Does anyone have any suggestions on a good app too stitch pics together for a panoram? Thanks in advance for any help
Panorama Pics
- Thread starter Otterdrone
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Jagerbomb52
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SRJ_North East_CT
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Jagerbomb52
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I have tried that program a few different times and could never get good results from it. I also found the work flow hard to follow but that was for a 360 degree pano.
Hugin is more capable than anything mentioned above, but can't be used properly without serious study, because it was designed for professionals. It isn't a good option for someone who wants software that is easy to use without study, but is a great option for professionals who need to stitch images that can't be stitched properly (for a variety of reasons) with software designed for amateurs.
Unlike many software packages with far less capabilities, Hugin is open-source (and therefore malware-free), free to use, and runs great under Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and MacOS.
Hugin Download
Unlike many software packages with far less capabilities, Hugin is open-source (and therefore malware-free), free to use, and runs great under Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and MacOS.
Hugin Download
Jagerbomb52
Well-Known Member
Oh-boy we have a professional here....about time. Tired of being with all you amateurs. Great now I have someone to ask questions after 5 years of doing the wrong things. Great to have ya aboard.
Well thanks for your reply. I hope to be part of the cool kids club some day. But your stuck with an amateur that has no clue why you sent that long message. Didn’t help me at all. I appreciate the effort though.
Jagerbomb52
Well-Known Member
Without hesitation I would recommend PTGui. You did not mention if you were only looking for free stitching software, but for professional work I have been using PTGui for many years now. Far superior to Photoshop and Lightroom when it comes to pano stitching, it also has built in render to website capability which was important to me for my commercial clients. PTGui is pretty easy to use when the image was shot from a perfectly still drone (no wind, no drone movement, proper overlap), but its real power shows when there was a lot of drone movement, the composition does not have enough control points, etc.
I am not sure how familiar you are with shooting and editing drone panoramas, but there are a few tricks that will help you. I have shot for many commercial clients and delivering commercial grade drone elevation panoramas is one of the most challenging workflows that I have. Below is my own personal workflow:
Here is a sample lowlight pano that I took with the EVO II. I followed most of the workflow that I listed above and used PTGui for this stitch. The entire workflow took less than 5min, mainly because the EVO II was so steady and because PTGui did not need any manual control points or corrections.
View attachment Project-02092021-AP-LowLightTest (1) Panorama.jpg
I am not sure how familiar you are with shooting and editing drone panoramas, but there are a few tricks that will help you. I have shot for many commercial clients and delivering commercial grade drone elevation panoramas is one of the most challenging workflows that I have. Below is my own personal workflow:
- Fly the drone up to the elevation where you will shoot the pano
- Point the drone to the brightest part of the panorama. This is particularly important if you are shooting a sunset or sunrise.
- Set your ISO, Aperture, and shutter speed to properly expose the brightest part of the panorama, if this is a sunrise or sunset pano then you may need to slightly over expose the sunset or sunrise. You should also set your WB at this step. If this is midday or night time then all of this gets way easier.
- Rotate the drone 180 degrees and check your exposure for what should now be the darkest part of the pano. Once again, if this is a sunset or sunrise pano you need to decide right here how much you want to underexpose the darkest part of the pano to protect the colors in the sky or overexpose the sun to reveal the lows
- Make sure that you are shooting RAW for the pano at least if you are following my workflow. This is very important because PTGui uses the metadata from the RAW images to make stitching them together much easier.
- I then rotate back to the sun (if it is a sunset or sunrise pano) and start my pano with a full shot of the sun, this is to ensure that the stitch lines do not travel through the sun later
- I rotate the drone and make sure there is at least a 20% overlap then take the rest of the images. If it is a windy day you need more overlap sometimes up to 40% due to drone movement
- After taking all of the necessary images (typically 6-8 images for a 360 pano or 14-16 images for a full spherical pano), I then land the drone and do a test stitch with PTGui onsite before leaving the venue. I bring a laptop with me specifically to verify that I can successfully stitch the pano before leaving the site. With drones its impossible to tell how much the wind has affected its altitude and position without a test stitch. PTGui is great because it can work with the RAW source images without having to first process them.
- Back in the office I then take all of the images into Lightroom, post process them like I normally would and I straight the horizon. I then export the final images as TIFFs
- I import the TIFFs into PTGui and create the pano there. This is where PTGui really shines, it can literally stitch just about anything as long as you overlapped properly.
- After the stitch is done, I export it as a TIFF from PTGui and use Paint.Net to trim the edges until only the image remains.
- From there I import the image into Photoshop and fix any stitching errors that occurred due to drone movement
- From Photoshop I then export a full resolution JPG which should be a commercially ready image for the client. Sometimes I send the image back to Lightroom one more time for slight rotation adjustments.
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Here is a sample lowlight pano that I took with the EVO II. I followed most of the workflow that I listed above and used PTGui for this stitch. The entire workflow took less than 5min, mainly because the EVO II was so steady and because PTGui did not need any manual control points or corrections.
View attachment Project-02092021-AP-LowLightTest (1) Panorama.jpg
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