I made my first panorama today, stitching together a few pictures I took hiking last weekend. I used the hugin panorama tools, which are freely available for Linux, Microsoft Windows, and OSX.

The panorama

This is a wider view of one of our favorite hikes in the area. The raw image measures 4,800 pixels wide (after cropping), which combines the two 2,400 pixel source images. I only used 7 control points in this test, so a few of the seams are slightly visible. Had I doubled the number of control points (or used a tripod), the image would have been seamless.

The wider view was created by stitching two hand-held digicam shots together. The process allows any number of images to be merged, but I only had two useful shots that overlapped. Here are the source images (scaled down a bit):

panorama_part_1.jpeg	panorama_part_2.jpeg

The process

First off, I suggest you read the tutorials on the hugin panorama tools home page. It’s a complicated tool, and it took me a few passes before I understood what it was doing.

1. Take some pictures that overlap (by hand, or on a tripod). Copy the images to a temporary directory.

2. In the tool, add each image and tag with the overlap information. Use as many points as you can find between each image, as the tool works better with more control points.

3. Process and wait. 2 images, on my 2Ghz laptop takes about 3 minutes to process.

The software does a great job, and can stitch hundreds of images together. I’m going to try a few more complicated panoramas on the next hike, and maybe a few with my tripod at home.