Mini 3 Auto-Panorama Function: Has the Mini 2 curved horizon problem/feature been fixed?

[CJG]

Sometimes you just need the speed of the auto-panorama function.

On my M2P, this is fine.

But with the Mini 2, a 9 shot pano (when RAW shots are stitched in Lightroom Classic) always comes out with a very curved horizon, making such panoramas largely unusable.

Does anybody know whether the Mini 3 got rid of this "defect"?

If it has, that alone will tempt me to buy it: with more and more restrictions being placed on drones like the M2P, capable sub-250g machines seem to be the way to go

 

[Meta4]

But with the Mini 2, a 9 shot pano (when RAW shots are stitched in Lightroom Classic) always comes out with a very curved horizon, making such panoramas largely unusable.

Try starting your pano shot with the camera level rather than tilted downwards.
See how that works.

 

[CJG]

Try starting your pano shot with the camera level rather than tilted downwards.
See how that works.

Thanks for this @Meta4. I have tried everything I can think of.

Has this worked for you?

 

[Meta4]

Thanks for this @Meta4. I have tried everything I can think of.

Has this worked for you?

I don't have one to check, but some others have and it worked for them.

 

[CJG]

Thanks @Meta4

 

[Drone Pilot192]

I use Kolor autopano giga to fix this problem the in software it's a little hard to get because it's but still is possible.

 

[Lister]

I use Kolor autopano giga to fix this problem the in software it's a little hard to get because it's but still is possible.

(Posted elsewhere, too but for the same topic)

You can't expect the drone to do a good job of stitching. If you want quality results, you have to stitch in software, later. No drone has the power of Photoshop et al.

For those that have Photoshop, the OP's curved horizon is easy to fix, although that's a pretty extreme case.

1) select the entire frame (ctl - A) or drag a box surrounding the frame.
2) choose "Edit/Transform/Warp".
3) use the handles distributed around the frame edges to stretch the image until you're happy. This technique takes practice. Experiment and learn.
4) hit "enter" to accept the changes you've made to the image.

 

[CJG]

(Posted elsewhere, too but for the same topic)

You can't expect the drone to do a good job of stitching. If you want quality results, you have to stitch in software, later. No drone has the power of Photoshop et al.

For those that have Photoshop, the OP's curved horizon is easy to fix, although that's a pretty extreme case.

1) select the entire frame (ctl - A) or drag a box surrounding the frame.
2) choose "Edit/Transform/Warp".
3) use the handles distributed around the frame edges to stretch the image until you're happy. This technique takes practice. Experiment and learn.
4) hit "enter" to accept the changes you've made to the image.

Thanks for this @Lister: I know you can’t expect the Mini 2/3 Pro to do a good job of stitching itself. The “curved horizon“ issue occurs when stitching in Lightroom Classic.

In fact, the in-drone/app stitching is pretty good in that it gets rid of the of the ”curved horizon“ issue (albeit at the expense of distortion elsewhere). Its just a shame that the output is a low quality jpeg.

I have Photoshop as part of my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (although I have never used it; always seems too complicated). I will give your solution a go. I seem to remember reading there is also a one-click lens correction solution in Photoshop that does the same thing.

 

[KabNL]

Use PTGui to stich. Horizon curves are corrected by pulling the line to its preferred position. I am not a drone user (yet) but have processed over a thousand Panos at all angles of shooting and use PTGui Pro exclusively. I am a PS and LR subscriber but have never found the processing of panos to be as reliable. NewfoundlandPanoramas.com

 

[globetrotterdrone]

I am a PS and LR subscriber but have never found the processing of panos to be as reliable. NewfoundlandPanoramas.com

I am too but but all Adobe products that feature panorama functions lack of advanced capabilities and mostly projections. Up to 180 diagonally you can achieve good results. However the stiching and the control is unmatched with PTGUI Pro. I especially like the possibility to mask out parts of pictures like, let's say, a car had moved etc.

That is really convenient, efficient and one can achieve supreme results.

 

[CJG]

I am too but but all Adobe products that feature panorama functions lack of advanced capabilities and mostly projections. Up to 180 diagonally you can achieve good results. However the stiching and the control is unmatched with PTGUI Pro. I especially like the possibility to mask out parts of pictures like, let's say, a car had moved etc.

That is really convenient, efficient and one can achieve supreme results.

Thanks for this @globetrotterdrone

 

[CJG]

I am too but but all Adobe products that feature panorama functions lack of advanced capabilities and mostly projections. Up to 180 diagonally you can achieve good results. However the stiching and the control is unmatched with PTGUI Pro. I especially like the possibility to mask out parts of pictures like, let's say, a car had moved etc.

That is really convenient, efficient and one can achieve supreme results.

Use PTGui to stich. Horizon curves are corrected by pulling the line to its preferred position. I am not a drone user (yet) but have processed over a thousand Panos at all angles of shooting and use PTGui Pro exclusively. I am a PS and LR subscriber but have never found the processing of panos to be as reliable. NewfoundlandPanoramas.com

Thanks for this info @KabNL

 

[CJG]

Use PTGui to stich. Horizon curves are corrected by pulling the line to its preferred position. I am not a drone user (yet) but have processed over a thousand Panos at all angles of shooting and use PTGui Pro exclusively. I am a PS and LR subscriber but have never found the processing of panos to be as reliable. NewfoundlandPanoramas.com

Thanks for this @KabNL . Appreciated

 

[PanoVolo]

Panovolo has a an automatic horizon straigtening feature. It reads the orientation information saved by the drone and automatically auto-corrects curvy horizons.

 

[Lister]

For Photoshop users, once the pano has been stitched, ensure that there's just one layer for the entire pano.

Then do a SELECT ALL, then choose menu item IMAGE/TRANSFORM/WARP and drag the edges of the image around until you like what you see.

 

[PanoVolo]

this is a neat trick. That being said, the quality of correction will be higher if it's done during sticthing (when images are warp and blended) and not after the panorama is already stitched. Whether the difference will be noticeable is an open question.

 

[Lister]

Thanks, PanoVolo. I've printed panos five feet wide using this method on my HP Z3200. No visible degradation.

After I wrote this, I discovered your drone-oriented stitcher. Looks good. I'll apply to try your beta.

 

[RogerDH]

With freeware Image Composite Editor (ICE), a curved horizon is easily fixed by dragging the center of the composited image up and down before final rendering. It usually does an excellent job on drone photos -- no stitching errors -- and it can also make panoramas directly from videos, which I use a lot. ICE is no longer supported by Microsoft, but I see that it's still available for download from CNET.

(Edit: Another thing I like about ICE is that it has 10 different projection methods that you can experiment with before rendering.)

 

[Felix le Chat]

Sometimes you just need the speed of the auto-panorama function.

On my M2P, this is fine.

But with the Mini 2, a 9 shot pano (when RAW shots are stitched in Lightroom Classic) always comes out with a very curved horizon, making such panoramas largely unusable.

Does anybody know whether the Mini 3 got rid of this "defect"?

If it has, that alone will tempt me to buy it: with more and more restrictions being placed on drones like the M2P, capable sub-250g machines seem to be the way to go

Simplest wonky pano solution with the mini 3 pro? Set your shots to 48mp mode, your capture format to JPG+RAW, flip the camera to portrait orientation, activate exposure lock then snap off a multi-shot series with about 70 percent overlap. Then try Microsoft ICE v.2 on the JPG output. Shooting a manual pano doesn't take any more time than the drones auto function. If your horizon is still wonky in the ICE stitch screen: it's a simple case of a single mouse-click-and-drag up or down to correct it.
ICE v.2 is fast, accurate, "intelligent", simple to use and if you output to TIF, the result can be run through a RAW editor to produce almost the same quality of results as a DNG.

Oh.... and ICE v.2 has an added bonus.... It's freeware.

 

[RogerDH]

...Then try Microsoft ICE v.2 on the JPG output. ...

I didn't notice that the CNET download that I linked above is Version 1.4.4, but I found a link to Version 2.0.3 on the Wayback Machine. (There are other places it can be found, but the Wayback Machine is an archive directly from microsoft.com, so probably safer.)