# Panorama Stitching Software.



## Valvebounce (Dec 8, 2015)

Hi Folks.
I just posted my first panorama to the thread in the landscape gallery using AutoStitch.
I tried canons stitch software and didnt like the results, I dont do a lot of Panoramas (though I'm sitting here typing this and thinking where to take some locally) that said I like how easy this software was to use, not as good result as some here, but enough to please me. Is there a good FREE software that is better than this, I'm not going to spend hours manually lining these up in Gimp or similar, I want a nice simple program with a high quality output that will blend for me, any recomendations.
Thanks in advance.

Cheers, Graham.


----------



## kaihp (Dec 8, 2015)

Valvebounce said:


> I tried canons stitch software and didnt like the results, I dont do a lot of Panoramas (though I'm sitting here typing this and thinking where to take some locally) that said I like how easy this software was to use, not as good result as some here, but enough to please me. Is there a good FREE software that is better than this, I'm not going to spend hours manually lining these up in Gimp or similar, I want a nice simple program with a high quality output that will blend for me, any recomendations.



Canon's stitching software is - for the lack of better word - crap.

Microsoft Research provices the program ICE (Image Composition Editor) _for free_ which does an excellent job of stiching photos. It is, however, a Windows-only programs. You might be able to run under an emulator on a Mac.


----------



## Halfrack (Dec 8, 2015)

I've used krpano and Panorama Studio Pro in addition to PTGui. None are free, but under $100 really can save you time. Krpano would be the product to use but I needed it to generate the whole experience and PanoramaStudio give me a fully functional zoomable image.

All have free trials, give it a go.


----------



## zim (Dec 8, 2015)

+1 for ICE for a freebie but if you get into this you'll soon run into frustrations

Honestly though I went through a lot of trial software and PTGui is hard to beat bang for buck


----------



## RobertG. (Dec 8, 2015)

Hi, I used for years Kolor Autopano. It worked well and better than any other software for me. But now it doesn't want to work with my 5ds R files. It stitches the JPEGs but not the .CR2 files. Maybe it's time to update the software again. It just says no panorama found, although there clearly is one and it works great with the same motifs as JPEGs (I take a .CR2 & a .jpg file at the same time at each shot).


----------



## privatebydesign (Dec 8, 2015)

Graham,

Just get Lightroom 6 standalone and be done with it. The stitching is very good, you have various projection options and it retains the RAW editability. They do deals on LR, which normally takes the price to under $100, a couple of times a year too, not free I know, but it saves so much time and effort it really is worth it.


----------



## Halfrack (Dec 9, 2015)

Um, yea, if you haven't done it in LR CC/6 yet - it's really good even with 50mp files. That and the DNG it creates is nice and deep, and stays within the workflow. I was thinking you'd already tried LR and haven't been happy/etc.

There is a point when the file created is just too big, thus the fancy software, but until then, LR is your friend.


----------



## meywd (Dec 9, 2015)

Unless you make sure the overlap percentage is high - 40% as minimum for some software - it may not stitch it all, so for me I try to do it as the following:

1) LR 6, best because I can edit the result as a raw which is awesome, but sometimes it can't stitch or it does so badly.

2) PS, well here the success percentage is a bit higher, and I think - not sure - its faster, even if it fails, it stitches what it can and leave the rest, which is better than no result, and I use PS to fill the gaps anyway with content aware fill.

3) Auto-stitch, this is what I use if all fails, it has a higher success percentage, and is a lot faster than Adobe's options, and like PS it shows what it succeeded to stitch - if not all photos match - but it only outputs the result image which means you need to return to PS for further editing, but its free so its awesome.

4) Canon's Stitch Utility, yeah its not very good, but it has an even higher success percentage than auto-stitch, for me anyway, but I only use it if its the last resort.


----------



## Mt Spokane Photography (Dec 9, 2015)

Its not free, but Photoshop CC does a very good job. I compared it to Lightroom 2015CC and like using Photoshop much better. With Photoshop, I can remove unwanted trees or items that detract or prevent me from getting the full panorama. Lightroom does the job, sort of.

I've posted comparison photos before, so I won't repeat them.


----------



## privatebydesign (Dec 9, 2015)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Its not free, but Photoshop CC does a very good job. I compared it to Lightroom 2015CC and like using Photoshop much better. With Photoshop, I can remove unwanted trees or items that detract or prevent me from getting the full panorama. Lightroom does the job, sort of.
> 
> I've posted comparison photos before, so I won't repeat them.



Can you post a link to the photos? I'd like to see that.


----------



## Valvebounce (Dec 9, 2015)

Hi Folks. 
Thanks for the advice and input, I will try ICE, I have a limited budget for photography which I would sooner spend on hardware especially as panoramic shots are an insignificant blip on the radar compared with what else I do, hence the free stipulation. This is a hobby for me from which I earn no income so purchases come from the home budget. 
I have my raw conversion / editing software with DxO. 
I suspect panoramic photography will become a bigger part of my repertoire, at which time I may feel that purchasing software is the way forwards. 

Cheers, Graham.


----------



## Sporgon (Dec 9, 2015)

privatebydesign said:


> Mt Spokane Photography said:
> 
> 
> > Its not free, but Photoshop CC does a very good job. I compared it to Lightroom 2015CC and like using Photoshop much better. With Photoshop, I can remove unwanted trees or items that detract or prevent me from getting the full panorama. Lightroom does the job, sort of.
> ...



I haven't used Lightroom 6, but Lightroom CC is just astonishingly good at stitching, and HDR for that matter. At the moment there seems to be nothing it can't do. Photoshop CS6 seemed good at the time, and I began to use ptgui a lot less, but with LR CC I'm just not bothering to stitch or blend in PS CC. 

I've been able to produce some panos now that I had really liked the potential of but couldn't get them together satisfactorily in either ptgui or PS CS6.


----------



## rfdesigner (Dec 9, 2015)

kaihp said:


> Valvebounce said:
> 
> 
> > I tried canons stitch software and didnt like the results, I dont do a lot of Panoramas (though I'm sitting here typing this and thinking where to take some locally) that said I like how easy this software was to use, not as good result as some here, but enough to please me. Is there a good FREE software that is better than this, I'm not going to spend hours manually lining these up in Gimp or similar, I want a nice simple program with a high quality output that will blend for me, any recomendations.
> ...



Just tried ICE with a "boke-panorama" I'd tried some time ago and it won't let me tell it where the separate images go.. it insists the images had to have been taken in a top-bottom/left-right order, where as I took them in more of a spiral order.

is there any way to kill off it's auto-insistance?


----------



## Mt Spokane Photography (Dec 9, 2015)

Sporgon said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > Mt Spokane Photography said:
> ...




Here is the link

http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=26078.msg513805#msg513805


This was my first try using lightroom. I did not find using photoshop to be difficult or complicated, as I recall, it was about the same as using lightroom.


----------



## kaihp (Dec 9, 2015)

rfdesigner said:


> Just tried ICE with a "boke-panorama" I'd tried some time ago and it won't let me tell it where the separate images go.. it insists the images had to have been taken in a top-bottom/left-right order, where as I took them in more of a spiral order.
> 
> is there any way to kill off it's auto-insistance?


I don't use ICE very often so I had to open it up to see what all the fuss was about. I'm afraid that I don't have a good suggestion on that one :'(


----------



## GammyKnee (Dec 9, 2015)

I tried a few of the free options, but none of them gave me the control I needed, and I eventually splashed some cash on Kolor Autopano. I think anyone that gets hooked on panos will probably be best served by getting one of the dedicated paid stitchers.

However, you can get a lot more out of the freebies (and make life easier with the paid-for software) by:

- Using a good steady tripod and a nice smooth panning head
- Using a rail to eliminate parallax where necessary
- Keeping the overlaps nice and big
- Experimenting with correcting lens distortion prior to stitching


----------



## scyrene (Dec 10, 2015)

Sporgon said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > Mt Spokane Photography said:
> ...



I've been very impressed with Lightroom's ability but there are a couple of situations where it fails pretty consistently - with wide apertures (Brenizer style) and large areas either without detail, like some skies, or fine semi-random detail, like branches - and there's no option if it fails, you can't add control points etc. I just recently got a motorised panorama tripod/head, but I'm not sure Lr is up to it - any idea if PTGui is better for this purpose? I downloaded the demo but it seems no more capable than Hugin, a free program I used a while back (but maybe I'm being premature).

What do people use for big, complex panoramas, gigapixel work etc?


----------



## kaswindell (Dec 10, 2015)

I have dabbled with panoramas and found LR6 to work pretty well. Before that I used ICE, which I still turn to when LR can't sort things out. The only other software I have tried was Canon's which, like the rest of the stuff included on their CD, was not worth the space it consumed on the hard drive.


----------



## raptor3x (Dec 10, 2015)

rfdesigner said:


> kaihp said:
> 
> 
> > Valvebounce said:
> ...



Are you telling ICE that it's a structured panorama? I've always found it to work extremely well for those types of panoramas.


----------



## scyrene (Dec 10, 2015)

dilbert said:


> PtGui is the best.
> 
> Adobe CC Bridge/LR 6/LR CC work "most of the time" but when they don't, you have no ability to fix or control anything.
> 
> I've never come across a situation that PtGui couldn't handle (plus it lets you merge raw files!)



I'll give it a chance then  Lightroom lets you merge raw files too.


----------



## beckstoy (Dec 10, 2015)

I've had HORRIBLE results with LRcc in stitching (Brenizer Method stuff, usually), so I keep resorting back to AutoStitch. For those of you who have used it successfully, what's the carryover percentage (just give me a guess) for each photo? Am I expecting too much with my only-slight overlaps?


Thanks in advance!


----------



## rfdesigner (Dec 10, 2015)

raptor3x said:


> rfdesigner said:
> 
> 
> > kaihp said:
> ...



yes.. it's still demanding I've taken the images in stripes, I didn't. I even tried cutting down to just a 2x2 and sorting out the arrangement, and it made a dogs breakfast of it.... canon photostitch does much better.


----------



## scyrene (Dec 10, 2015)

beckstoy said:


> I've had HORRIBLE results with LRcc in stitching (Brenizer Method stuff, usually), so I keep resorting back to AutoStitch. For those of you who have used it successfully, what's the carryover percentage (just give me a guess) for each photo? Am I expecting too much with my only-slight overlaps?
> 
> 
> Thanks in advance!



I found it just plain doesn't like wide apertures for stitching. But in terms of overlap, it seems to be better not to have too much - I often find better results (broadly speaking) when I remove every other shot, which means less overlap (having shot with quite a bit of overlap to begin with). Maybe 10-20% each side?


----------



## Famateur (Dec 10, 2015)

scyrene said:


> beckstoy said:
> 
> 
> > I've had HORRIBLE results with LRcc in stitching (Brenizer Method stuff, usually), so I keep resorting back to AutoStitch. For those of you who have used it successfully, what's the carryover percentage (just give me a guess) for each photo? Am I expecting too much with my only-slight overlaps?
> ...



I generally go for 1/3 overlap. An easy way to do it is to use Live View with the Rule of Thirds screen overlay enabled. If going left-to-right, just pan the camera so that what was behind the right third line is now behind the left third line (vice versa if going right-to-left). Rinse, and repeat.

Before pano-stitching was added to Lightroom, I enjoyed using ICE which could stitch my RAW files and generally did a very nice job (and quickly). I still use it now and then when Lightroom croaks on too many large files.

This thread is of interest to me, though, since even ICE can't handle a project I'm doing. Considering something like Autopano, but since panoramas are only hobby for me, I'm hesitant to throw down some cash when Lightroom and ICE usually do the job...


----------



## scyrene (Dec 10, 2015)

Famateur said:


> scyrene said:
> 
> 
> > beckstoy said:
> ...



Oh, I've been shooting them handheld so far, so it's more a matter of take loads and hope they all overlap!  Lr does have a problem managing memory during the process, and using raw files does eat up a lot of disk space while it's running, but it's worked fine in the end...


----------



## Valvebounce (Dec 10, 2015)

Hi Folks. 
Sorry I haven't replied much, been a bit busy and haven't had time to try the advice out yet. I did look at PTGui but £70 for a couple of panoramas is a bit steep, maybe when I have more interest in them. 
Thanks for the input, I'm finding it all very informative. 

Cheers, Graham.


----------

