Re: Serial Number Autopano Pro 3.0
Matthew Pendergrass
If it all looks a little confusing, there are a number of video tutorials on the Kolor site, and for those like me who much prefer text to read, there is plenty of written help and a discussion forum.
Large areas of black sky like this can cause some stitching difficulties, but rather than reprocess the images in a way that would bring out noise and glow from street lights, I decided that fixing black sky was easier in Photoshop afterwards.
I should point out that if you are going to be doing many hand held panoramic shots, you will probably need to become efficient at using the cloning tool to fill in the odd missing bit of an image when you crop to the final size. If you have an issues with this, well, either get over it or remember to shoot more shots than you need for the coverage you want.
There are a variety of different output file types. The .psd (or .psb) format for Photoshop is my most likely choice, especially for very large files where you may run up against maximum pixel width/height limits.
Since I know that I processed the RAW files into the ProPhoto colour space, I can simply assign a profile. Remember that these profile warnings are not enabled by default in Photoshop, so do check, if you are using specific profiles.
In the pair of images below, extra shots at either side would enable me to make more of that cloud in the top left, when cropping to a rectangular print, whilst a bit more care with working out the real horizon level would have not lost the foreground on the right.
Keith has written a book that looks at the many ways that tilt/shift lenses can benefit your photography from a technical and creative point of view. If not in the UK check for import issues and maybe try an on-line bookshop. Keith has no connection with sales of the book.
We've a whole section of the site devoted to Digital Black and White photography and printing. It covers all of Keith's specialist articles and reviews. Other sections include Colour management and Keith's camera hacks - there are over 1200 articles/reviews here...
iinterested I want to select between autopano giga and ptgui pro for cylindrical and spherical panos. Do downloaded both and realized that ptgui was better able to recognize the photos and stitch them together (For the photos that i tried). However, I have seen reviews that rated Autopano also very highly (Most of the reveres we're dated).
Before I bought PTGui, I used Microsoft ICE to stitch a large number of cylindrical panoramas that I'd never managed to get looking right with the stitching software that came with my old Canon S20. It's fully automated and works quite well, though I didn't get good results doing spherical panos, perhaps you'll have better luck.
There's also a nice tutorial series on youtube for doing 360x180 spherical panoramas; I ended up getting PTGui after watching these, so it might give you a good idea if PTGui is what you're after. =PL15B8C737F69319BE
Thanks for your response. Yeah I like MS ICE, works better than Hugin. I saw the same videos and was inspired to buy ptgui. However, doing research online, I also came across autopano; though I haven't seen any reviews comparing them.
PTGui has the best selection of projections and excellent sky blending, but is a horrible, error-prone stitcher, butchering even simple joins with regularity. Be ready to clone stamp. Pretty annoying for a $180 program. HDR layer capable. (Pro version)
Autopano will take anything you can throw into the hopper including 150 shot bracketed monstrosities and make it work without bawling for control points. The garbage mouth. HDR layer capable. Top recommendation. I don't think you need Giga for your purposes.
Any wide pano that has close in subject matter, you want to use a pano head where the nodal point is the pivot. There is usually wide angle lens distortion at the sides of each panel that can prevent the perfect stitch. Autopano is the best I have used for stitching hands down, but it can fail if the panels are too unruly. Rather than mess with control points, which mostly don't work, it's better simply to reshoot with a reduced setting for wide angle.
Here's an example taken 60 feet away from a 240 foot high waterfall featuring 192 exposures, 8 over 8 times 3 handheld, assembled in about ten minutes by Autopano Pro which spat out three ginormous HDR layers later to be combined in Photomatix. Don't even think about this shot with PTGui, it will not do it.
Here's an example taken 60 feet away from a 240 foot high waterfall featuring 192 exposures, 8 over 8 times 3 handheld, assembled in about ten minutes by Autopano Pro which spat out three ginormous HDR layers later to be combined in Photomatix. Don't even think about this shot with PTGui, it will not do it.
As you can imagine, I resurrected this thread just because someone told me some times ago that he HAITED PTGui and only used AP Pro.... but as we live far from each other and he's got an awful Web connection, I can't even ask him to send me some of HIS files, just to check personally...
_storth/16065611135/ is several frames of the engine room of PS Waverley. There is hardly any parallax error in this hand held series to make the final image. The angle needed was simply too wide for 14mm on M4/3. For me it would be hard to better this parallax correction.
I have just stitched 14 x 36Mpix images shot with Samyang 14mm on nikon D800 and it stitches fast. The newest version supports the graphical processor. The main thing I like is the "save and forget" batch stitcher. there is a trick to HDR - PTGUI only recognizes series of hdr images by them having identical Fno. and shutter speed - if they don't becaus ethe camera was on auto - then you need to just edit your hdr series - then they are recognized properly. I have had PTGUI assemble 9 images deep TIFF hdrs in a panorama of a dozen or so images without any problem.
I DID try Autopano Pro, and it DOES work well, but when there are real stitching problems -and like it or not, this happens from time to time- , I MUST go back to PTGUI and manually set everything up !
I suspect it depends on what you shoot. My single or two row panos, to get 1:3 or 1:4 ratios with not much in the foreground - scenery in essence - stitch first go, but they would wouldn't they? APP is simply so easy to use and faultless.
This is about 9 frames taken in the engine room of a paddle steamer. The Olympus Pen M4/3 kit zoom simply wasn't wide enough. It was hand held and there is a lot of stuff likely to cause parallax problems. I've no idea where the entrance pupil of that lens is either, so I just turned the camera around the centre of the lens.
i've never looked further than AP, so cannot say about the others but APP gives you a push button choice of projection so you can chose what looks best. The other interesting thing it does is to take pictures of buildings that seem undo-able and sorts them out. I've put some images of West Wycombe church and the final stitch on my flickr page and I'd be interested how other programs stitch them, but I was staggered when I first did this. 24mm on full frame, it wasn't wide enough.
Recently I have found that when I stitch a row of format-filling, portrait orientation fisheye images (sigma 15mm F2.8 on Nikon D800) I get a better result of the top of trees by exporting using the "full Frame Fisheye" projection: The tops of trees curve a lot away when using Mercator - and much less when using"Full frame fisheye" projection.
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