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Tutorial 1 Tutorial 2
Tutorial 3
Tutorial 4
Tutorial 5
Tutorial 1: Campus
Objectives
In this
tutorial we will illustrate how to:
1)
stitch a 360° panorama using Auto Mode,
2) use
Marker editing to correct mis-registration of image pairs,
3) save
a high-resolution master panorama for screen saver or printing and derive a
lower-resolution version for web publishing,
4) print
the panorama using the visual printing utility.
Taking
the photos
1) Zoom
the lens out to the base focal length
of 28mm and set the camera exposure to Manual mode.
2) Pan
camera around to decide the Aperture and Shutter Speed settings so
that the photos of the whole surrounding will be bright enough but
without any over exposure.
3) Tilt
the camera up by 10° to catch the treetops. Take
overlapping photos handheld while turning around. Try to stay on
one spot as you turn to minimize the parallax effect. The overlap is around
40%.
PanoStitcher
stitching
After the photos
are loaded from the camera's memory to the computer in the
directory named "campus" (the file names are changed to
campus00x.jpg for demo convenience). PanoStitcher is launched.
Following its PanoGuide, each step of the stitching process is
described in the following:
Start
When
PanoStitcher starts, the setting is a New Project with the name Untitled.psp.
Load
1) Click on
the "Load" page tab. The "Load Images" window
pops up.
2) Go
through the folder hierarchy in the left pane to open the folder
"campus". The middle pane shows all the JPG files in
"campus".
3)
Browser the folder by clicking on a file name to view its
thumbnail image on the right.
4) While
pressing <Shift> key, click on the first file name and then on
the last file name. All JPG files between the two are selected
(actually all files in the folder are selected). Click
[Include Selections] to load the fourteen selected images to
PhotoBench.
5) It is
known that at the default minimum focal length (28mm) there is
substantial distortion towards the periphery of an image, which
needs to be corrected for stitching. Click on the check box in
"PanoGuide" | "Load"menu to activate the
[Select Camera Info] button. Click on the button to pop-up the
"Select Camera Info" dialog box. Select the Camera Info
file "Olympus C-3000 (28mm).txt and Click [OK]. The Camera
Info file name shows under the [Select Camera Info] button.
Sort
Click on
the "Sort" page tab to show PanoGuide Sort menu.
1) Order
the thumbnails by dragging them to their correct locations in
PhotoBench.
2)
Remove a thumbnail by dragging it out of PhotoBench.
3) Click
"Full Circle" "Yes" since the last and the
first images have overlap.
4) Click
[Adjust Overlap] to pop-up "Set Image Pair Overlap"
window. Drag each overlying image to roughly register its overlap
with its left neighbor. Then click on top-right [x] to hide the
window.
Fig 1.
PhotoBench containing the photo thumbnails
Stitch
Click on
the "Stitch" page tab to show PanoGuide Stitch menu.
1)
Select the default "Auto Mode".
2) Click
[Stitch]. PanoStitcher will go through all image pairs to make the
panorama preview.
3)
Inspect the panorama preview. It is found that image 1 & 2 are
not well-registered. Click the image pair link bar between 1 &
2 in PhotoBench to pop up the menu. Choose "Edit marker
pairs" to bring up the window "Image Pair for Markers".
A dialog box pops up reminding "Please add minimum 2 marker
pairs (press F1 for help)". Click [OK] to start adding marker
pairs.
3)
Inspect the images, choose features that are stable and
identifiable in both images. After adding a marker with the mouse
click on an image feature, use the four arrow keys
(<up>, <down>, <right> and <left>) to
refine the marker's location. Now two pairs of markders are
added.
4) Click
[Stitch] (Or click with the right mouse button in the "Image
Pair for Markers" window to popup its floating menu and
choose "Stitch this pair"). A new panorama preview is
generated with the matching between image 1 & 2 corrected by
their marker pairs. Now all images are properly registered.
Fig. 2
Panorama preview [50%]
Blend
Click on
the "Blend" page tab to show PanoGuide Blend menu.
1)
Choose Resolution Ratio .75 which corresponds to the panorama size
of 5395x901.
2) Click
[Option...]. Uncheck "Auto-balance intensity" (since
the camera exposure for the photos was fixed).
3) Click
[Blend] to make the panorama.
4) Make
Panorama window the active window by clicking on it. Then
make the panorama window just fit inside PanoStitcher's main
window (by clicking the Zoom-in or Zoom-out button in the tool bar
while pressing the <Ctrl> key).
5)
Right-click in the panorama window to pop-up its floating menu.
Choose "Horizontal rolling" (only active for a 360°
panorama) and the cursor becomes a hand pattern. Drag on the
panorama to put the scene of high interest (the dome) in the
panorama center.
6) Click
on the tool bar [save] button to save the stitching environment to
the project file campus.prj. Later you can continue working by
loading this file to PanoStitcher.
Edit
Click on
the "Edit" page tab to show PanoGuide Edit menu.
1) Click
on Edit | [Select Region]. Drag in the panorama window to select
the band region of interest. Fine-tune the band by moving its
top/bottom sides.
Click on Edit | [Crop] to crop the panorama.
Save
Click on
the "Save" page tab to show PanoGuide Save menu.
1) Click
on [Save Panorama] to pop-up the "Save Panorama Image"
window. Save the panorama to the name "pano_campus.tif"
which is uncompressed. This is the mother panorama for future use.
2) Click
on [View Panorama] to pan and zoom the saved panorama in
PixtraViewer.
3) Click
on [Print Panorama] to bright up the visual printing utility.
Select page "Orientation" "Landscape" in
[Setup] | "Page Setup" dialog box. Drag on a
printing grid corner or center to fit the panorama to five 8"x11"pages. Click on [Print] to print the panorama.
*
Pasting the five printed pages has the problem that the seams are
visible. The better way is to glue five blank papers together as
the home-made panorama banner, or to buy the panorama photo papers
(8"x22"). Then in print setting, choose the proper
"paper size" in "Page Setup" and "Fit One
Page". The panorama will be printed to a single long paper.
Post
Click on
the "Post" page tab to show PanoGuide Post menu.
1) Click
on [Screen Saver] to pop-up "Display Property". Select
the "Screen Saver" tab. If Pixtra PanoScreen is the
current screen saver, the "campus.tif" thumbnail preview
should already be spinning. Click [Settings...] to pop-up "Pixtra
PanoScreen Configuration" window. Change the spin-speed
or add the panorama to a PanoAlbum. Click [OK] to finish. In "Screen Saver"
menu click [OK] to set "campus.tif"
as the screen saver of choice.
*) If
you expect the settings in this stitching project to be the most likely used
ones, you should transfer them to PanoStitcher Configuration: main
menu "Edit" | "Configuration"
2) To
publish the panorama to your website you need to scale down the
mother panorama. Load "campus.tif" to PanoStitcher.
Click on main menu "View" | "Zoom..." |
"Select image size". Change "Width" from 5395 to 570 to zoom the panorama down to the exactly desired size for
this web page. Right-click in the panorama window to pop-up the
panorama floating menu. Select "Save at screen
resolution" to save the zoomed down panorama as seen on the
screen (below is the resultant image). You can also click on [Web]
to automatically generate a dynamic web page using the PanoViewer
plug-in.
Fig.
3 Panorama that is precisely zoomed down for web publishing.
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