Hugin

[KrisK10D]

Does anyone use it?

I'm having all sorts of trouble stitching together 9 shots of a bridge

Here's the best result I've got so far



It's doing all sorts of weird stuff even changing the colour of things in the images used. I'm very distressed

[creampuff]

Give Photoshop CS4 a shot.
Adobe has made it so much better compared to CS3 in joining images seamlessly.

[KrisK10D]

Thanks but I don't have CS4

[KrisK10D]

I guess no one makes panos?

[procyon]

If you're on Windows try Microsoft ICE, it's free and gave me excellent results on some hand held panoramas that no other stitching program (autopano pro, hugin etc.) could do without serious seams and/or distortions.

[panoguy]

Originally Posted by KrisK10D

I guess no one makes panos?

I do (check out my forum name). I typically use Stitcher and AutoPanoPro, but I know Hugin as well. Hugin is robust and usually gives good results with little fuss, but your comment about different colors is a little confusing.

Considering how many variables are involved, I'll ask the basic questions:

- What OS are you on?
- What version of Hugin?
- What format are the input files?
- Did you use consistent exposure settings (Manual mode, no AWB)?
- And to diagnose stitching errors, were these handheld or indexed on a tripod?

Finally, if you can put up the 9 images (even scaled down and saved as JPEGs) I can do a quick check to see if there is anything in the setup that prevents getting a good stitch right away from Hugin.

-Mark

[xs400]

Autostitch works well and it's free!!

I have also used Autopano but you have to pay for Autopano.

[emalvick]

Originally Posted by KrisK10D

Does anyone use it?

I'm having all sorts of trouble stitching together 9 shots of a bridge

Here's the best result I've got so far



It's doing all sorts of weird stuff even changing the colour of things in the images used. I'm very distressed

I am at a firewalled computer (government related), so I can't see your image. I'm not sure what your problems are, but I have used Hugin. It is a bit of a challenging program to use. I'm not sure what your problems are since I can't see your image at the moment, but the key thing I found was to look through some of their tutorials on the Hugin websites.

While it is a complicated program, I've found it to be among the best for panorama stitching. The key is to choose the correct projection from the start. You then need to let it automatically process the match points. It will not perfectly match on the first try, so then you want to erase matches that aren't correct and add new ones. Adding manual match points isn't terribly easy, and I use the program so infrequently, that I find that I am having to hunt around a little to make it work.

In the original photos it helps if you have sufficient overlap. You also want to make sure you don't have so much overlap that one image might overlap multiple others (e.g. 2 to the right). If they do, you need to make sure you have enough match points everywhere. I had this problem once as I conservatively made a pano that one image matched two images right of it. I had to make sure there were match points for both the right images. I hope this isn't too confusing.

As for the color issue, I suggest turning off some of the blending features. Make sure you get the match points worked out. Hugin tries to do a lot of things, and you don't necessarily need them all. It does help if the original panorama is taken all at the same settings (i.e. M mode with same shutter speed and aperture). This is at least important when starting. I also suggest starting out with 2 or 3 images rather than the full nine to get the hang of the program.