7 ms·

Hugin – Panorama photo stitcher

97 points by dlsym 12y ago

MasterScrat 12y ago
You had to post that right when Huginn is on the front page too, right? ;-)
- czottmann 12y ago
  It's an opportune moment, I think. ¯\＿(ツ)＿/¯
- tombrossman 12y ago
  Funny, I thought the same thing. I'm stitching a bunch of panoramas right now with Hugin and I opened HN for something to read while they process. Total confusion for a moment there... For some example photos I've got a few here: https://tombrossman.com/photos/ https://tombrossman.com/photos/. Admittedly not the greatest works of art, but I am working on photographing the tidal extremes where I live and panoramas are a perfect way to showcase them.
  - bigtech 12y ago
    Les Quizerables. Brilliant!
- SloughFeg 12y ago
  Quick, somebody make a news article about the Munin daemon.
- tapia 12y ago
  Maybe the person who published this link just wanted to remember/show, that the name was already taken by another project (the name is almost the same) and that the programmers should consider changing it.
rplnt 12y ago
This was pain to use. Far from automated, crashed all the time, horrible UI and UX (pretty common in OSS). I'm sure the results might have been better compared to regular "click next" panoramic software.. but it was simply not worth it for my (personal) use-case. Then I used some proprietary program for windows (arcsoft maybe? not sure now), which a had limited free version, and it was a breeze to use. Selecting images was intuitive, reordering was easy, configuration was simple and stitching was automatic.
- keithpeter 12y ago
  I'm not seeing Hugin crash. Debian Wheezy, stitching around 20 jpegs snapped from phone, using the default auto options. When was this?
  - rplnt 12y ago
    Maybe three years ago? On Fedora I think.
    - keithpeter 12y ago
      I was using Hugin on Ubuntu Lucid so about then. Can't remember any big issues but doing full sized stitches as TIFFs did use a lot of memory and take some time (swapping).
zachbeane 12y ago
I've been pretty happy using Hugin for making Brenizer method panoramas, e.g. https://www.flickr.com/photos/xach/10301052666/in/set-72157639971484114 https://www.flickr.com/photos/xach/10301052666/in/set-721576... The UI is not great, but it's better than nothing, and the results are generally pretty good. And it's free.
- slantyyz 12y ago
  Curious: Can you do the same using the Hugin command line tools, or do you have to use the GUI?
  - zachbeane 12y ago
    I'm not sure; I suspect you could go CLI-only. The GUI seems like a pretty thin layer over the GUI in most places. Some of the perspective/projection interface elements seem like they would be difficult to do from the command line, though.
    - slantyyz 12y ago
      Another question, does Hugin do the transform and alignment for your Breziner method images? I'm assuming some transformation has to be done to accommodate the tilting of your shots? I've been interested in trying the method but have never gotten around to it.
      - zachbeane 12y ago
        Yeah, Hugin does that for you. It's pretty neat. I've had two problems with it: - Alignment errors, where objects don't match up with each other across different shots - Missing coverage, where I left a hole from missing a picture when trying to cover a scene The former is something better software might be able to handle, but the latter is all my fault.
kirk21 12y ago
Would be cool to see an online version (eg no install required).
- timdiggerm 12y ago
  I believe you mean "photostitching as a service"
- batmansbelt 12y ago
  If you have photo backup enabled to google plus, it will stitch your photos together sometimes.
- QuotedForTruth 12y ago
  That would require uploading all the input photos. Thats sometimes 50+ 20 MP images, none of which you are going to want to look at after you get the stitch done. Id like to see a portable version that doesnt require install, but not an online version.
- eitland 12y ago
  As much as I like services I love real honest apt-get-able open source ;-) (Edit to add: Some of the hats some of us wore or wear comes with data that should n o t be uploaded to any cloud.)
leeoniya 12y ago
was just using it to stitch some costa rica photos yesterday :) https://www.dropbox.com/s/cwqj70kl0ln8g1l/DSC_8270%20-%20DSC_8275.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/cwqj70kl0ln8g1l/DSC_8270%20-%20DSC... https://www.dropbox.com/s/ujiovwhg79o33ky/DSC_8252%20-%20DSC_8254.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/ujiovwhg79o33ky/DSC_8252%20-%20DSC...
orkj 12y ago
Great stuff, but I just have to say it: That website could have been stitched better together. No offence intended (some pun intended).
DangerousPie 12y ago
Is this noticeably better than Photoshop's panorama stitching (to the point where it would be worth reprocessing them)?
- jitl 12y ago
  No. Photoshop is usually faster and produces a better quality alignment and (optionally) merge for the general case of "I have these photos, please make them into a single image." Hugin has more tunable options, so it's easier to do more stages of an advanced stitching workflow in it, but I wouldn't suggest investing time in Hugin unless you want to do a specific crazy thing.
jedberg 12y ago
I used to use Hugin for all my stitching needs. It did a great job creating what became my Facebook cover photo, which was stitched from 80+ images. However, it would crash about 50% of the time, with some sort of random error. If I slightly changed a setting, like tweaking the cropping or removing a single image, then sometimes it would work. Sometimes it would work if I ran the exact same job again -- the issue was not repeatable. I eventually switched to a paid program, Autopano Pro (recommended to me by some of the Smugmug employees). It works just as well, a lot faster, and doesn't crash 1/2 the time. If you're serious about making beautiful panoramics, I highly suggest you check it out.
- selmnoo 12y ago
  Well, don't leave us hanging, show us the finished stitched image (and the individual images you started out with). :) As it happens I'm doing something these days that'll require me to stitch a lot of images together. I'm taking a lot of images with a microscope by having the stage go in a snake-y, boustrophedon fashion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon) and capturing shots along the way... so I have a lot of images (about 10,000 of them) I need to stitch together. Would something like Hugin work for this? All the images are kind of similar to each other, and each image might overlap the next one a little bit (such that a small outer edge on all 4 sides would have to be trimmed). I was thinking of stitching them together with Imagemagick, with appropriate parameters based upon how much I'm moving the stage, but I'm wondering if that might introduce some error for the 10k images, ideally it shouldn't. I suppose I'll explore both options. If someone might have any insight into this, I would be very happy to hear anything. And thanks for linking this dlsym, I learned of this at just the right time. :)
  - RobotCaleb 12y ago
    Yes, Hugin should be able to help with that. Check out some of the tutorials on the site, specifically http://hugin.sourceforge.net/tutorials/scans/en.shtml http://hugin.sourceforge.net/tutorials/scans/en.shtml If you have enough overlap you might could even batch stitch them all automatically. You might have to do them in batches, though.
RobotCaleb 12y ago
Great set of tools. I used the gui to do some initial work and then automated the rest with the command-line tools in the creation of http://robotrising.org/StratoSphere/collection.html http://robotrising.org/StratoSphere/collection.html
edward 12y ago
I made this panorama of Ascot Racecourse with Hugin. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ascot_Racecourse_panorama_2.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ascot_Racecourse_pan... The image appears on the Wikipedia article about the racecourse.
- edward 12y ago
  Here are some more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dorset_seafood_festival_in_Weymouth_from_Town_bridge_panorama.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dorset_seafood_festival_i... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Weymouth_beach_in_July_2011.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Weymouth_beach_in_July_20...
  - miahi 12y ago
    It's hard to judge a panorama software without knowing the quality of the input photos. I see no obvious parallax errors. Did you use a panoramic tripod head?
    - edward 12y ago
      I didn't use a tripod, these are all handheld.
bane 12y ago
If you're on windows, worth checking out https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/ https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/I... I've found it to be easier to use.
- Magi604 12y ago
  I'll second this. I use ICE for my panos. It's pretty simple, and it's pretty good at stitching together pictures without errors (in most cases). ICE also deals with DNGs, though it's slower, and it makes the colors a little off.
- Renaud 12y ago
  I love how this integrates with Photosynth. It can also use videos to create a panorama and appears to have lots of useful options. MS Research projects pages are a real treasure trove of useful (and generally free) tools.
rexreed 12y ago
There are TWO Hugin / Huginn top articles on HN today. Is this a coincidence?
joshberry 12y ago
The last time I used Hugin was about 5 years ago, but at the time it was my go-to software for panoramas. To get the best results you want to have a good amount of overlap between the images, and make sure everything is very level. Here's one that will give you an idea: https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshbg2k/3382847846/sizes/o/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshbg2k/3382847846/sizes/o/ You can't see too much detail there, but I have a 6' long print of that image and it's perfect.
slantyyz 12y ago
I've used Hugin with ImageMagick to eliminate noise (or moving objects) from a burst handheld shots when using cameras with "lesser" sensors. Hugin does a great job aligning the images before stacking. Source: http://petapixel.com/2013/05/29/a-look-at-reducing-noise-in-photographs-using-median-blending/ http://petapixel.com/2013/05/29/a-look-at-reducing-noise-in-... Example: I used Hugin and Imagemagick to remove noise from this photo, which I shot handheld in burst mode with a "meh" camera. Had there been tourists walking around, they would have "vanished" using the same technique. https://www.flickr.com/photos/slantyyz/9041667571/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/slantyyz/9041667571/
- nathancahill 12y ago
  Woah, that's impressive. I've started taking ~7 burst shots with my iPhone instead of just one. The first and last 3 are usually a little noisy or blurry, but the middle one is usually gold. I might try this method too. Thanks!
themodelplumber 12y ago
I had a frustrating moment while using my video camera in Sicily where I couldn't back up any further, didn't have my wide-angle lens, and decided to just shoot & stitch later. Hugin did a great job turning the slices into an acceptable (even if imperfect) shot later. https://www.flickr.com/photos/porkfriedrice/4076794508/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/porkfriedrice/4076794508/
paulnasca 12y ago
All my panoramas are made with Hugin: http://www.panoramio.com/user/1428211/tags/PANORAMA?photo_page=22 http://www.panoramio.com/user/1428211/tags/PANORAMA?photo_pa...
jacobfrantz 12y ago
mlissner 12y ago
Another approach, for the lazy, is to just push the photos to Google auto backup. If you do that it'll automatically figure out that they can be stitched together and will provide you with the image. Works very well in my experience and requires no effort at all.

97 points by dlsym 12y ago

MasterScrat 12y ago

You had to post that right when Huginn is on the front page too, right? ;-)

czottmann 12y ago
It's an opportune moment, I think. ¯\＿(ツ)＿/¯
tombrossman 12y ago
Funny, I thought the same thing. I'm stitching a bunch of panoramas right now with Hugin and I opened HN for something to read while they process. Total confusion for a moment there... For some example photos I've got a few here: https://tombrossman.com/photos/ https://tombrossman.com/photos/. Admittedly not the greatest works of art, but I am working on photographing the tidal extremes where I live and panoramas are a perfect way to showcase them.
- bigtech 12y ago
  Les Quizerables. Brilliant!
SloughFeg 12y ago
Quick, somebody make a news article about the Munin daemon.
tapia 12y ago
Maybe the person who published this link just wanted to remember/show, that the name was already taken by another project (the name is almost the same) and that the programmers should consider changing it.

rplnt 12y ago

This was pain to use. Far from automated, crashed all the time, horrible UI and UX (pretty common in OSS). I'm sure the results might have been better compared to regular "click next" panoramic software.. but it was simply not worth it for my (personal) use-case. Then I used some proprietary program for windows (arcsoft maybe? not sure now), which a had limited free version, and it was a breeze to use. Selecting images was intuitive, reordering was easy, configuration was simple and stitching was automatic.

keithpeter 12y ago
I'm not seeing Hugin crash. Debian Wheezy, stitching around 20 jpegs snapped from phone, using the default auto options. When was this?
- rplnt 12y ago
  Maybe three years ago? On Fedora I think.
  - keithpeter 12y ago
    I was using Hugin on Ubuntu Lucid so about then. Can't remember any big issues but doing full sized stitches as TIFFs did use a lot of memory and take some time (swapping).

zachbeane 12y ago

I've been pretty happy using Hugin for making Brenizer method panoramas, e.g. https://www.flickr.com/photos/xach/10301052666/in/set-72157639971484114 https://www.flickr.com/photos/xach/10301052666/in/set-721576... The UI is not great, but it's better than nothing, and the results are generally pretty good. And it's free.

slantyyz 12y ago
Curious: Can you do the same using the Hugin command line tools, or do you have to use the GUI?
- zachbeane 12y ago
  I'm not sure; I suspect you could go CLI-only. The GUI seems like a pretty thin layer over the GUI in most places. Some of the perspective/projection interface elements seem like they would be difficult to do from the command line, though.
  - slantyyz 12y ago
    Another question, does Hugin do the transform and alignment for your Breziner method images? I'm assuming some transformation has to be done to accommodate the tilting of your shots? I've been interested in trying the method but have never gotten around to it.
    - zachbeane 12y ago
      Yeah, Hugin does that for you. It's pretty neat. I've had two problems with it: - Alignment errors, where objects don't match up with each other across different shots - Missing coverage, where I left a hole from missing a picture when trying to cover a scene The former is something better software might be able to handle, but the latter is all my fault.

kirk21 12y ago

Would be cool to see an online version (eg no install required).

timdiggerm 12y ago
I believe you mean "photostitching as a service"
batmansbelt 12y ago
If you have photo backup enabled to google plus, it will stitch your photos together sometimes.
QuotedForTruth 12y ago
That would require uploading all the input photos. Thats sometimes 50+ 20 MP images, none of which you are going to want to look at after you get the stitch done. Id like to see a portable version that doesnt require install, but not an online version.
eitland 12y ago
As much as I like services I love real honest apt-get-able open source ;-) (Edit to add: Some of the hats some of us wore or wear comes with data that should n o t be uploaded to any cloud.)

leeoniya 12y ago

was just using it to stitch some costa rica photos yesterday :) https://www.dropbox.com/s/cwqj70kl0ln8g1l/DSC_8270%20-%20DSC_8275.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/cwqj70kl0ln8g1l/DSC_8270%20-%20DSC... https://www.dropbox.com/s/ujiovwhg79o33ky/DSC_8252%20-%20DSC_8254.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/ujiovwhg79o33ky/DSC_8252%20-%20DSC...

orkj 12y ago

Great stuff, but I just have to say it: That website could have been stitched better together. No offence intended (some pun intended).

DangerousPie 12y ago

Is this noticeably better than Photoshop's panorama stitching (to the point where it would be worth reprocessing them)?

jitl 12y ago
No. Photoshop is usually faster and produces a better quality alignment and (optionally) merge for the general case of "I have these photos, please make them into a single image." Hugin has more tunable options, so it's easier to do more stages of an advanced stitching workflow in it, but I wouldn't suggest investing time in Hugin unless you want to do a specific crazy thing.

jedberg 12y ago

I used to use Hugin for all my stitching needs. It did a great job creating what became my Facebook cover photo, which was stitched from 80+ images. However, it would crash about 50% of the time, with some sort of random error. If I slightly changed a setting, like tweaking the cropping or removing a single image, then sometimes it would work. Sometimes it would work if I ran the exact same job again -- the issue was not repeatable. I eventually switched to a paid program, Autopano Pro (recommended to me by some of the Smugmug employees). It works just as well, a lot faster, and doesn't crash 1/2 the time. If you're serious about making beautiful panoramics, I highly suggest you check it out.

selmnoo 12y ago
Well, don't leave us hanging, show us the finished stitched image (and the individual images you started out with). :) As it happens I'm doing something these days that'll require me to stitch a lot of images together. I'm taking a lot of images with a microscope by having the stage go in a snake-y, boustrophedon fashion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon) and capturing shots along the way... so I have a lot of images (about 10,000 of them) I need to stitch together. Would something like Hugin work for this? All the images are kind of similar to each other, and each image might overlap the next one a little bit (such that a small outer edge on all 4 sides would have to be trimmed). I was thinking of stitching them together with Imagemagick, with appropriate parameters based upon how much I'm moving the stage, but I'm wondering if that might introduce some error for the 10k images, ideally it shouldn't. I suppose I'll explore both options. If someone might have any insight into this, I would be very happy to hear anything. And thanks for linking this dlsym, I learned of this at just the right time. :)
- RobotCaleb 12y ago
  Yes, Hugin should be able to help with that. Check out some of the tutorials on the site, specifically http://hugin.sourceforge.net/tutorials/scans/en.shtml http://hugin.sourceforge.net/tutorials/scans/en.shtml If you have enough overlap you might could even batch stitch them all automatically. You might have to do them in batches, though.

RobotCaleb 12y ago

Great set of tools. I used the gui to do some initial work and then automated the rest with the command-line tools in the creation of http://robotrising.org/StratoSphere/collection.html http://robotrising.org/StratoSphere/collection.html

edward 12y ago

I made this panorama of Ascot Racecourse with Hugin. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ascot_Racecourse_panorama_2.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ascot_Racecourse_pan... The image appears on the Wikipedia article about the racecourse.

edward 12y ago
Here are some more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dorset_seafood_festival_in_Weymouth_from_Town_bridge_panorama.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dorset_seafood_festival_i... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Weymouth_beach_in_July_2011.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Weymouth_beach_in_July_20...
- miahi 12y ago
  It's hard to judge a panorama software without knowing the quality of the input photos. I see no obvious parallax errors. Did you use a panoramic tripod head?
  - edward 12y ago
    I didn't use a tripod, these are all handheld.

bane 12y ago

If you're on windows, worth checking out https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/ https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/I... I've found it to be easier to use.

Magi604 12y ago
I'll second this. I use ICE for my panos. It's pretty simple, and it's pretty good at stitching together pictures without errors (in most cases). ICE also deals with DNGs, though it's slower, and it makes the colors a little off.
Renaud 12y ago
I love how this integrates with Photosynth. It can also use videos to create a panorama and appears to have lots of useful options. MS Research projects pages are a real treasure trove of useful (and generally free) tools.

rexreed 12y ago

There are TWO Hugin / Huginn top articles on HN today. Is this a coincidence?

joshberry 12y ago

The last time I used Hugin was about 5 years ago, but at the time it was my go-to software for panoramas. To get the best results you want to have a good amount of overlap between the images, and make sure everything is very level. Here's one that will give you an idea: https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshbg2k/3382847846/sizes/o/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshbg2k/3382847846/sizes/o/ You can't see too much detail there, but I have a 6' long print of that image and it's perfect.

slantyyz 12y ago

I've used Hugin with ImageMagick to eliminate noise (or moving objects) from a burst handheld shots when using cameras with "lesser" sensors. Hugin does a great job aligning the images before stacking. Source: http://petapixel.com/2013/05/29/a-look-at-reducing-noise-in-photographs-using-median-blending/ http://petapixel.com/2013/05/29/a-look-at-reducing-noise-in-... Example: I used Hugin and Imagemagick to remove noise from this photo, which I shot handheld in burst mode with a "meh" camera. Had there been tourists walking around, they would have "vanished" using the same technique. https://www.flickr.com/photos/slantyyz/9041667571/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/slantyyz/9041667571/

nathancahill 12y ago
Woah, that's impressive. I've started taking ~7 burst shots with my iPhone instead of just one. The first and last 3 are usually a little noisy or blurry, but the middle one is usually gold. I might try this method too. Thanks!

themodelplumber 12y ago

I had a frustrating moment while using my video camera in Sicily where I couldn't back up any further, didn't have my wide-angle lens, and decided to just shoot & stitch later. Hugin did a great job turning the slices into an acceptable (even if imperfect) shot later. https://www.flickr.com/photos/porkfriedrice/4076794508/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/porkfriedrice/4076794508/

paulnasca 12y ago

All my panoramas are made with Hugin: http://www.panoramio.com/user/1428211/tags/PANORAMA?photo_page=22 http://www.panoramio.com/user/1428211/tags/PANORAMA?photo_pa...

jacobfrantz 12y ago

mlissner 12y ago

Another approach, for the lazy, is to just push the photos to Google auto backup. If you do that it'll automatically figure out that they can be stitched together and will provide you with the image. Works very well in my experience and requires no effort at all.