Microsoft Image Composite Editor

[Abarbarian]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9159403/stitchtest.jpg (to download, right click and SAVE AS, 8.4MB.You could just click the link and it will open up in the browser)

I wanted to have a go at panorama stitching so I decided to give the title program a go.
3.2MB download tooka minute ,install took a minute, stitching 5 pics together took a minute and loading to DB tool a minute.
What do you recon folks.
The view is what I see when I sit on me chair on me decking having a smoke. Obviously as me eyes ain't on stalks I have to turn me head in real life to see everything.

I used FastStone picture viewer to looksee as you can magnify and move around the picture with the mouse.



http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/730cd6bb-6450-4e66-8101-a94e71cb0779/default.aspx

Microsoft Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. Given a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location, the application creates a high-resolution panorama that seamlessly combines the original images. The stitched panorama can be shared with friends and viewed in 3D by uploading it to the Photosynth web site. Or the panorama can be saved in a wide variety of image formats, from common formats like JPEG and TIFF to the multiresolution tiled format used by Silverlight's Deep Zoom and by the HD View and HD View SL panorama viewers.

An I don't want no wise guys asking why I ain't using open source stuff.

 

[Taffycat]

That finished demo photo looks very impressive Abarbarian Sounds like it's pretty simple to use too, very nice find

 

[Abarbarian]

Ta

A bit of camera shake on the right side. Lawns only half cut. Might try pics with me tripod to see if it will sharpen up a bit.
Peasy easy to use.
Print size is 25" x 9"

 

[Urmas]

An I don't want no wise guys asking why I ain't using open source stuff.

OK.

https://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-3983323.php

 

[Abarbarian]

OK.

https://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-3983323.php

Yes the tool looks and sounds great.
The documentation covers in great detail all about the various components of the tool.
The example pics look to die for.
It sounds a bit more complicated than Windows ICE but you can do more with it artistically.
There is a Mandriva RPM.
It installs and you get two menu entries.
The Batch Processor fires up and looks like it will work but it needs special file types which you create with Huggin.
The Huggin menu entry when clicked flashes up a GUI for a fraction of a second on the desktop then disappears

Result so far.

Windows ICE - five minutes from start to finish and I have a panorama example I have made - looks pretty good as well.

Huggin - many hours spent on research with a half install - expensive as paracetamol and real coffee are required in huge amounts - no picture example not even a program to work with.

The winner by a country mile is the FREE Windows ICE.

 

[Urmas]

AB,

I just downloaded Hugin... only problem is, I don't have a pic series to play with (OK, fine, a wee quickie with Mrs. Google would fix that).

Could you please email me the five originals?


U

 

[Abarbarian]

AB,

I just downloaded Hugin... only problem is, I don't have a pic series to play with (OK, fine, a wee quickie with Mrs. Google would fix that).

Could you please email me the five originals?


U

They are copyrighted you realise.

I'll post a DropBox link in a mo.

 

[Urmas]

They are copyrighted you realise.

Fair enough... I'll buy me a six-pack of Saku tonight and drink it. Deal?

 

[floppybootstomp]

Can Hugin do vertical stitches as well as horizontal?

I ask as I'm trying to piece together several different scanned pix of a 12" vinyl album, the double inner pic, and Canon's Photo-Stitch just won't hack it. The Canon software was supplied with my camera.

Same question applies to the MS ICE thingie.

I was going to ask for links to suitable free software, this subject prompted me.

 

[Urmas]

No hands-on experience – yet. (Hugin)

But I found one ANSWER to the question "How do I get Hugin to orient the images vertically?"

 

[Abarbarian]

Can Hugin do vertical stitches as well as horizontal?

I ask as I'm trying to piece together several different scanned pix of a 12" vinyl album, the double inner pic, and Canon's Photo-Stitch just won't hack it. The Canon software was supplied with my camera.

Same question applies to the MS ICE thingie.

I was going to ask for links to suitable free software, this subject prompted me.

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/tutorials/index.shtml

You might fond help here.

As to ICE it is so quick that your best bet is to give it a try.

 

[Abarbarian]

Fair enough... I'll buy me a six-pack of Saku tonight and drink it. Deal?

Used your addy you sent in a previous PM so the pics should be available now.

You should have posted,

I'll buy me a six-pack of Saku tonight and post them to you post haste.

 

[Urmas]

Thankee Abarbecue!

That Dropbox thingy sure is handy... a simple "accept", and <POOF!> the stuff is in my File Manager!




Postal Urmas

 

[Abarbarian]

Zoomfooting to here with luck.(e-mail address removed)

 

[V_R]

Looks good, just need to crop the pic to remove the black mis-shaped border.

 

[EvanDavis]

Just had a read through this thread and thought it looked great. So I downloaded from you link Abar. Download went fine.
But when I try install I am faced with this.

Bit confused. I am the administrator. And no policies have been set. When I restart into safe mode I get the choice of two accounts. Administrator and Evan (which is an Admin account) Still can't install from either account. But yet I have installed a bunch of other things quite fine today *scratches head in confusion*

 

[Abarbarian]

Just had a read through this thread and thought it looked great. So I downloaded from you link Abar. Download went fine.
But when I try install I am faced with this.

Bit confused. I am the administrator. And no policies have been set. When I restart into safe mode I get the choice of two accounts. Administrator and Evan (which is an Admin account) Still can't install from either account. But yet I have installed a bunch of other things quite fine today *scratches head in confusion*

Can not help as I'm not up on MS inner workings. Someone else will no doubt have the answer.
Worked fine in XP Pro.

 

[Urmas]

Huggin - many hours spent on research with a half install - expensive as paracetamol and real coffee are required in huge amounts - no picture example not even a program to work with.

Um. I installed Hugin from Ubuntu repos (Version 2009.2.0.4461, the "2010 version" isn't in official repos yet).

Opened it:



Assistant... hmmm... all right. I fed it three of Afotografer's pics... I aimed for realism, so I included some laundry into the mix:

"1. Load images..."

Three photos in, what next? Um... time to hit the "2. Align..." button? OK... a small terminal window opens, computing computing computing (took a minute or so with this old 1 GHz lappy with 1 GB RAM), then, output:

Images are connected by 26 control points.
Mean error after optimization: 3.2 pixel, max: 17.2
Bad fit, some control points might be bad, or there are parallax or movement errors

Aha... wonder what that means in real life... "3. Create panorama..."



Whaddayaknow... a wee cropping job, and:



(It seems that Huggin – at least the "2009 version" wants to save the end result as .tif.)

So... 1-2-3... no rocket science needed. Which is good, because I am not a rocket scientist.

The winner by a country mile is the FREE Windows ICE.

Can't comment on that (I couldn't find a .deb package in manufacturer's pages). But no paracetamols were hurt during this quick test... and coffee consumption stayed within accepted limits – 2-3 liters per day.

 

[Urmas]

Here's one with another set of images – I used six of 'em:

 

[Abarbarian]

Neat job.
My huggin problems are probably down to a tempremental Mandy.