Between Andrew’s amazing panorama created with Hugin, and Garrett almost simultaneously sending me a link to a Lifehacker* post about Hugin, I figured it was only fitting that I try it out. It’s essentially a software app (OpenSource no less) to stitch together a series of shots and create a panorama.
Since I don’t like reading instructions, I downloaded the software and worked on setting ‘control points’ for a set of five photos I recently took, thinking they’d be good for creating a panorama.
I think I need to read the directions.
* It’s interesting that Garrett sent me a link to Lifehacker. Kyle’s recently become a big fan, too. I discovered the site at least a year ago, and always considered it a niche website that no one I knew would have heard about. I’m glad to be proven wrong!
In my first attempt at Hugin, I accidentally set up the first set of control points on the same photo. I don’t remember where exactly it was, but I found a walkthrough that helped immensely.
I tried with another photo, and didn’t choose all the wrong settings this time. It came out alright, but it was before I had common sense, so each photo was taken with different exposure settings and thus it looked horrible.
If I was good, I’d clean ’em all up. But I’m lazy, so I gave up.
What is this “setting control points? Don’t you just click on the pictures you want to use and select the panorama option from the Make menu item and let the software do all the work? That’s how I create panoramas withe Windows Live Photo Gallery. Which I think is free.
What is this “setting control points? Don’t you just click on the pictures you want to use and select the panorama option from the Make menu item
I’ve seen many programs offering that function. I have never seen one that handles it well.
Plus, even if software did do a good job of picking the points to match up, it’d have problems with handling barrel distortion and such, I’d imagine?
Have you ever tried any of the Microsoft tools that do this? I’d love to hear from you your opinion.
Hugin is really just a GUI front-end to a bunch of other tools. When installed, it can take advantage of Autopano, and automatically generate the required control points.