Explore Incredible sized Panoramas easily
Creating Panorama images
Panoramics (a.k.a. flat rectilinear or planar-stitched images) are many digital images stitched for a wider view
History:
Taking standard pictures often loses the spatial feeling of how large an area was when taking photographs. Panoramas do a better job of conveying this by letting one show as much as 360-degrees if you wish. The overall effect is like having a super-wide angle camera lens. With panoramas you can simulate how that wide lens image would look using many smaller images. Plus it allows crazy wide angles that exceed 180-degrees and are impossible for typical cameras and standard lenses. On the beach image below I stitched five large images together to see the full water view which was less than 180-degrees. A single and standard shot of the beach would not have had this same ability to help the viewer visualize the scene.
1) Go straight to Hugins software Panorama tutorial
2) Go to video and let me demonstrate stitching
Six images of this Hawaii beach give you the better feel of being there
The Hawaii beach image above I took in early 2007 and stitched with Canon's Photostitch (click to enlarge)
On some software packages you can stitch together several levels of panoramas to create a much larger super-pano. For instance a pano of the sky, one of the horizon, and then one of the ground. Then you'd put these together as if all three separate panos were one large image matrix. Why would you do that? Suppose you only had a 1.3 Megapixel camera and needed a 10-Megapixel image for a large printing project. Stitching together many 1.3MP images would create this same final product using less expensive equipment. This technique was used during the early U.S. space program of the 1960's.
Multiple layered panoramics give you additional flexibility photographing wide areas
Photographing Considerations:
How do I photograph panorama images? You start out on your left or right and then take the images consecutively as you rotate across the area you are interested in. Try to focus on rotating the camera and not make huge rotations in your body. The more centered the camera as it rotates the better. The biggest rule of all is that images have to overlap each other by about 25-30%. That is to say if there is a tree at the end of the first image, then it should be in the beginning of the next image and so forth. This overlap helps the programs assure all the images go together as best they can. If you overlap the images too much this will cause you problems in stitching as well. Attempt to keep the image overlap around the 25% rule.
One trick I use in order to get more into my panos was turning the camera sideways. Images are more wide than tall in the camera normally. While this causes you to take more images to get the same pano, it also makes the pano taller and shows more sky or whatever you choose. This eliminates the need for multiple layers of panos in many cases.
Laie Point on Oahu, Hawaii north shore (click to enlarge)
Seam Problems:
Even with 25% overlap your images may not register correctly all the time. This can be the case because of everything from complex geometry to software confusion. Avoiding poorly stitched seams is one of the main goals when creating a good panorama. As a basic rule the straight lines in man-made structures make it easier to see flaws against organic shapes and nature. With poor seams it is the repeating of patterns that grab the viewer's attention and suggests problems. There will be instances when the software creates subtle flaws and duplicates a tree limb or a mountain top and you may not even notice. All seam flaws are important to inspect for as they will haunt you later when trying to make a decent printed poster or other final product.
Going back to re-register your points is the first step to fixing image seams that don't match up. Another fix I've seen is people bringing the originals into Photoshop or other paint programs and warping the pieces they need over the broken areas. One seldom sees and absolutely perfect panorama unless the creator has done painstaking work. So the cut-off for perfection will have to be your own judgment. Some stick to natural scenes where little to no man-made objects complicate their panoramas. This makes the scenes with man-made ones all that more worthy.
Seam problems while making panoramas remain common
Cropping Problems from Rotation:
If there is any camera movement up or down the final image will need clipped as the moving will create jagged edges on the final panorama. This is because one image may be up and the other further down, but the tree in both images is in the same place. To register or stitch these together it will leave gaps on the top and bottom of the pano. Below is an image example of this taken during the autumn season as I jumped out of my car on the highway. I rushed to take this shot and ended up with some very uneven images to stitch together. The fact that the hill was diagnal and steep didn't help either. Most programs will clip this jagged part off but will do it all the way across the image. One ends up losing a significant amount of good image if there is clipping. The main solution to this cropping is to use a tripod and perfectly rotate your camera's center. But what if you want the tops of all the mountains and some are higher than others? First make sure you turn your camera sideways for most height on the capture. Look through your camera and view the highest mountain in your potential image set. Rotate your body to where the last image is going to be taken without moving up or down with the camera and see if this meets with your approval. If the mountains on the far right are super tall and the ones on the left are much shorter then you may have to compromise where your rotation height begins.
Also each SLR camera has a mark on it called a nodal. The nodal represents the center of the image. If you get a tripod that specializes in panoramas then the nodal mark should be right above the spot where the camera is mounted and rotated. Using a level on the tripod helps too. I Ideal this IS how you want to make your panorama. Personally I find decent luck without a tripod when I take far off shots and use the time to rotate straight across as I photograph the images. However, in locations with mountains the perfect rotation of even a tripod often clips off parts of landscapes that I wanted to photograph.
An autumn image taken near the Colorado and New Mexico border (click to see final result).
Near Object and Moving Problems:
Photographing items near to the camera can cause problems. The Royal-Gorge Bridge in the image below made it really difficult to stitch points together because of near bridge wires that came toward the image. This is called Parallax. It's a seeming change in the direction of an object, but it's caused by a change in camera position appearing as a new line of sight. What that all means in an example is when you take two pictures of the mountains one after another and you see in the distance there is a tree in the way of your photograph. That nearer tree will appear to change position drastically from one picture to the next. In most cases it's best to either eliminate these closer objects or use a tripod to assure one stationary point.
In one of my temple panoramics I photographed a tourist that moved in the direction I was recording my pano. As a result there were duplicates of her in a couple places at the site. Keep moving objects in mind when you image. You may want to take your shots in the opposite direction to avoid duplicate subjects. On the other hand it may be very cool to have a good friend jump into every frame and have them star in multiple places on your master panoramic image.
The Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado. A passing rain storm seen in the center.
Image Exposure Considerations:
When many images are taken side-by-side, then each will often be a different shade of the sky and perhaps other objects. This is because the exposure or white-balance for each shot was probably different. This becomes an issue when all the images are stitched together and the sky is not the consistent blue all the way across the scene. If the camera in question is of the new and family type then it might have a pano-mode built into the camera to fix this.
If one's camera is a digital SLR then there are other options such as an automatic exposure lock (AE Lock often represented by an asterisk button on Canon models). Holding this button will keep the colors more consistent across all the images. This will help the stitching software create a more seamless color scene and skyline. When you use the AE lock you'll want to start locking your image exposures by taking the first image in the center of the panorama. With the AE still locked you can then proceed to start taking photographs from your far left and panning all the way right (of course retaking the center one again to keep them in order). Keep that AE held all the way across if it is not the type that stays locked. In this way all of the images will average out in their exposure.
Some lenses leave a dark border on each image that you may not see till you are stitching. This "vignette" affect does happen. It will leave dark stripes in a regular pattern down your images at the seams. This is because all lenses have some distortion built into them as they have to bend the light into the camera. Usually moving the lens to the middle of its range is where the sweet spot of the lens occurs and distortion is the most minimized. Some tricks to eliminating dark stripes in the panoramas can help. On the exposure problems one can shoot multiple versions of the panos. Then if you see differently exposed images you can sometimes reach back to other sets of this same area in panos for different pictures. The second trick is to use Photoshop's healing-tool to eliminate or reduce the vignette effect. The healing tool can smooth out the dark areas where they at least blend better.
Lens Considerations:
Using a fisheye or other lens with built in warp or distortion will give your stitching software fits. While many of the software packages have ways to compensate for these, it may be best to choose a lens with decently wide view but little distortion around the edges. I usually take my stock 18-55mm lens with me to create a Pano. Try not to use any level of zooms as this will complicate your panorama and may leave your images inconsistant.
Consistent Panning Considerations:
When taking panorama images, it's important to make sure they are all shot from the exact same stand-point and same height as one pivots the camera around the scene. Some use a tripod and simply snap the images one at a time as they rotate the camera on the tripod. This works very well but requires patience. The Pineapple orchard image below was stabilized by hand as I simply rotated the camera while trying to keep it as steady as possible.
The Dole Pineapple orchards using 12-images stitched with Canon's Photostitch (click to enlarge).
File Resolution Considerations:
The more images you place into your pano the larger it will grow. The downside is that it will also get wider. At some point the image will become impractical for most applications. That is to say, too long for common displays, printing, or web use. So there is a balance you must strike when creating a visual story. The image up above with the red roads on each side is of the Dole Pineapple orchards in Hawaii on Oahu. I took twelve images to capture the full 180-degrees in this shot and maintain the details. As you can see the strip narrowed more than the four taken at the beach. Now my options are to shrink it where the viewer can see the entire frame or have them pan and move around in it somehow. What I've done on mine is just to sample way down. While the detail is lost you can get a good idea of the overall scene.
Okay, so how do I stitch together a panorama? The answer for free stitching of panoramas is Hugin software. I pushed some massive images through this software and the results were mind-blowingly simple. I checked and didn't see any flaws. Okay, maybe this was beginner's luck but I've paid for many pieces of software and not done as well. Hugin also allows for you to register the points for more precision panorama that are free of seams.
Freeware program to create panoramics
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Click here to Download Hugin
V0.7.0.3082 by Pablo d'Angelo (9.45MB)
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1) Download and install the Hugin_svn3082_20080524_setup.exe file from the above link. You can continue to click next, accept and so forth to accept the default installation options.
2) From your desktop double click to run the Hugin icon. I noticed many other little files landed on my desktop after install like enblend360, enfuse360, and so forth when I installed by default. This should not be a problem if they are left on the desktop while we assemble our panorama.
3) Close any annoying browser-windows that comes up. This directs you to their website and tutorials as well. They have some very robust tutorials so be sure to read those later. Our examples here are from running the software at ground level so lets proceed.
4) Let's begin by going to the top-left of the Frontend window and left-click the load-Images button. Find your grouping of images on your hard drive to use for this panorama. It is helpful to expand the Add Images window by left-clicking and then dragging the window to a much larger size by the handle on the bottom right corner of the window. As a huge help in the top right of the load window there is the standard View pull-down icon for windows (the square looking icon with six other squares in it...next to the two yellow folder icons). I usually change this to Thumbnails so I can see previews of the images I'm about to load.
5) Left-click just once on the first image in your pano sequence. Now hold the Shift key on the keyboard and left-click the last image in the sequence. All of your images should be highlighted at once. Left-click the Open button to import these images.
6) Hopefully your focal length information is all filled-in thanks to the information inside your images. If it is not then look on your camera lens for the focal length and type in that number. This will probably be enough to make your panorama work.
7) Next left-click the Align button. The Finding Control Points window will come up and begin trying to match your images together. This could take a short while depending on how many images you have added to your panorama.
8) The Panorama preview window comes up next. Use the slider on the bottom to zoom outward by moving the slider right. You can click to tell the program where the center of your view should be and this changes the warping of the image. My image was in an arc shape so I bent it more straight with the mouse by clicking one way or another from center. This can get strange if you click too much but bringing it back to almost straight is fairly easy.
9) If you are satisfied with the panorama then step #3 is next. Left-click the create panorama button in the Frontend window. The Specify Prefix Output window then comes up. This is where you choose where your panorama will save. Also give your panorama a name and left-click the Save button. The hug-stitching window comes up and begins calculating. This may take a while as your panorama is created. The output format is a TIF image by default.
Now for this same Panorama tutorial done via video. If you are the type person who learns faster from watching than reading, then the below video may be helpful to you. Here I create the entire Panorama in about 2.34 minutes. Once you see the work-flow of the program you can head straight into the process again as shown in the video. Feel free to send me feedback if this tutorial worked for you or even why it didn't. I've just put up a feedback area in the icon at the bottom of the screen. Happy Pano stitching!
Conclusion:
Panoramas are amazing because it doesn't matter what technological level we reach you can sew together the next level of megapixel images even before a camera of such quality is available. As demonstrated, the art of taking panoramas can produce super seductive images and it's easy to be obsessive by many who are really into it. Each time you take a shot you will realize even more techniques you could have used to make a panorama better. For instance try using the cross-hairs in your camera viewfinder to follow the horizon. This way you keep the images lined up to a certain degree without a tripod. Get out there and have fun creating panoramas!
Written Dec07 and updated Apr09 by Tracy Rose