I finally decided to sit down this morning and figure out how to do a proper job of stitching photos together - - - WITHOUT PAYING TONS OF MONEY

There are allot of fine stitching programs that cost allot, but I like being able to do it on the fly on someone else's computer.

I finally settled on a public software program called Hugin.


STEP 1

I downloaded the windows version 2010.2.0 of hugin. It is available here - http://sourceforge.net/projects/hugin/

It is just a zip file. I extracted the directory zip and copied the contents into my "c:\program files" directory. This made a new directory - C:\Program Files\Hugin 2010.2.0


STEP 2

Next I downloaded an application caled panomatic. It automatically checks all of the pictures to find common points between 2 pics so they can be stitched together. I tried to get autopano and a few others working, but I probably had incompatible versions. Panomatic worked, so I used it. I downloaded windows version 0.9.4.

Panomatic is available here - http://aorlinsk2.free.fr/panomatic/?p=releases

Again, panomatic was just a zip file. I copied the 2 binaries into hugin bin directory with the other hugin binaries in C:\Program Files\Hugin 2010.2.0\bin


STEP 3

I added the hugin bin directory to my PATH variable so the programs would be found automatically.

Click on the windows start button
Right click on "My Computer"
When the menu pops up, click on "Properties"
Click on "Advanced System Settings" or the "Advanced" tap depending on win version
Click on the "Environment Variables" button to pop up a dialog
In the "System Variables" window, scroll down and double click on "Path"
Scroll all the way to the end of the path string and add the following string

;C:\Program Files\Hugin 2010.2.0\bin

Do not forget the semicolon at the beginning of the new path, it seperatates various paths in the long string.


STEP 4

I created a desktop shortcut to Hugin.

Anywhere on your disktop right click, and when the menu pops up click "New" and then click "Shortcut"

When prompted, enter this text: C:\Program Files\Hugin 2010.2.0\hugin.exe

Click the Next button

Either leave it named Hugin.exe or just Hugin and click Finish.

You should now have a pretty icon on your desktop of a stick figure with a panorama behind him.


STEP 5

Set the defaults to use panomatic

Run Hugin by double click on your new cool icon.

In the menu click on "File" then "Preferences"
Click on the "Assistant" tab
I changed my Preview to be "Preview Window" because the Quick Preview didn't work.
Click on the "Control Point Detectors" tab
Click on "Panomatic" then click on the "Set Default" button
Click on OK


STEP 6

Use Hugin

I mostly just use the Assistant tab.
Start by clicking the "Load Images" button
Browse to and select all of the images that make up your panorama
Next click on the "Align" button which will run panomatic to figure out which pickture goes where. It might take a while.
Next, I click on the "Stitcher" tab and switch to a JPG type of image
Next I switch back to the "Assistant" tab and click "Create Panorama
I browse to where I want the file saved and give it a name, then wait for the magic to happen.

Here are a couple of quick samples while I experimented.

4 pictures off my back deck. Handheld, not really trying to steady, but I did try to hold a horizontal line. This took about 3 minutes to process



12 pictures off my back deck. I zoomed in and took them somewhat randomly. This took over 15 minutes to process and stitch. Not 15 minutes of my time, I just loaded then and started the computer going.




Be sure not to zoom in or out while taking multiple pictures, and if your camera has a way to lock the exposure, do it. Some cameras have a panorama assistant that will lock exposure.