Stitching Software Needed

[Phil973]

Hi, i would like to improve my outputs and plan to give a try on the "stitching" route.
Any experienced recommendation regarding the available softwares will be very welcome, this is a new field for me i really have no idea about it.
Thanks in advance.

[Lou Jost]

If you just want to get started quickly, I highly recommend Microsoft ICE. It requires no knowledge or pre-processing, and is quite good. Throw your files at it and out comes the stitched result. No need to identify guide points or anything. It is shocking how well it works with no help from the user.

[rjlittlefield]

For difficult stitches, say with parallax or repeating patterns that cause problems, I like the power and control of PTGui.

But I agree with Lou that for well behaved stitches, Microsoft ICE is hard to beat.

--Rik

[Phil973]

researching on the web effectively that ICE may be a efficient option, however as Mac user it seems not for me.
Thanks anyway for your messages

[EricRed]

I haven't used Microsoft ICE. Support of it by MS seems to have ended with Win 8.1. Microsoft has a history of putting out interesting and useful utilities that aren't kept up. ICE will probably be one of those. If there is a minimal learning curve, I'd give it a try.

I've used PTGui for years. Normally all you have to do is drop the images in and say go. It has a lot of options. To fully make use of the program, there is somewhat of a learning curve, but it's pretty easy. It also has features that help with the occasional problematic image (read, a two dimensional group of an almost featureless salt flat). PTGui will probably be around for the foreseeable future. Any investment of time is likely to be worth the effort.

PTGui is not free. If you're planning to do only an occasional stiched image, you may not want to spend the time or money.

Eric

[JKT]

How do you set up PTGui for these flat stitches? I wasn't too successful, but my version is somewhat old. ICE does work on W10.

[rjlittlefield]

How do you set up PTGui for these flat stitches?

As far as I know, PTGui does not have a mode for doing perfectly flat stitches. Its underlying model is always to work on a sphere, never a plane.

So, the trick is to work on a sufficiently small part of the sphere that it acts like a plane for all practical purposes.

This is done by providing an artificially large focal length so that PTGui then uses a very narrow angle of view. The document "Stitching distortion-free mosaic images for QWA using PTGui", HERE, suggests using values of 10,000 to 200,000 mm (yes, 10 thousand to 200 thousand mm). I have only skimmed that document, but I have the impression that it covers all the aspects I have found necessary.

--Rik

[Phil973]

ok Rick, duly noted, this deserve a deep dive on it.

[JKT]

This is done by providing an artificially large focal length so that PTGui then uses a very narrow angle of view. The document "Stitching distortion-free mosaic images for QWA using PTGui", HERE, suggests using values of 10,000 to 200,000 mm (yes, 10 thousand to 200 thousand mm). I have only skimmed that document, but I have the impression that it covers all the aspects I have found necessary.

Thanks! Never saw that guide, but that is what I basically did ... though not likely quite that large numbers. IIRC that makes the control of total image size somewhat difficult due to angle of view steps.

[rjlittlefield]

though not likely quite that large numbers. IIRC that makes the control of total image size somewhat difficult due to angle of view steps.

I have similar memories. Even if the geometry computations work OK, there can still be issues in previewing extremely narrow angle results because of the way the GUI controls work.

Looking closer at the linked document, I see on page 10/14 that one of the troubleshooting hints is to use smaller values of focal length, e.g. 1000 or 5000.

Checking a couple of my old projects, I see that I did them with nominal focal lengths around 1000 mm.

--Rik