Unable to create panoramas. No control points

[Amy Muschik]

I was hoping to purchase PTgui for stitching the HDR spherical panoramas I need.  I thought best to try it out before I purchase it, to make sure I can use it, and so far I am having no luck.  I know others use it for this purpose, so I am not sure what the problem is.  

I loaded the photos and it stitched something that seemed pretty good using just one set of 4 photos but I needed to make it in HDR.  I closed it out and restarted and put in all 12 photos and have not been able to get it to work at all.  It came out all garbled, it can not find any of the information from the files (focal length, crop size, exposure etc), nor does it find any control points.  I tried setting them manually and that did not produce results either.

I went back to just 1 set of 4 photos, same problem-no control points.  I tried making them HDR in LR and bringing them in to just make the panos.  I tried a different set of panos from a different shoot, and then just a set of regular (non-spherical) photos to try a simple pano.  The results were the same for everything.  It can't find any control points in anything.

I really want this to work, so that I can buy the software and be able to work with it but I am not that techie and I am so frustrated now.  Can anyone offer some help with this? 

[John Houghton]

Amy, I'm sorry to hear you are having such trouble but we know so little about your projects. Generally, I would recommend getting familiar with stitching non-HDR projects before tackling HDR.  Of course, if the merging of bracketed sets of image is done before input to PTGui, then there should be no HDR issues anyway.  It would be best if you could make available a set of images for investigation.  Please upload a set of good quality jpeg images somewhere and post a link to them here.  You can use a free file hosting service such as www.ge.tt if necessary (no need to register).

John

[Keith Martin]

On 9 May 2015, at 1:24, Amy Muschik wrote:

> It can't find any control points in anything.

As John said, if you can put your images somewhere online and post a
link to them here we can take a look and give specific advice. In
addition, it is worth trying placing manual control points to see if you
can steer things yourself. PTGui's ability to find control point
positions automatically can sometimes feel like black magic, but there
are occasions when it struggles or just says "no".

Also, you mention aiming to create a spherical panorama, and using four
shots. That's all very possible (it's effectively how I work a lot of
the time; three around and one nadir to remove the tripod/head) but it
does require a full-frame sensor camera and a shaved or full-circle
fisheye lens. What equipment are you using?

k

[Amy Muschik]

Thanks John and Keith

In my frustration, I did not include enough information.  I am using Canon 6D (full frame) and a Canon 8-15mm fisheye set at 8mm, with a nodal ninja head.  The pano came out with a very small stitching error in other software, which is the kind of situation that causes me to want to have an alternative software. Settings were Manual F8 and bracketed +/-2 for HDR.

The first try, it did stitch correctly, but I did not save it nor can I get it to work again, and as I mentioned, I tried with non HDR and then a completely different set of photos, and then a different set of regular-non spherical, non fisheye, for a straight on pano.  All produced the same results-no control points.  I had no success with creating manual control points.

Here is a link to the ones I pre-applied the HDR in LR to simplify the process http://ge.tt/1hJgO3G2?c

Thanks so much for your help.

[John Houghton]

Amy, Thanks for uploading the images.  Probably the reasons why you have trouble with these processed images is that the exif camera data has been lost.  You therefore have to input this manually.  I got a good stitch after doing this using just the Align Images feature.  The PTGui project file and stitched images is uploaded to http://ge.tt/4DFrW3G2/v/0?c .

The lens data to be entered after loading in your images is: circular fisheye, focal length 8mm and crop factor 1.  

After this, visit the crop tab to adjust the crop circle so as to be just inside the image circle.

Then click Align Images and all should be well.

My project file should be loaded into the same folder as the images and loaded into PTGui via the File manu.can be loaded in from the File menu.  (You can save your project at any stage to a .pts format file and restore it any time later).

BTW, 4 shots around is overkill when you have a horizontal field of view of 180 degrees.  3 shots around would be fine.  Setting the lens to 12mm and shooting 4 around would  be even better, as you wouldn't waste so many pixels on black space.

John

On Saturday, May 9, 2015 at 1:24:39 AM UTC+1, Amy Muschik wrote:

[Willy Kaemena GM]

Loading your pictures in PTgui  and then saying  “Align Images” gave me with only ONE click a perfect stitch.

Willy

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[Keith Martin]

On 9 May 2015, at 14:00, Willy Kaemena GM wrote:

> Loading your pictures in PTgui  and then saying  “Align Images”
> gave me with only ONE click a perfect stitch.

Me too. Well, I had to tell PTGui that the lens was 8mm and the crop
factor was 1, but I didn't even bother with setting the crop circle.
Average CP distance: 0.549967, minimum: 0.117980, maximum: 1.128431.

Other than lacking a nadir the stitch looks excellent. However, you
should apply chromatic aberration correction when processing your
original images (you do shoot in RAW, right?) to deal with the red/green
fringes along bright edges.

k

[Amy Muschik]

Thanks, 

It would seem the issue was that box that popped up when it did not find the EXIF data.  Filling it in that box messed everything up.  I closed the box and did not fill it in, and put the data like you said on the main screen and it worked.  Thanks for your help.  I have to run out for the day. I will see if I can proceed from here tomorrow.

Thanks again for your help.

P.S.  Yes Keith, I shoot RAW.  I will have a look at adjusting that fringing.  Thanks for the advice.