Hugin

[lethargic_man]

I was telling rysmiel the other day about the photo-stitching program Hugin, and thought I'd post an example here, to raise its profile.

Here's a panoramic I took when dhole took me and Clara WINOLJ hiking in Ein Gedi. At the time I posted a version crudely stitched together by myself manually:

As you can just about make out in this low resolution version, the component photographs never quite align perfectly, due to perspective distortions induced by mapping an image onto an image plane of varying distance from the focal point. (This is why your eyeballs are spheres and not flat like the back of a camera!) Also, for the same reason the edge of each photo is darker, and so the joins are very overt.

Now here's the same panoramic as assembled from its component photographs automatically by Hugin, at the touch of a button:

The result is seamless and, I hope even at this low resolution, speaks for itself.

About 90% of the time Hugin works very well; the other 10% of the time it goes completely off its trolley^*; but there is the backup option of aligning the photos manually by clicking on common points in each image. Once a panoramic is assembled, it allows you the option of straightening wonky horizons, and then gives you a choice of projections to use for the final result. (I don't think I got the horizon quite right on this example, but it was an example where I had before and after versions readily to hand, to demonstrate Hugin...)

* Insert reference to tram lines here...