, and feathered blending so that, in many cases, the seams between images will be invisible. The resolution and detail of your input images is retained.
Automatically corrects the darkening around the periphery of input images, due to lens optics, so that images do not show vertical banding (vignetting) that would otherwise occur. You don't need to do anything to get vignette correction in Stitch.Efx; it's automatic!
With vignette correction:
Without vignette correction:
For maximum control over blending, Stitch.Efx supports blending masks by hand in Photoshop or other image editing software. An ideal tool for shooting images of people or other moving subjects. Simply select the images whose blending you want to fine-tune, save their projected images, use Photoshop to retouch their masks to control cut curves between images, flatten the layers into a single image, and then upload to GigaPan.com using our free Upload application.
This is a screen shot of the GigaPan Stitch software with my 992 photo panoramic image ready to stitch. Completing the image took hours. Completing the project (retouching, uploading, etc.) took 15 hours, some of which I spent sleeping while the machine carried on without me.
Here is my GigaPan on its Really Right Stuff carbon-fiber tripod in the window of the business on the Marienplatz in Munich. My camera bag, with four other lenses in it is hanging on the hook in the center of the tripod to prevent it from moving.
The building is a landmark partly because of its famous glockenspiel, which plays a musical and animated program at 11:00, 12:00 and 5:00 each day. Hundreds of people stand in the plaza each day to witness this charming presentation.
Several weeks ago I contacted a company that has its offices in the building opposite the Rathaus and asked for permission to use a window on their floor of the building for a few hours while I took my photos. They were open to this idea, and welcomed me into their lovely office.
Meanwhile, my students took the other tripods and cameras to make street-level panoramic images with those. We were experimenting with a new 3-stop neutral density filter on one camera. It looks almost opaque, and cuts the light coming through by half of half of half (which is 1/8). The reason this is a valuable accessory is that it allowed us to make 30-second exposures in broad daylight. By doing this, most of the people on the plaza disappeared from the photos, making almost eery images of the buildings without crowds of people nearby (More on that in future blog).
Up in the fourth floor window I set up the camera and the GigaPan. My lens choice was the 100-400mm Canon telephoto. I set the zoom to 300mm, which was appropriate for this shot. At that focal length, the photos for the image would be close enough to zoom in and see tremendous detail, and it would allow me to finish the project in a reasonable amount of time.
After you establish the field of view, the GigaPan instructs you to identify the upper-left corner of your image, then the lower-right corner. I did both, and the GigaPan determined that I would need 992 images to complete my shot. The physical limitations were the frame of the window in which I was working, otherwise I had an unhindered view of the plaza.
This is a reduced-resolution view of the final GigaPan image. There is mayhem in the plaza in the image because people were not photographed in their entirety (the camera was making multiple passes horizontally). As a result, there are many partial people in the image, but no one was injured in the making of this image! I promise.
The GigaPan then steps you through a series of questions to stop you from making dumb mistakes: Is the camera on? Is the zoom locked? Is focus locked? Is exposure locked? Is the strobe off? Are you sure? Yes, I indicated, and it began its work. The LCD display counts-off the photos as they are taken, and it indicates how much time remains. I needed one hour and 21 minutes to make this series of shots. The sky was cloudy with blue showing-through in patches.
About twenty minutes into the series, the sky turned dark gray and it rained. People ran from the plaza and took cover under the umbrellas of stores along the Marienplatz. About ten minutes later the sun came out again and the sky turned to a lighter gray. The photos continued all the while.
At the end of the first series of photos the sky turned a beautiful blue with scattered white clouds. I decided to do it over, so I started it again; that is the image I ended up using. In the end I captured over 2,000 photos of the Rathaus in two series.
Just downloading 2,000 camera Raw photos to the machine took several hours. I use Adobe Bridge and its Get Images from Camera tool to import, rename, and simultaneously convert from Canon CR2 to Adobe DNG. This takes time, but I prefer this work flow because it is obsolescence-proof. I watched a documentary about things that are underneath London (Netflix) while this was going on. Then I watched a second documentary about zzzzzz (I fell asleep) until the job was done.
Converting from DNG to TIFF took about one hour using the Image Processor in Photoshop (thank you, Russell Brown!). The folder containing the images consumes 23.4 GB of disk space (just the DNG raw files).
So, late, late last night I had my 992 photos in TIFF ready to stitch. I set up the software and told it to start work. Five hours later I awoke and it was still working. One hour after that it was finished.
I also save my GigaPan images and their work files (there are thousands of them), this keeps a record all of the stitching parameters in case I ever need to do it over. It is possible to discard the TIFF images once the stitching is done, as they are redundant.
Once the Raw file is written to the disk, I open it in Photoshop to do minor (sometimes major) retouching and color correction. This image benefitted from some Vibrance and Saturation adjustment. Just opening the photo (at about 27 GB) took 17 minutes. Cropping the scraps off the edges took another 15 minutes. There are lots of photographic mishaps in the crowds at the bottom of this image. I will spend some time cleaning those up before I print the image.
The picture above was taken at my first photo shoot with the EPIC Pro at a local bay. I shot 30 frames, but in the end I only used 12 for the final image due to depth-of-field issues. The original idea was to include the rocky shore as foreground interest but getting everything from the foreground at my feet to the distant mountains into focus didn't work out on this occasion. Having said that it is possible to stop the EPIC Pro during the sequence to change focus so in theory front to back focus can be achieved. A 3-stop ND filter and low ISO sensitivity setting gave me a long exposure time, which I wanted to blur the waves and make stitching the single frames easier.
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