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Tutorial 1
Tutorial 2 Tutorial 3
Tutorial 4
Tutorial 5
Tutorial 3: Beach Mirrors
Note: This is a challenging
advanced project, which will give you experience in overlaying image pairs
with very vague common features.
Objectives
In this tutorial,
we will illustrate how to:
1) use the Overlay
method to stitch a partial panorama from photos with few distinctive shared
features,
2) transform the
panorama using the Unbend panorama / Rotate panorama features to straighten and
make the ocean horizon horizontal,
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.
Take the photos
1) Zoom the lens
out to the base focal length of 28mm and set the camera exposure to Auto mode.
2) Tilt the camera
to position the horizon roughly in the middle of the frame. Take
overlapping photos handheld while turning around. Try to stay on one spot as you
turn. The overlap is about 25%.
Transfer
photos from camera to computer
Load the photos
from the camera's memory to the computer in the directory named
"sunset".
Open PanoStitcher
Following
PanoGuide, each step of the stitching process is described in the following:
Load
1) Click on the
Stitch Toolbar Load button. The Image Browser window pops up.
2) Go through the
folder hierarchy in the left pane to open the folder "mirrors".
The middle pane shows all the .JPG files in "mirrors".
3) While
pressing [Shift] key, click on mirrors001.JPG and then on mirrors003.JPG.
All files between the two are selected. Click "Load Selections"
to load the three selected images to PhotoBench.
Fig 1. PhotoBench
containing the sorted photo thumbnails
Settings...
1) Click on the
Stitch Toolbar "Settings..." button to bring up the "Stitch
settings" dialog box.
2) Set Focal
length to "Known" and set the value to 28mm (the focal length used for
taking this photo set)..
3) Select
Stitching Mode to "Manual". Auto mode would have difficulties
because the photos are dominated by the moving ocean waves while the static
areas (cloud and dark coastline) have few distinctive features.
4) Make sure
"Auto-balance intensity" is checked (the photos have different
brightness since the camera auto exposure was used).
5) Click OK.
Stitch
1) Click Stitch.
The window "Adjust Image Pair Overlap" containing the first two images
appears.
2) Put the cursor
somewhere around the anchor. Drag to shift the foreground image around such that
the clouds and the horizon line register. Then use arrow keys on the
keyboard to fine-tune the shift.
3) Click and drag
the anchor to the middle of the overlap area on the horizon line.
4) Put the cursor
far away from the anchor but still inside the foreground image. Click and
drag to rotate the foreground image around such that the horizon line from the
two images is straight. Then use [Ctrl] + arrow keys on the keyboard to
fine-tune the rotation.
5) Click Stitch.
Or, right-click in the "Adjust Image Pair Overlap" window to
pop-up its floating menu and choose "Stitch this pair". The
Panorama Preview window opens displaying the stitched images. Click Stitch
again to show the window "Adjust Image Pair Overlap" containing the
next pair of images. Repeat the process until all image pairs are
stitched.
Fig 2a. Image pair
1 & 2
Fig 2b. Image pair
2 & 3
Fig. 3a Raw
panorama preview
Fig. 3b
Panorama preview with ocean horizon straightened and leveled.
4) PanoStitcher
already automatically adjusted the photos in the panorama. However, you
might want the ocean horizon to be perfectly straight and level.
Right-click in the panorama preview window to pop-up the floating menu.
Choose "Rotate panorama". Click and drag vertically on the
panorama until the horizon is level (though still bent). Then pop-up the
floating menu again to choose "Unbend panorama". Click and drag
vertically on the panorama to straighten the horizon.
Blend
1) Choose
Resolution Ratio 75% which corresponds to a panorama size of 694 x 335 pixels.
2) Click Blend to
make the panorama (automatically cropped).
Now the
panorama is made!
Edit
1) No action
needed.
Save
1) Click on File |
Save Project to save the stitching project to the project file mirrors.psp in
the "mirrors" folder. Later you can continue working by loading this .psp
file to PanoStitcher and clicking Stitch.
2) Click on the
Main Toolbar "Save image" icon to pop-up the "Save Panorama
Image" window. Save the panorama to the name "pano_mirrors.tif"
which is uncompressed. This is the master panorama for future use.
3) Click on the Main Toolbar Print icon to bring up the visual printing utility.
Set page Orientation to "Landscape" in the Setup | Page Setup dialog
box. Right click in the panorama window to pop-up the print floating menu and
choose "Fit 1x2 Pages". Click on Print to print the panorama to
two 8"x11"pages.
* The two printed
pages will need to be taped or glued, and will have visible seams. A
better way is to tape or glue three blank papers together before printing, or to
buy panorama photo paper (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 the
Post menu.
1) Right-click on the panorama and select "Set as Screen Saver" to
pop-up "Display Properties". Select the Screen Saver tab.
If Pixtra PanoScreen is the current screen saver, the "pano_sunset.tif"
thumbnail preview should already be spinning. Otherwise you need to select
PanoScreen from the screen saver drop-down list. Click "Settings..."
to pop-up the Pixtra PanoScreen Configuration window. Change the
spin-speed or add the panorama to a PanoAlbum. Click OK to finish. In the
Screen Saver menu click OK to set "pano_mirrors.tif" as the screen
saver of choice.
2) To publish the panorama to your website you need to scale down the master
panorama. Load "pano_mirrors.tif" to PanoStitcher. Click on main
menu View | Zoom... | Select image size. Change Width from 2678 to 570 to
reduce the panorama to exactly the right size for this web page you are reading.
Right-click in the panorama window to pop-up the panorama floating menu.
Select "Save at screen resolution" to save the reduced 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 Applet or the
ActiveX plug-in.
Fig. 4
Panorama that is precisely sized for web publishing.
Fig. 5 The
master panorama (from resolution Ratio=75%).
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