Raw & Post Processing, Printing > Digital Image Processing
PTGui vs Autopano Pro vs PTAssembler
Ray:
--- Quote ---If my pano software meets 99% of my needs while my below par physical conditions makes me arrive late on top of mountains for the sunrise, then I'd rather spend time in the gym instead of looking for ways to gain 1% on a process that basically already works.
Cheers,
Bernard
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=113731\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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I agree completely. I lost 10kg on my last trip to Nepal. I've now put it all back on, sitting in front of the computer, processing images and chatting to people on LL.
Before getting Autopano I was fearful of the effect that even more time sitting in front of the computer would do to my overweight situation, especially with huge 100 image projects.
I recently tried stitching with Autopano 103 images taken with my 20D, 3 rows of 33-35 images. Because the process was automatic, it didn't worry me too much when things didn't go quite to plan.
The first obstacle was a lack of space on the hard drive I had allocated for the temporary scratch folder. When I attempted to render the image (after it took an hour or so for the preview to be created) I got a message to the effect that my hard drive had only 24Gb of free space when 44GB was required. I had to close the program, after renaming the path of the temporary folder, and start again.
The second obstacle occurred about 4 hours into the rendering. A minor storm blew up. There was a bit of thunder and lightning and the usual power cut. I'm connected to a UPS and the computer shut down nicely, but I had to start the rendering a third time when the power came back on. This time I had it running all night. There was no power cut and the stitched, rendered file seem to have been saved okay.
However, the third obstacle was the file size. I'd calculated that 103 x 24MB images should not be larger than 2.5GB at most. I therefore felt safe in using the TIFF file format which has a size limit of 4Gb. I'm sure I clicked on the 8 bit option before rendering but for some reason the saved TIFF file was 4.11GB which appeared to be 16 bit, or maybe that's due to the alpha channel. Anyway, I couldn't find a way of opening the file so I had to begin the rendering again, a fourth time, selecting the PSB format and being very sure I specified 8 bit.
This 4th attempt has worked fine, but oddly enough the finished file size is shown as 4.73GB. However, after opening in CS2 the file size diminishes to 1.77GB. Don't know why this is.
The point of the story is, if I'd had to spend hours doing manual adjustments prior to rendering these images, I'd be tearing my hair out by now.
jmb:
You know Ray... IMHO, if you'd spend one quarter to half of the time you've spent reading and posting in this thread, you would likely have already figured out/mastered how to use PTAssembler or PTGui (along with the accompanying programs like Autopano (the control point generating program, not the complete stitching software) and Enblend/Smartblend) to get better results than you've been getting and could probably have generated (and fixed (just by rerouting seams in PS), if there were any huge problems) a pano or two...
Just give either of them a shot yourself (PTAssembler has become almost completely automated and for about 90% of my images, I don't have to play with any of the stitching parameters...), play around with one or two smaller panos, play around with editing the output from one or two panos where you have stitching problems (ie, reroute the seams so that you can't see them), and then you'll better be able to see how these programs fit into your needs and how well they can work with just a little additional user input (yes stitching 103 images together is time consuming, but so far, in my experience, rerouting the seams isn't that difficult... What I end up finding difficult is finding the bloody errory/misalignments after I've used Enblend or Smartblend. Once I find them, I can simply import one or two of the warped images into the pano and in a minute or two, mask out the offending misalignment). Out of the whole process (with the exception of one or two of my panos), I find that actually stitching the image together, colour corrections (etc.), and sharpening take much more time than dealing with errors in the panos (that said, my computer is fairly slow and I only have a 1.25 gig of ram...).
JMB
Ray:
--- Quote ---You know Ray... IMHO, if you'd spend one quarter to half of the time you've spent reading and posting in this thread, you would likely have already figured out/mastered how to use PTAssembler or PTGui (along with the accompanying programs like Autopano [a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=113768\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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In restrospect you are probably right, and if not half the time, then possibly all the time. I could have figured it out for myself and having done so, could have not bothered even mentioned my findings on the grounds that I'd spent the allocated time for such matters figuring it out.
In fact, if I'd spent the amount of time learning Photoshop techniques that I've spent on this forum, over the years, I'm sure I would now be a master photoshop user familiar with all techniques and possibilities.
Maybe it's time to change my priorities.
Johnny V:
Hi Ray,
I appreciate all the testing that you’ve done...is very interesting for sure...and will help out many beginners and intermediate pano shooters.
I did a quick test between PTGui and Autopano Pro...I don’t have time to post many images as I’m packing for vacation that starts tomorrow.
I used most of your settings Ray for Autopano Pro and it does edge out PTGui in stitching by a little - I tried to match the same preference settings in PTGui. AP had two stitching errors while PTGui had three on a three-horizontal-row image with the NPP off by about an inch horizontally.
But the AP image had noticeably more noise especially in the shadows and seemed inherently less sharp over all. Don’t know if that is the result of the Spline-64 interpolation. Even with a curve to match the contrast of the PTGui file and Unsharp Mask I could never match the “clarity” of the PTGui file. Attached “noise” file is with curve and sharpening applied to the AP image...the PTgui image is straight out of the app.
Also AP colors were very saturated, while PTGui’s colors were right on...colors were adjusted to match with attached images.
The horizon was perfect with AP and slightly tilted with PTGui.
AP appears longer width wise and shorter height wise than PTGui. Not sure which one is more accurate! See attached “overall” image.
Ray:
--- Quote ---I used most of your settings Ray for Autopano Pro and it does edge out PTGui in stitching by a little - I tried to match the same preference settings in PTGui. AP had two stitching errors while PTGui had three on a three-horizontal-row image with the NPP off by about an inch horizontally.
But the AP image had noticeably more noise especially in the shadows and seemed inherently less sharp over all. Don’t know if that is the result of the Spline-64 interpolation. Even with a curve to match the contrast of the PTGui file and Unsharp Mask I could never match the “clarity” of the PTGui file. Attached “noise” file is with curve and sharpening applied to the AP image...the PTgui image is straight out of the app.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=113824\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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Interesting. I hadn't even addressed such issues as noise and resolution. The only differences between the interpolation algorithms in Autopano, that I observed, were between the default bilinear and bicubic. With bilinear I noticed some very obvious smearing of 'not so fine' detail, in certain parts of the stitch, that simply wasn't there when I switched to bicubic.
I understand that Spline64 is one of those interpolation methods that is supposed to produce a theoretically more accurate result but which might not be noticed. I used that setting simply because I thought it would do no harm but might possibly do some good.
My 103 image stitch in Autopano was done directly from the RAW files. I'm at a different computer where my trial version of PTGui is not installed, but my memory is that PTGui doesn't recognise RAW files. Is that correct?
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