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Tutorial 1 Tutorial 2
Tutorial 3
Tutorial 4
Tutorial 5
Tutorial 2: Pacific Sunset
Highlight
In this
tutorial, we will illustrate how to
1)
stitch photos having almost no clear static features using Marker
Mode ,
2) pick
marker pairs in images almost with no well-defined static
features,
3)
transform the panorama using the "Unbend
panorama"/"Rotate panorama" features to straighten
and make horizontal the ocean horizon,
4) save
a high-resolution mother panorama (for screen saver) and derive a
lower-resolution version for web publishing.
Taking
the photos
As
George drove by Ocean Beach in San Francisco, the sun
was about to set and the world was serene. He rushed to the cliff
edge and captured the scene in five photos handheld. The digital
camera's settings were default: Auto mode at the base focal length
of 28mm.
PanoStitcher
stitching
After the photos
are loaded from the camera's memory to the computer in the
directory named "sunset", 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 hierachy in the left pane to open the folder
"sunset". The middle pane shows all the JPG files in
"sunset".
3)
Browser the folder by clicking on a file name to view its
thumbnail image on the right. It looks that the photos
related to sunset is around PC270006.JPG.
4) While
pressing <Shift> key, click on PC270005.JPG and then on
PC270009.JPG. All files between the two are selected. Click
[Include Selections] to load the five selected images to
PhotoBench.
5) It
seems that there are more relevant images in the folder. Click on
PC270010.JPG in the middle pane and the thumbnail does indicate it
is a "sunset" image. Double-click on PC270010.JPG
to load the image to PhotoBench.
6) 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)
Inspect the thumbnails. The order is PC270005.JPG, PC270006.JPG,
PC270007.JPG, PC270008.JPG, PC270009.JPG, PC2700010.JPG.
2)
Remove PC270010.JPG by dragging its thumbnail out of PhotoBench,
since PC270005.JPG and PC270010.JPG correspond to roughly the same
scene.
3) Order
the 5 thumbnails by dragging some of them to their desired
locations in PhotoBench. Now the order is PC270010.JPG,
PC270096.JPG, PC270006.JPG, PC270007.JPG, PC270008.JPG
Fig 1.
PhotoBench containing the photo thumbnails
Stitch
Click on
the "Stitch" page tab to show PanoGuide Stitch menu.
1)
Select "Marker Mode". This is due to that the photos are
dominated by the moving ocean water and static features are the
cloud and dark coastline which are not prominent enough. Hence
"Auto Mode" would have difficulties.
2) Click
[Stitch]. The window "Image Pair for Markers" containing
the first two images show up. 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"). The Panorama preview window
shows up displaying the stitched images. Click [Stitch]
again to show the window "Image Pair for Markers"
containing the next pair of images. Repeat 4) until all
image pairs are stitched.
Fig. 2 Raw panorama preview
Fig. 3 Panorama preview with ocean horizon straightened and
leveled.
5)
PanoStitcher automatically adjusted the photos to a band in the
panorama. But you might want the ocean horizon to be perfectly
flat. Right-click in panorama preview window to popup the floating
menu. Choose "Rotate panorama". Drag vertically on the
panorama to level the horizon. Then popup the floating menu. again
to choose "Unbend panorama". Drag vertically on the
panorama to straighten the horizon.
Blend
Click on
the "Blend" page tab to show PanoGuide Blend menu.
1)
Choose Resolution Ratio .75 which corresponds to the panorama size
of 2789x687.
2) Click
[Option...] to make sure "Auto-balance intensity" is
checked (the photos have different brightness since the camera
auto exposure was used).
3) Click
[Blend] to make the panorama.
4) Click
on the tool bar [save] button to save the stitching environment to
the project file sunset.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) 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).
2) Click
on Edit | [Select Region]. Drag in the panorama window to select
the region of interest. Fine-tune the box by moving its sides.
Click on Edit | [Crop] to crop the panorama.
3) Click
on Edit | [Brightness] to pop-up the
"Brightness/Contrast" menu. Adjust the Contrast slide
bar to enhance 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_sunset.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. Right click in
the panorama window to pop-up the print floating menu and choose
"Fit 1x3 Pages". Click on [Print] to print the panorama
to three 8"x11"pages.
*
Pasting the three printed pages has the problem that the seams are
visible. The better way is to paste three blank pages together as
the home-made panorama paper, or to buy the panorama photo papers
(8"x22"). 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 "sunset.tif" thumbnail preview
should already be spinning. Click [OK] to set "sunset.tif"
as the screen saver of choice.
*) If
you expect the settings in this 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 "sunset.tif" to PanoStitcher.
Click on main menu "View" | "Zoom..." |
"Select image size". Change "Width" from 2678
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. 4
Final panorama, precisely zoomed down for web publishing.
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