How to take a panoramic photo. Step-by-step instruction! Simple, easy, fast. March 20th, 2012

Every amateur photographer must have wondered at some point: how to make one panorama photo from several shots? What is needed for this? Is it difficult? Read step by step instructions with which you can do panoramic photo (panorama) without tripod and without much difficulty.

Today I will tell you how to do it easily and simply.

Making a panorama is not easy, but very simple! Step-by-step instruction. Modern programs allows you to make a panorama from pictures taken by any camera, as long as the frames overlap each other. So that you have no doubts about the ability of your camera to take pictures suitable for making a panorama, for this photography lesson I took a phone camera.

I invite you to repeat all the steps of this instruction with me, using these photos that you can

  • download from the link in the archive from my dropbox,
If you use your own shots, make sure that there is at least a quarter of the total space between shots, and it is better that the horizon does not "run away" between frames. In fact, a smaller overlay may suffice, but the best, as you know, is the enemy of the good, therefore it is better not to overdo it with overlapping.

To assemble the panorama, we will use Hugin latest version. At the time of this tutorial, the latest version is 2011.4.0. Hugin is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. All instructions below are suitable for the version for any OS.

Installing Hugin is easy, just download the installation package and follow the installer's instructions.

When opened, Hugin automatically creates new project. Select photos for the panorama by clicking the appropriate button.

You can add all the photos at once in one fell swoop.

Hugin defines the properties of the lens itself.

Click "Combine ..." and let's go to drink tea, especially if you do not have the most modern computer or a lot of high-resolution pictures.

As soon as Hugin merges the images, a panorama preview window will open.

For a better view of the result, turn off the grid by unchecking the box at the top of the window.

The panorama preview has several tabs with settings, some of which are of no interest to us at all due to the fact that Hugin has already done the main work on combining images, and the other part of the tabs can still be useful to us.

On the "Projection" tab, we have the ability to change the way images are projected and some other settings. For example, you can see what a panorama would look like if it was shot with a fisheye lens:

However, today our goal is not special effects, but a finished panorama, so we will choose an equidistant projection mode.

On the "Moving on the projection plane" tab, we have the opportunity to align the horizon on all frames, if suddenly it did not align automatically. We can also bend the horizon for more effect:

To return the horizon to its original, even state, press the "Align" button:

On the next Crop tab, click the Auto Crop button to automatically crop the black edges of the panorama.

If the result of automatic cropping did not suit you, you can drag the inner edge of the frame and crop it as you need, for example, if we plan to finish painting the sky and black fields do not bother us.

Close the preview window and click "Create Panorama..."

And then he will offer to come up with a file name for the finished panorama:

We stock up on patience, tea, coffee, jam, cookies, etc., for 5 minutes :-)

Find the resulting panorama file:

We look with any suitable viewer.

For publishing, it is best to convert the panorama to JPEG. This can be done in any graphics editor or popular viewers.

The result is scaled up to 8209 x 1693.

This article will be devoted to creating a panorama from ready-made images.

How to create panorama photos using panoramic head or without it, you can read the previous article: “How to create a 3D panorama. Part 1: theory and photography.”

For this tutorial, you will need the Autopano Giga software (link to the trial version). The examples will use version 2.0.6. IN currently version 2.5 is already available. She certainly has differences, but they are not so significant. Therefore, with the help of this article, you can also understand it.

To describe the work on creating a 3d panorama from a practical point of view, the source files for the panorama of the Cherek Gorge (Elbrus region) were uploaded.

You have probably already tried to photograph a panorama as described in the last article and got the first results. You can try to work with your materials, but it is better to use the suggested photos.

These shots blend well into a panorama, but they have some typical problems that will be discussed in this and the next article.

In addition, there is no zenith image here. Or rather, it was originally, but was not specifically archived in order to show in the next lesson how to complete the zenith of the panorama.

As you can see, this panorama was photographed in 2 rows, plus a nadir image was created. The photograph of the nadir is hand-held and therefore somewhat inaccurate.

Plus, extra elements (lower limbs) are visible. But in most cases the Autopano Giga does a good job with these elements and they don't show up in the finished panorama.

Creating a panorama

1. Processing and selecting images to create a panorama.

This stage has already been done in the source files, the necessary already processed files are posted in the archive.

When working with your files, you need to do the following:

  • Highlight the pictures that belong to the panorama. Select among duplicates the best photos. You should not use several variants of one image when stitching panoramas, this will complicate the work with links in the panorama stitching program.
  • If you are shooting in RAW format, then you must first process the images in the LightRoom program. You should try to neutralize highlights and too dark shadows. Then you need to export to jpg in maximum quality.

2. Autopano Giga setup.

Open Autopano Giga. At the first start, it is desirable to carry out the basic settings of the program.

Select Main Menu -> Edit -> Options

Specify a temporary folder on the disk where you have 10 or more GB free space.

When you work with uploaded files of the Cherek Gorge, this parameter is not critical (their resolution is reduced). But when you work with real pictures, the more pictures you have and their resolution, the more free space you will need for the program to work.

Also select some folder with a simple path. Autopano Giga may crash when creating a panorama (unfortunately, this sometimes happens). In this case, it does not delete temporary files. You will then have to manually clean this folder.

If you have a powerful enough graphics card, then activate GPU processing. Click the button Check and in tab Render check the picture GPU processing. If she repeats reference picture, then your graphics card is supported.

In the tab Creation, select high Detection quality. In this case, image processing will take longer, but the stitching quality will be better.

You can also install control points to a value around 100.

These are the main settings adjustments. Later, if desired, you can change the rest of the settings to suit your needs.

Restart the program to activate the settings.

3. Stitching photos into a single panorama.

So, you have the main window of the Autopano Giga program open.

Add a group of pictures.

A new group

Select all the photos of the Cherek Gorge in the explorer or file manager and drag them to the currently empty area of ​​the group.

After adding pictures, click -

After the calculation, the program will stitch all the images into a single panorama.

4. Editing a panorama in the Autopano Giga program.

Press the edit button and analyze the quality of panorama stitching.

On the left are the main information elements of the menu.

Item “Information”

Build quality is expressed as an average RMS. This number is calculated as the average error in the analysis of the general areas of photographs. Ideally, it is between 0.0 and 1.0, which is rare.

To obtain such an RMS, it is necessary to adjust the panoramic head very well (the nodal point is located exactly on the axes of rotation, the rotating elements of the head are not loose and there are no deflections of the head due to the weight of the equipment), to shoot panoramas without moving objects, and to photograph the zenith and nadir with the help of additional equipment.

Fortunately, such a low RMS is not required. Panoramas blend well with RMS up to 5-7. IN last resort errors, in most cases, can be quickly corrected in Photoshop.

Item “History”

The panorama thumbnails and editing history are shown here. Using the Create snapshot button, you can, in fact, create an additional snapshot to compare with the previous one and evaluate how positive the changes made to the panorama are.

Item “Layers”

Here are shown in the form of an unfolding list of photos that participated in the creation of the panorama. You can group them according to certain characteristics (shutter speed, focal length, etc.). You can also view snapshot properties and add or remove specific snapshots.

If you are going to add new photos to the panorama, be sure to save the current project. This function is sometimes unstable and may cause the program to crash.

The top menu contains the following controls:

Saving a project

Undo/Redo changes made to the panorama

projection type

Mercator– will be used if you are stitching several images to create a photo with a large horizontal and vertical viewing angle (but if the vertical angle is close to 1800, you must select the “Sphere” projection type).

Plane– necessary if you create a general picture with an average viewing angle horizontally and vertically. If you see that strong distortions are obtained, then try the projection type “mercator” or “cylinder”

Cylinder– used to create 3d panoramas with large horizontal angles and medium vertical angles (about 600)

Sphere– necessary to create an interactive 3d panorama with large horizontal viewing angles and angles close to 1800 degrees vertically

Ideally, to create a 3d panorama, panoramas with viewing angles of 3600 horizontally and 1800 vertically are used, i.e. with a full view of the space.

How to evaluate what the resulting viewing angle is?

The number of corners is shown in the lower right corner of the window. Phi And Theta

In this case:

Theta Min/Max (-180/180), i.e. we have a full horizontal view of 360 degrees (modulo addition of Min and Max values)

Phi Min/Max (-90/76.70). It can be seen that vertically from the nadir to the horizon there is complete filling, but not from the horizon to the zenith. Those. just a snapshot of the zenith is missing. Later we will restore the missing picture in Photoshop.

Three buttons to rotate the panorama by 180 and 90 degrees.

Button to change the angle of rotation, tilt, rotation of the camera./p>

Fitting mode button. The size of the panorama is adjusted so that the minimum possible empty spaces remain at the edges of the panorama.

Button for manual panorama cropping.

Central point. Allows you to change the position of the center of the panorama. Ideally, the center point should be on the horizon line in the center of the panorama.

Automatic horizon button. The program will try to determine the horizon line based on image analysis. This function does not always work correctly, especially when the horizon line is not clearly visible. On the current panorama just such a case.

Button “set verticals”. If you see that some objects in the panorama are not set vertically, then use this tool to set the verticals and press Enter.

Layer mode. Shows how your images are arranged on the panorama, what their serial number is and what changes are made to the image based on the selected projection.

Each picture in the program is assigned a serial number. And if you want to perform some operation on it, for example, remove it from the panorama, then you can easily find it by this number at the bottom of the window in the “Layers” menu section.

Image movement mode. If you have enabled GPU processing in the settings, then here you can use the mouse to change the position and orientation of the panorama.

Link editing mode. One of the most necessary modes when working with panoramas. Clicking this button opens a window with a list of used photos in the panorama and their links to each other. At the same time, all links and their RMS are shown on the previous window.

Based on the numerical values ​​and the color of the links, it is possible to estimate where in the panorama the largest errors are. It can be seen that in this panorama, the most errors are when joining the nadir with the rest of the images. The reason for this error is that the photograph of the nadir was taken by hand.

IN this lesson We will not dwell on editing links. In this panorama, everything fits together quite well.

Panorama color correction. You can choose from several types of correction.

LDR (Low Dynamic Range)– at the intersections of photos, the color of the pixels is processed according to special algorithms for changing the brightness of images in order to equalize the exposure of the entire panorama.

HDR (High Dynamic Range)- the maximum elaboration of the image is put at the forefront. There is a calculation in which of the photos the fragment of the image is more detailed. It is this fragment that is used in the panorama.

No color correction– natural colors of photos are displayed. Colors are averaged at intersections.

Auto mode uses LDR as a color correction method. Usually in this mode, the panorama is more contrast than the HDR method.

In fact, using the described method of assembling a panorama, it does not matter which method you use.

Color Anchor Edit Button

Quite a broad topic. Briefly described, anchors allow you to specify which snapshot is the base one. Under the brightness of this image, all other photos in the panorama are color-corrected.

Changing the type of anchors occurs by selecting a menu item with the right mouse click.

The following scheme is usually used:

  • A fixing anchor is assigned to the lightest image. It is best to use 1 anchor of this type. When using several fixing anchors, you will get a differently lit panorama.
  • For all other photos, it is better to assign the “mono” exposure compensation anchor.

Let's apply the same scheme to this panorama. We get the following distribution of anchors.

Using such a scheme, overexposed areas of the panorama are minimized.

At the same time, if the photographs were originally taken with errors (incorrectly set exposure or too much change in exposure in neighboring shots), then such a scheme can give a highly contrasting panorama. In this case, it is better to mark the less illuminated image as a fixing anchor.

Here is a typical histogram of an image. Brightness is plotted horizontally (black on the left, white on the right). The height of the bars shows the number of pixels of that brightness.

In a separate lesson, I will try to analyze in more detail the work with histograms in relation to image analysis and processing. For those who are particularly interested, there are a lot of lessons on the Internet on this topic.

On this moment we have dismantled the main tools of the Autopano Giga. It may seem that there is too much technical information and it is difficult to figure it all out. Try to start by simply shooting panoramas and stitching in this program without really delving into the settings. In most cases, the Autopano Giga automatically provides an acceptable result. By creating your panoramas, you will gradually master the functionality of this program.

Well, now be sure to save the project and run the panorama for rendering (miscalculation).

Click the "Collect" button.

The top shows the size of the panorama, which will be the result of the render.

Algorithms will not be analyzed in this article. In general, the default settings give a good result.

Format

If a panorama is used for posting on the Internet, then you can use the jpg format. If you plan to use a panorama in printing, it is better to choose formats without quality loss (tif or png). In this case, we assume that we need a panorama for the Internet.

Layers

Layers are photographs that have been adjusted to the projection being used and are used to create a panorama.

It's better to use the "one per file" setting. In this case, if there are any problems in the panorama, then you can try to eliminate them using the material from the resulting layers.

If you select the PSD format, then you can pack the layers into the file itself (using the “Inside” setting). At the same time, in this case, you will get a very cumbersome panorama file, and quite difficult to edit in Photoshop.

output file

Here we specify the output folder of the file.

In the file name we write the string “%a%l”. This will give the program a template for generating file names so that a unique file name for the panorama and layers is obtained.

We press the “Collect” button and after a while we will get the finished panorama.

The next lesson will show how you can complete the zenith of a panorama, how to work with projections, and how to finally get an interactive 3d panorama.

Good luck assembling panoramas.

Article author: Alexander Slobodenyuk
Website: 1panorama.ru
Mail: [email protected]
1panorama.ru - Photographing panoramas. Creation of interactive virtual tours.

Other parts of the article:

Hello, friends. Today we will learn how to make amazing panoramic photos two mouse clicks. To help us in this matter will be a free, lightweight program from Microsoft. Yes, you are not mistaken, this is the manufacturer himself operating systems Windows. You can imagine how thoughtful and reliable this program is.

What will be required of you? Several photographs of the same area, taken "in a circle". It is not necessary to spin in all directions with the camera. It is enough when shooting (for example, a group shot, near a fountain) to take a couple of shots, shifting the angle a little to the side, to the right and to the left.

I just returned from a small photo shoot - I shot it specifically for this article on a regular mobile phone. Let's see together what will come of it. You can see what result we are striving for at this link.

Now it remains for us to "throw" our photos into the program and it will mount them into one panoramic photo. You will not see any seams and transitions - brightness, contrast, shades ... everything will be picked up and smoothed out by our program. She's doing great panoramic photos, automatically - for this purpose it was created.

Panoramic photos: download Microsoft Image Composite Editor

We are not afraid that the program is English language. You and I have already seen that it does not matter by doing photo morphing.


Installed. Now we will open the main window of the program ...

We select a pack of our photos and click "open" - the process of loading into the program has begun. It lasts seconds...

And immediately, followed by the process of gluing and processing ...

Now let's wait...

After that, slightly correcting the borders of the panorama with the mouse cursor and setting the quality level to the maximum ...

We save the result of our panting ...

We choose a place on the disk where our files will be stored. panoramic photos and that's it, actually.

Result 1

Result 2

In this lesson, I will try, without unnecessary theorizing, to outline a technique for shooting panoramas, which will allow you to avoid a significant part of the problems when gluing them.

It is customary to call a panorama a photograph assembled from several frames using special programs. In order to make it easier to glue a panorama in a graphic editor, you need to follow simple rules when shooting it.

How to shoot a panorama:

  1. From most of the problems associated with the "shake" and the wrong movement of the camera when shooting, you will be saved by a good old friend - a tripod. If there is no tripod, you will have to practice and acquire some skill. But in some types of shooting, such as at sunset or at dawn, you will not be able to take pictures when shooting indoor panoramas. High Quality without using a tripod.
  2. Set your camera's white balance to one of the presets appropriate for the lighting. Or, if you have a large gray card, do manual setting. This will avoid problems with different color shades of frames, which makes panorama stitching often impossible.
  3. Adjust the optimal exposure for the given scene. It is advisable to measure the exposure in aperture priority mode, then, after taking a few test shots in M ​​mode, adjust the shutter speed more accurately.
  4. After focusing, disable autofocus. If this is not done, the next shots may result in the camera focusing in the wrong place, such as the foreground. as a result, panorama stitching will be impossible.
  5. Shooting must be done quickly, otherwise some objects, such as clouds in the sky, may change their position, resulting in defects in the panorama.
  6. When shooting, it is necessary to ensure that each frame overlaps the previous one by about a third. Then it will be easier for the program to collect the panorama. This applies to all types of panoramas - horizontal, vertical, combined, spherical.
  7. Having filmed required amount frames, we proceed to the next stage - assembling or gluing the panorama in a graphic editor.

Gluing a panorama in a graphic editor

Consider assembling a panorama in the most common graphics editor - Adobe Photoshop CS5. To do this, select our panorama frames in Bridge.

Then go to the menu Tools - Photoshop - Photomerge. The names of the selected files will appear in the dialog box that opens. It is recommended to enable checkboxes Vignetting removal And Geometric Distortion Correction.

Perhaps, each of us, admiring the panoramic landscape or the panorama of the city from some viewing point, having a camera in our hands, felt the desire to capture what we saw in all its glory, but only part of the picture fit into the frame and this was frustrating. To ensure that nothing is left behind the scenes, the ability to take panoramic photos will come in handy.

This tutorial will show you how to take panoramic photos yourself. As in many other cases, the process of making a photo panorama consists of several stages: preparation, shooting and processing.

Stage one. Preparation.
To shoot a panorama you will need a digital camera, a tripod and of course the subject. It is advisable to use a tripod with a level to minimize camera tilt when taking individual shots. Some modern cameras have built-in digital gyroscopes that allow you to control the position of the camera in space by displaying slopes directly on the screen. Very convenient, but alas, not available to everyone function. The bubble level, on the contrary, is available in almost any tripod.

The camera should be switched to the manual sensitivity adjustment mode, i.e. set the ISO value yourself. Since you are using a tripod, you can safely set the minimum value of 100 ISO without fear of image blur. If you decide to shoot a panorama in the evening or at night, make sure you have a cable release or remote control.

Since the spread of lighting is quite large when shooting wide panoramas, it is difficult to get evenly exposed frames using the same aperture and shutter speed settings. The camera should be set to aperture priority mode. In this case, the built-in exposure meter will automatically adjust the shutter speed.

Stage two. Shooting.
Decide on a starting point and an end point. Except when shooting 360-degree panoramas where the start and end points are the same. The shooting direction is not important. You can shoot either from right to left or from left to right. It is important to observe the following principle. Each next frame should overlap the area of ​​the previous one by 30% -50%. That is, the more often you take pictures, the better. This is a much better situation than if you run out of frames and then there will be gaps, due to which the entire panorama can be thrown out.

Do not use a short throw lens for panorama shooting. wide angle lens. Such lenses strongly distort space, which can lead to distortions when assembling a panorama. It is best to use lenses with a focal length of 50 mm.

Now, a few words about the position of the camera. For a wider image coverage, horizontal panoramas are best shot with the camera in a vertical position, and vertical panoramas - with a horizontal one. In addition, you can shoot panoramas not only in one row, but also in two and three parallel rows.

The above example consists of only six horizontal frames, taken as always on the run without any special preparation, and therefore is the best fit for our case.

Stage three. Treatment.
There are several ways to assemble the footage into a single picture, since there are several programs that do this quite simply. Let's focus on the two most famous products: Photoshop and PTGui. The latter program is extremely simple and intuitive to use. Gluing a panorama with its help is literally done in four steps: loading, layout and ordering, gluing and saving the result.

Therefore, let's take a closer look at the method of assembling a panorama using Adobe Photoshop. It should be noted that the method described below was done using Photoshop CS6. In earlier versions, a slightly different algorithm is possible, but the principle remains the same.

1. First you need to load all the captured pictures into the program. The fastest way to do this is through the menu: File > Script > Load Files it Stack...

2. In the window that opens, select all the frames we need and click OK. Don't forget to check the box Attemp to Automatically Align Source Images. Then the program, after uploading the photos, will automatically collect them into a single picture.

3. After the done action, you will get an almost finished panorama. However, due to the spread of lighting in different frames, the overall picture looks uneven: some areas are lighter, some, on the contrary, darker. This issue is resolved by the next step.

4. In the panel on the right, select all our frames, which, as you can see, have loaded each in a separate layer. Then on the menu: Edit > Auto-Blend Layers.. we launch the function of automatic adjustment of transitions between layers.

5. In the next window, select the method Panorama and press OK.

6. Now the picture has acquired a finished look. It remains only to make sure that the horizon in the finished image is in a horizontal position and crop the excess.

7. Our panorama is ready. If desired, you can make adjustments to the image and save it in the desired size and format. IN this example no adjustment is required, since all the necessary adjustments to the image have already been made in advance.

As you can see, taking panoramic shots is more troublesome than difficult. Experiment! And good luck with your pictures!

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