Panorama Photos Stitched Badly with no Wind?

[AeroJ]

I have been using PTgui to stitch pano shots together, with some good results, some not so good. How does PTgui stack up against other similar software? Should I be trying a different product?

For me, PTGui and Hugin are the best, and fairly similar in power, except the latter is free, and has a few of its own weird little foibles. MS ICE is the fastest, but lacks editing ability and often gets the stitching wrong. Anything else I have tried is inferior to those first 2...

 

[daveatpdx]

Good to know. Thanks for your input. I have not yet figured out how to match up points when the software asks me to do that. I sup;p;ose that I can find a youtube instruction or something.

 

[sancap]

I also see issues with the Mavic 2 pro stitching and do not bother using the stitched pano. I use paid for apps such as PtGui and AutoPano Pro.

 

[Point Zero]

I also see issues with the Mavic 2 pro stitching and do not bother using the stitched pano. I use paid for apps such as PtGui and AutoPano Pro.

Do you use both packages on one photo to get the best results possible or do you use them alone as it were?

I really want to master the whole range of Panorama shot types that the Mavic 2 offers but I am not very impressed at how lackluster DJI's in-house version is so far. That said, I am not really complaining (i think) when you shoot in D-Log you know and want to get stuck in to some post production as its part and parcel of the workflow, so I guess its the same way for panoramas and HDR photos too.

 

[sancap]

Do you use both packages on one photo to get the best results possible or do you use them alone as it were?

I really want to master the whole range of Panorama shot types that the Mavic 2 offers but I am not very impressed at how lackluster DJI's in-house version is so far. That said, I am not really complaining (i think) when you shoot in D-Log you know and want to get stuck in to some post production as its part and parcel of the workflow, so I guess its the same way for panoramas and HDR photos too.

If I don't like the results from one program I will give the other a try but usually autopano pro works fine. For the long term project I have been working on the sky isn't that important so I don't spend a lot of time on it. I did this one the other day with the mavic 2 pro.

You can see a couple of errors in this also.

City Of Sanibel, Lighthouse Beach Park, 1-2-19, 1:08 PM, High Tide Is 9:08 PM | Created By SanCap Aerial

 

[Point Zero]

@sancap dude that photo is aewsome! As hard as i tried i could not see any errors lol.

Do you mind if ask how you did that and uploaded it like that. That was very impressive and i'd like to give that a go

Pz

 

[ff22]

I have been using PTgui to stitch pano shots together, with some good results, some not so good. How does PTgui stack up against other similar software? Should I be trying a different product?

PTGui is a bit pricy to stitch pans so I'm still looking around, particularly for a Spherical result. I'm curious, too.

Back to the original question, I know that my cell phone produces some good pan results stitching two, three and four shots in its automatic mode but like the original poster, when I''m shooting a water/sky image, it can sometimes flounder. I expect that since there are few DISTINCT features.

 

[sancap]

@sancap dude that photo is aewsome! As hard as i tried i could not see any errors lol.

Do you mind if ask how you did that and uploaded it like that. That was very impressive and i'd like to give that a go

Pz

It gets more involved and there may be another way to do it than how I do it. I use another program called Pano Tour Pro that lets me customize the pano's with text, hot links etc. Then I upload to my Amazon S3 server. My workflow is as follows.

Take the pano, stitch in PTGui or Autopano Pro, add the missing sky in Photoshop, import the corrected image into Pano Tour Pro and customize as necessary. Pano Tour Pro creates an .html and .data file, those are uploaded to my server which generates the link that is shareable.

It works well for real estate also.

Tarpon Estates | Virtual tour generated by SanCap Aerial

 

[sancap]

PTGui is a bit pricy to stitch pans so I'm still looking around, particularly for a Spherical result. I'm curious, too.

Back to the original question, I know that my cell phone produces some good pan results stitching two, three and four shots in its automatic mode but like the original poster, when I''m shooting a water/sky image, it can sometimes flounder. I expect that since there are few DISTINCT features.

You would have to add more control points in a program like PTGUI or manually move the images to put them in the proper location in PTGUI or a similar program.

 

[sancap]

If everything else looks good but you have a wonky horizon you can do a quick fix like this in photoshop.

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[Meta4]

@sancap dude that photo is aewsome! As hard as i tried i could not see any errors lol.
Do you mind if ask how you did that and uploaded it like that. That was very impressive and i'd like to give that a go

Here are some instructions for the method:
Skypixel 360° Images - WOW
And here's a nice example I did: Makarora River

 

[sancap]

Here are some instructions for the method:
Skypixel 360° Images - WOW
And here's a nice example I did: Makarora River

Beautiful!

 

[Cymruflyer]

A quick look at the problem Pano, it's easy to see that you also have a perspective issue here. Pano stitching software is great, however, there are limits to what any of these programmes can do if you have a difficult collection of scene images to put together. I think you are asking a little too much with these images, there is plenty of details here but the problems are 1. as has been mentioned, the water at the shore line is ever changing, so that is a difficult problem to overcome when stitching, even manually. 2. the angle of the water to shore line is a big problem because as you rotate around (Yaw) that angle is ever changing and that in of itself is a difficult thing to overcome, again, even manually doing it.

If you tried it again but moved further back away from the shore line and then climbed up twice the height, I think you would see a more successful stitch. Look at the scene through a camera lens or take a look at the individual images taken by your drone and see as you go through each frame, how that shore line angles changes as you pan around to the right, for example. You have chosen a very difficult scene to attempt to stitch.

 

[RonBower]

Yes ... a lack of matchable points between the pairs of photos is the problem.
The sea surface texture is moving between shots so the software can't match anything.
There's just nothing for it to lock onto.

One approach that works for me is to manually take each RAW photo while only rotating the camera a little between exposures. Then stitching the RAW photos together in software. You should use about a 40% overlap between shots. This gives your software a lot of headroom when trying to match points between photos. On a DSLR you don't need that much overlap, but a drone needs more because of less than perfect stability. I use LightRoom for stitching rather than the expensive products that specialize in doing panoramas. You also have better control over the horizon point using this method.

 

[Meta4]

One approach that works for me is to manually take each RAW photo while only rotating the camera a little between exposures. Then stitching the RAW photos together in software. You should use about a 40% overlap between shots. This gives your software a lot of headroom when trying to match points between photos.

That's fine with a static scene but not much help when dealing with a moving sea surface where the software is unable to match points in the sea section of each photo and the waves are covering different amounts of the shore in each shot.

 

[RonBower]

Very true. Good point. I do panos where things are moving but usually have something static in the background.

 

[RonBower]

Very true. Good point. I do panos where things are moving but usually have something static in the background.

But still, in general, I get much better results if I manually frame the shots and stitch in LR. But either approach needs some points to match on, as Meta 4 said.

 

[TheRock]

Here are some instructions for the method:
Skypixel 360° Images - WOW
And here's a nice example I did: Makarora River

Which camera did you use for the Theater shot and the non-arials? Nicely done.