Programs for creating panoramas. Hugin is a great free panorama software. Different types of panorama projections

How to do panoramic photo. Step-by-step instruction! Simple, easy, fast. March 20th, 2012

Every amateur photographer must have wondered at some point: how to make one panorama photo from several shots? What is needed for this? Is it difficult? Read step by step instructions with which you can do panoramic photo (panorama) without tripod and without much difficulty.

Today I will tell you how to do it easily and simply.

Making a panorama is not easy, but very simple! Step-by-step instruction. Modern programs allows you to make a panorama from pictures taken by any camera, as long as the frames overlap each other. So that you have no doubts about the ability of your camera to take pictures suitable for making a panorama, for this photography lesson I took a phone camera.

I invite you to repeat all the steps of this instruction with me, using these photos that you can

download from the link in the archive from my dropbox,

If you use your own shots, make sure that there is at least a quarter of the total space between shots, and it is better that the horizon does not "run away" between frames. In fact, a smaller overlay may suffice, but the best, as you know, is the enemy of the good, therefore it is better not to overdo it with overlapping.

To assemble the panorama, we will use the latest version of Hugin. At the time of this tutorial, the latest version is 2011.4.0. Hugin is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. All instructions below are suitable for the version for any OS.

Installing Hugin is easy, just download the installation package and follow the installer's instructions.

When opened, Hugin automatically creates new project. Select photos for the panorama by clicking the appropriate button.

You can add all the photos at once in one fell swoop.

Hugin defines the properties of the lens itself.

Click "Combine ..." and let's go to drink tea, especially if you do not have the most modern computer or a lot of high-resolution pictures.

As soon as Hugin merges the images, a panorama preview window will open.

For a better view of the result, turn off the grid by unchecking the box at the top of the window.

The panorama preview has several tabs with settings, some of which are of no interest to us at all due to the fact that Hugin has already done the main work on combining images, and the other part of the tabs can still be useful to us.

On the "Projection" tab, we have the ability to change the way images are projected and some other settings. For example, you can see what a panorama would look like if it was shot with a fisheye lens:

However, today our goal is not special effects, but a finished panorama, so we will choose an equidistant projection mode.

On the "Moving on the projection plane" tab, we have the opportunity to align the horizon on all frames, if suddenly it did not align automatically. We can also bend the horizon for more effect:

To return the horizon to its original, even state, press the "Align" button:

On the next Crop tab, click the Auto Crop button to automatically crop the black edges of the panorama.

If the result of automatic cropping did not suit you, you can drag the inner edge of the frame and crop it as you need, for example, if we plan to finish painting the sky and black fields do not bother us.

Close the preview window and click "Create Panorama..."

And then he will offer to come up with a file name for the finished panorama:

We stock up on patience, tea, coffee, jam, cookies, etc., for 5 minutes :-)

Find the resulting panorama file:

We look with any suitable viewer.

For publishing, it is best to convert the panorama to JPEG. This can be done in any graphics editor or popular viewers.

The result is scaled up to 8209 x 1693.

No need to think that only Photoshop can create panoramas. By the way, I described how to make a panorama using Photoshop in my review ().

There are a number of free programs that can do this job just fine. And the best part is, you absolutely do not have to pay for them. Some of them do not even require installation on a computer.

Over the years of photography (over 10 years), I have tried many and decided to collect my own small personal rating of free programs for creating panoramas. So, let's begin!

Rating of free programs for creating panoramas

4th place - Canon Ptoho Stitch program

good old and free program that comes with Canon cameras. The interface of the program is old, but it performs its functions.

How to make a panorama with Canon Photo Stitch?

Step 1- run the program

Step 2- select the photos from which the panorama will be created.

Step 3- start combining photos into one large panorama frame.

At the same time, you can turn on the option to display the seams along which the photos are combined.

Step 4- Choose panorama generation settings (the program offers a choice of possible options)

Step 5- crop the edges of the panorama and save to a file.

The result of the work Canon Photo Stitch - collected separate panorama with cropped edges. Very good, but had a lot of manual work!

3rd place - Hugin program

A free program by a large team of authors with great but confusing functionality. Too complicated for a beginner in my opinion. Of the benefits - there is support for the Russian language in the interface.

How to make a panorama with Hugin?

Step 1- run the program. When opening, there is a set of tips for a beginner - a small bonus from the developers.

Step 2- Set the settings for creating a panorama using Hugin - the folder for saving, the name of the files, etc. There are many settings, so hold on 🙂

Step 3- Upload photos to create a panorama.

Step 4- Choose the type of lens and look at the aligned pictures.

Step 5- We select the settings for creating a panorama before generating the resulting photo.

We keep the panorama ... ..

As a result, we get such a processed panoramic photo using the free Hugin program.

2nd place - MS Image Composite Editor

Yes, yes, you heard right - the letters MS - means that this program was made by Microsoft. And, for free! 🙂

Cons - there is no Russian interface, but the program is so simple that you don’t need to read much here.

How to make a panorama using MS Image Composite Editor?

Step 1- open the program and go to the settings section - the upper right part of the window - see the gear.

Step 2- select a photo to create a panorama. The button in the top header is "New Panorama from Images"

You have completed step 1 - you have done the import of a photo for a panorama.

Step 3- reduction of photos into one picture - "Stitch"

After you get the panorama, you can enlarge it for viewing using the sliders.

Step 4- If you need to crop the photo - go to the "Crop" button.

For cropping, handles are used, exactly the same as in Photoshop for this command.

If everything suits you, save it.

As a result, you get a finished processed panorama using the MS Image Composite Editor program.

1st place - AutoStitch program

My favorite free panorama software!

What does she captivate?

no need to install on a PC, just open the archive and work
minimum settings for creating a panorama
small program size
smart frame detection

How to make a panorama with AutoStitch?

Step 1- run the program and go to the settings

Step 2- Open photos and add them to the program

ALL…. I repeat….. THIS IS ALL! 🙂

the program will do the rest.

The result of the program will be a collected panorama from the files that you have added.

If you are still not satisfied with this functionality, you can make panoramas using Photoshop CS ().

Additional Information for free program for creating panoramas:

AutoStitch- Website address - http://matthewalunbrown.com/autostitch/autostitch.html
MS Image Composite Editor - Website address - http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/ice/
Hugin- Website address -
Canon Ptoho Stitch- Website address - http://support-au.canon.com.au/contents/AU/EN/0200246607.html (select the Download checkbox to see the download link)

Video review of free programs for creating panoramas (Rating)

When photographing a beautiful landscape or an interesting architectural monument, who has not had to regret that the lens of the camera is not able to capture everything in its entirety, so that automatic creation panorama photography. Separate frames do not give such an impression as you get when looking at the landmark with your own eyes. I really want to get a photo that will have a complete image of the object being shot, that is, a panoramic photo. The problem is not new, it was tried to be solved back in the days of film cameras. We solved it in three ways.

The first way is to use short-focus lenses with an extended field of view. The logical development has led to super short throw lenses with an extremely wide angle of capture, the so-called fisheye lenses. disadvantage this method image acquisition is an extremely strong image distortion. Indeed, transferring the image around the camera to a flat surface is akin to trying to smooth the halves of a rubber ball on a flat table.

The second way is the creation of cameras with moving optics, in which the lens rotates during shooting, creating parts of the image one by one on the film. Such cameras include, for example, cameras "Horizon", which provide an image capture angle of 120 degrees. In this case, shooting is carried out on a regular 35 mm film, only the frame size is not the classic 24x36 mm, but 24x58 mm. Naturally, to print such photos, you need a special attachment for a photo enlarger.

The third path that many amateur photographers have taken (I also went through this) is taking pictures with a regular camera and printing regular photos. But then the photos were joined to each other, the superimposed parts of the photos were cut off, and the resulting mosaic was pasted onto a sheet of paper. It turned out well, although the cropped borders of individual photos were visible even with very careful fitting and careful cropping. In addition, the camera lens always gives distortion, so the exact docking of photos is impossible, we can only talk about more or less acceptable image quality.

Now film cameras are used only by professionals and old hardened amateur photographers who would never exchange their devices (by the way, with excellent optics) for digital cameras. But to us, mere mortals, digital photography has given us powerful means of obtaining images of everything that is dear and interesting to us. I will not talk about the many possibilities of digital photography, today we have a different topic - obtaining panoramic images.

Not surprisingly, almost simultaneously with the advent of digital cameras appeared computer programs for processing digital photos. Naturally, the creation of panoramas was also included in the list of necessary computer processing tasks. However, this turned out to be a very difficult task. The two main problems that arise when combining two or more images into one panoramic image are the following: the geometric distortion of images, which I already mentioned, and the brightness and color distortions that occur due to the automatic adjustment of digital cameras to the scene being shot. Since the task turned out to be more difficult than it seemed at first glance, programs for creating panoramas appeared much later than programs for simple correction of digital photographs, and, in addition, these programs were quite expensive.

Despite the fact that free software packages were developed, for example, Panorama tools, it was quite difficult to work with them, they were controlled from the program line, which was an almost impossible task for a simple computer user.

Naturally, the free software community could not ignore such a task, and as a result of their efforts, a free program for creating digital panoramic photos, which has now reached a level accessible for use by almost anyone who knows how to photograph digital camera and basic computer skills.

So, I present! hugin is a program that uses the Panorama Tools package to create panoramas, but provides exceptionally convenient tools for working. The program has been translated into various languages, including Russian. At the moment, the latest version of the program has the number 0.7.0 and was released to the public on October 4, 2008. The program is available for operating systems Linux, MacOS and, of course, Windows. You can download this program by clicking on the icon.

Linux users, as well as happy Macintosh users, will figure out which of the three files to download, and Windows users will probably also guess that they need a file that contains Win32 in the name, that is, hugin-0.7.0_win32-setup.exe .

Installing the program is quite simple. It is distributed under the GPL license, that is, free of charge, therefore, during installation, you can safely agree with the license by selecting (when it appears) the item "I accept the agreement", and on all other pages by clicking the "Next" button ("Next"). The program itself determines which language is used on your computer and immediately switches to it. However, if necessary, the language can be changed in the program settings by selecting one of seventeen, including Catalan and Ukrainian.

The program allows full automatic panorama creation, but this does not always work out if the original photographs do not provide enough information for their exact "stitching". In this case, work is provided in manual, or rather, semi-automatic mode. Let's look at the process of creating a panorama, starting with taking the original photos.

Photographing

In order to get a panorama with acceptable quality, when photographing, you need to immediately take measures to eliminate possible errors and distortions. To do this, pay attention to the following:
1. It is advisable to take photographs in order, for example, from left to right. Although the program can determine the order of the pictures, it is better to have all the pictures in the right order.
2. For normal photo stitching, the program must highlight a certain amount of identical dots in adjacent photographs. This requires that the photographs have overlapping areas in which there are sufficiently well-defined details. An overlap of about 25% of the image size is usually sufficient.

Practical tip: When shooting, look for some prominent landmark (circled in red in the photo) on the right side of the image (tree, corner of the building), after taking the picture, turn the camera so that this landmark is on the left side of the image, and take the next frame while paying attention to the next landmark on the right side of the image.
3. Try not to make tilted panoramas. Their processing is usually more difficult, and the result is likely to disappoint you. Pay close attention to the horizontal position of the image, when you tilt the camera, the panorama will turn out to be stepped and slanted.
4. Watch the angle of the camera. If the horizon line is higher on one frame and lower on the other, the panorama will also be stepped. Of course, you can crop the resulting image, but this will lose part of the image at the top and bottom.
5. As you pan the camera horizontally, make sure that the lens stays in the same position as possible. Frames taken from different points cannot be combined with acceptable quality.
6. The camera must be stable. When shooting handheld, try to keep the camera as still as possible. It is best to shoot from a tripod, but quite decent results are obtained when shooting with a short shutter speed (in automatic shooting mode - in good light). Night panorama can only be made when shooting from a tripod.
7. It is advisable to use manual exposure setting and keep it constant when shooting all panorama frames. However, the hugin program has the ability to adjust the brightness of the image, which allows you to get good results even when using simple digital cameras.

Despite such an extensive list of requirements, it is quite easy to implement them. Try it and you will see for yourself what is done wrong, and take it into account in the future. In any case, even if at first the panorama does not satisfy you, you will have individual photographs, so all your work will not be in vain.

Automatic panorama creation with hugin

We will consider working with the program with the Windows operating system installed on the computer.

Run the program by selecting the Hugin section in the Start menu, and the hugin item in it. A program window will open with the title "Hugin - a graphical interface for creating panoramas", and in it the first tab is "Assistant". If we are lucky, and the photos meet all the requirements of the program, we will not need other tabs.

When creating a panorama automatically, you need to perform only three actions:
1. Upload pictures.
2. Merge pictures.
3. Create a panorama.

Uploading pictures is very easy. After clicking the "1. Load pictures..." button, the usual dialog box will open, in which you need to select the photos from which the panorama will be formed. Some drawback is that there is no preview of the selected file in the selection window. Therefore, before working with hugin, you need to view the captured frames in another program, for which I recommend the free IrfanView photo viewer and editor, and write down the names of the files that will be included in the panorama creation process. When uploading files to hugin, you can select all the necessary files at once. Let me remind novice Windows users that this can be done by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on the names of all the necessary files one by one.

For example, let's take three pictures that were taken specifically to illustrate the process of creating a panorama:

The pictures were deliberately taken with some violations of the rules given above - the horizontal position of the camera was not maintained, the exposure in the evening was taken too low, which increased the amount of noise in the image. This will allow to some extent evaluate the capabilities of the hugin program.

So, let's upload these three snapshots. After uploading the images, the second item on the tab will become available - "2. Merge ...". Pressing this button launches a program that searches for points in images that can be used to stitch frames into a panorama.
The process is complex and time consuming, its progress is displayed in a pop-up window, but sometimes it may seem that the computer is frozen and does nothing. Be patient, and after a while, depending on the number of shots and their size, sometimes after a few minutes, the work will be completed, this window will automatically close and a new one will open, called "Panorama Preview". In this window, you can see a small image of the generated panorama. For convenience, it is better to immediately expand this window to full screen. If the images fit together, you will see a normal image, which may be curved upwards or downwards.

After processing the uploaded images, I got a curve with a bulge down. In order to straighten the panorama, let's try to select another central point by clicking on it with the left mouse button. The center point of the panorama is located at the intersection of the horizontal and vertical lines in the image.

I had to select a point that is inside the red circle. It is advisable to choose a point located on a vertical line. If the "Auto" button is pressed in the upper part of the "Panorama Preview" window, the image will be immediately rebuilt according to the new center point. After performing this operation, the panorama will be quite straight, but may be tilted to the left or right.

My panorama has a slight tilt to the right. This can be seen if you pay attention to the fact that the horizontal line on the left runs along the back of the garden bench, and on the right - at the level of the second floor of the building. To equalize the tilt, select a point on the edge of the panorama, which should be on the same level as the center point, and right-click on it. This point in my photo is also marked with a red circle.

It is now clearly seen that the shape of the useful image field is strongly distorted. Basically, the distortions come down to a barrel-shaped distortion of the top and bottom edges of the panorama, as well as a rather strong tilt of the right side of the panorama down. If barrel distortion is related to the features of the camera lens, and we can’t do anything about it, then the mutual tilt of the individual parts of the panorama is associated with the tilt of the camera (in this case, intentional) during shooting. This is the main reason why the camera needs to be held as level as possible while shooting.

There is a black background around the panorama, which is completely unnecessary unless you want to keep it for some aesthetic reason. It can be cropped by moving the sliders located under the panorama and to the right of it. When you hover over the engines, additional hints will appear related to the effect of these engines on the image. I usually adjust the horizontal slider first.

The slider (marked with a red circle) needs to be moved a short distance and wait for the image update to complete. You need to move the slider so that the uneven edges of the image on the left and right are cut off. Keep in mind that image operations are very time consuming, so the response to all your actions may not be as fast as you would like.

Then let's move on to adjusting the vertical slider on the right side of the window (circled in red).
This task will be somewhat more difficult due to the slope of the pictures. The panorama has unfilled places in the upper right corner and in the lower part of the panorama (circled in red ovals). Naturally, they can be cropped by moving the vertical slider, but this will lose part of the useful image.

Sometimes, you have to put up with small defects, or retouch them later in some kind of graphic editor. In my case, there was an almost imperceptible small black space in the upper right corner of the panorama.

At the bottom of the window there are a few more controls that you can leave untouched for now, they are designed for more advanced control of the panorama view.

Now, if the operation of combining images was successful, you can return to the main window of the hugin program. Below the "2. Merge..." button, a brief summary of the success of the merge operation will appear. If the program did not scold you, you can safely press the button "3. Create a panorama ...". You will be asked about the name of the panorama file, and after entering it, the "hugB - Stitching" window will appear and the actual operation of combining frames will be performed. This operation is also very slow.

The result of the work will be a file with the .tif extension, which has a size several times greater than the sum of the sizes of all source files. In my case, it has a size of more than 31 MB! And this is with the size of the source files about 4 MB, the total size is 12.3 MB. A file with the tif extension can be viewed in any graphic viewer or editor, for example, in the same IrfanView, and then saved in a more familiar format, for example, in JPEG. In this case, the file size will decrease significantly (I have 4.7 MB), especially if you set the quality to something other than 100%. I must say that an image saved at 80% quality is almost indistinguishable from an image with 100% quality. Therefore, a slight decrease in quality with a large reduction in file size is justified.

If you are not going to further edit the panorama, you can delete the *.tif file. If some correction is supposed, it is better to perform it on the original file and only then convert it to the final format. Before saving the image, I lightened it a little with the help of gamma correction in Irfan View and increased the contrast of the image. It remains to carefully examine the file with the .jpg extension and say with a sense of deep satisfaction: "Panoramic photo ready!"
By clicking on the picture, you can download an image with a size of 1283x384, 85 kB.

If the panorama in the preview window appeared in a very distorted form, the images were superimposed on each other, something completely incomprehensible appeared instead of one line of images, then you are out of luck, automatic panorama creation did not work and you need to create a panorama in semi-automatic mode, manually setting points docking.

How to create a panorama with such an image obtained in automatic mode, we will consider in the next article.

While traveling, you can create several consecutive shots for later stitching them in the program. A series of shots that will be combined into one large image will more fully capture the unforgettable landscapes of mountains, seas or other beautiful places. In the presence of necessary equipment You can create 360 degree panoramas. Although for phones - this is no longer a problem. It is necessary that the device meets the minimum hardware requirements, and then it's as easy as shelling pears. But for the PC there are no such programs yet. I suggest you take a look at some of them. One of them will definitely find a place on your system disk.

PTGui

The first PTGui program, which is one of the best tools for creating panoramic images. The PTGui software uses its own software algorithms to stitch panoramas. Implemented support for hardware accelerated processing on video adapters.

Some features of the program:

Creation of panoramas from any number of images;
Create panoramic images in a few clicks;
Full automation;
Live preview;
Read EXIF information;
Detection of lens parameters and camera crop factor;
Batch adding points to a photo;
Creation of panoramas based on a saved template;
HDR support;
Many other features.

Powerful enough software, which will automatically place control points and stitch multiple photos into a single panoramic image. In addition to full automatic, you can switch to manual mode and make detailed settings for various parameters. The photos will be joined so that no stitching lines will be visible.

In addition to the usual ones, the program can create 360 ° panoramas, export them and generate virtual tours.

Some features:

Stitching panoramas in automatic mode;
Color correction;
Removing the ghost effect using Smartblend technology;
Creation of virtual tours;
Full HDR support;
Batch rendering;
Other features.

Hugin

The completely free Hugin program offers to create panoramic images both automatically and manually, which completely allows you to control the entire process. Implemented support for HDR images. The program has three operating modes: simple, advanced and expert. Therefore, Hugin is suitable for everyone - from beginners to professional users. Lenses are detected automatically, thanks to which information about them will be used for the best stitching of the panorama. To do this, Hugin makes a geometric correction. There are tools for making color correction, exposure control, working with masks, etc.

Pano2VR is software for converting panoramas (spherical and cylindrical) to QuickTime VR (QTVR), Adobe Flash 8 and Flash 9/10 (SWF) formats. It is possible to create templates of your own panoramas. You can add sounds, animations, set up automatic rotation. There is also a function of dynamic correction of the original image, which allows you to load into the program not the entire panorama, but only the part of the image necessary for editing.

For convenient placement of a panorama on a website or blog, you can export all panorama elements to a single SWF file. Virtual tours are created with a 360 degree view. One of the export formats can be modern HTML5.

Microsoft's Image Composite Editor (ICE) software offers advanced panoramic image stitching. The program analyzes the output photos and then creates panoramas based on the received data. High Quality. Finished panoramas can be saved in one of the following formats: JPEG, TIFF and Photoshop PSD/PSB.

Image Composite Editor can add missing pixels. Therefore, all incomplete photos will have smooth borders. The interface of the program is quite simple and will guide you step by step through all the steps of creating a panorama.

While working, you can enlarge the image and see all the details, correct possible flaws.

Peculiarities:

Work on many processor cores;
Support for very large image sizes;
Support for Photoshop layers;
Automatic exposure blending;
Projection selection;
Automatic panorama cropping;
Support a large number formats;
Other.

Professional software Panoweaver allows you to create a panorama in a few clicks. Various types of images are supported from which you can create panoramas, including 360 ° panoramas for creating virtual tours.

Professionals will note the possibility of supporting Raw & HDR. Among the formats that are exported are: Html Flash VR, QuickTime movie (*.mov), standalone swf, HTML5 panorama for iPhone, iPad, Android. Panoramas can be embedded on websites.

Batch stitching mode allows you to quickly and automatically process hundreds of shots, saving a lot of time. Adding GPS coordinates is supported. And using an NVIDIA or AMD GPU will only speed up the rendering of the image.

Software from Arcsoft has always attracted me with its simplicity and quality. Photos are analyzed, after which seamless panoramas are created. The program works automatically and in most cases does not require user intervention.

Vertical, horizontal panoramas, grid, 360-degree panoramas and auto mode are available.

In addition to automatic work, there are tools for manual changes, placement of points, borders for gluing, etc.

Brightness, contrast, cropping, color correction, adding text and frames are also included in the program's capabilities.

According to the developers, the Pos Panorama program will automatically find control points and create panoramic photos. Horizontal and vertical photos are supported. Major image formats are supported: JPG, BMP, PNG, TIFF and GIF.

We continue, PanoramaStudio Pro - uses one of the best algorithms for detecting edges in a photo. Create panoramas quickly and efficiently. There is an editor that will help you adjust the lighting and color of the photo, adjusting the pictures if they differ greatly in the parameters described above. In addition to automatic, there is also a manual mode for marking control points.

Ready panoramas can be exported to flash format to create virtual tours. HDR support available. There is also the possibility of creating spherical panoramas.

Support for various lens models ensures better performance. You can export finished panoramas as splash screens, 3D panoramas, and as regular images in one of the graphic formats.

A free tool for viewing various panoramas. All types of panoramas are supported, including spherical ones.

STOIK PanoramaMaker - will create panoramas in three stages: import of source photos, analysis and stitching as best as possible, and finally - export to the format of your choice.

There are automatic and manual modes. The algorithms of the program can give a good result even if your photos are taken at an angle or have other disadvantages, for example, when shooting trees in windy weather.

Geometric compensation and lens curvature correction are taken into account. If the results of the automatic mode are unsatisfactory, you can switch to manual.

Every amateur photographer must have wondered at some point: how to make one panorama photo from several shots? What is needed for this? Is it difficult? Read on for step-by-step instructions to help you panoramic photo (panorama) without tripod and without much difficulty.