Hi Folks:
On another thread recently someone mentioned the panorama software
Hugin. Since it's open source software the price is right so I thought I'd try it out. Rather than comparing it to Photomerge or PTGui I wanted to judge it on its own merit, so I took my Fuji walkaround camera out and made some images. None of these are going to win any awards, but I was just trying out the software.
This is a 10-image stitch of the local City Hall building, made with 2 rows of 5 images, shot handheld at about 12 metres distance. I allowed the software to automatically assign control points, and it did a good job of fitting everything together.
[attachment=16313:DSCF4261_P.jpg]
Emboldened, I thought I'd challenge the software a bit. This is made from 8 images, handheld. Again, I allowed the software to find the control points on its own.
[attachment=16314:DSCF4545_P.jpg]
Now the Hugin software also allows one to create HDR panoramas, so I thought I'd try that out as well. I used a tripod for this, making 3 images of 3 exposures each - +1, 0, -1, then imported the 9 images into Hugin and let it go.
[attachment=16315:DSCF4887_P.jpg]
Here I wasn't as impressed. However, I have Timothy Armes'
LR/Enfuse plugin for Lightroom, so I combined each of the three multiple exposure images into one using Enfuse, then imported the three blended images into Hugin and ran it again.
[attachment=16316:DSCF4887_PB.jpg]
Here are 100% crops of the two versions. The LR/Enfuse image is on the right.
[attachment=16317:DSCF4887_P_2.jpg] [attachment=16318:DSCF4887_PB_2.jpg]
NB: All of the images were re-imported back into Lightroom for developing. The two images of the flowers were not processed identically; rather I tweaked the settings a little to make them look similar. For example, the image made using the LR/Enfuse blended images came out rather flat, and required a 35% increase in saturation to match the one made in Hugin.
Now I'll be the first to admit I'm not a 'Hugin master' and so the software may be capable of much more than I've been able to do with it. Still, it does create nice panoramas...
Mike.