Stitching images to create a plan view

[MAL20040]

I recently photographed a block of commercial units + land using a Mavic 4 at 120m and no zoom. It was too much area to get everything in 1 image from my max allowed height and I needed a plan view so I took a grid of 20 shots.

Individually the 20 photos are great but when I came to stitch the photos together (I tried using both Photoshop and PTGUI) neither program could accurately piece together the images.

I had shot approx 50% overlap, but the programs were unable to accurately put the roof together. They get close, but the complicated roof lines had too many editing errors.

Any tips for shooting 'corrugated style complicated roofs'? There are so many straight lines involved any errors really stand out.

Should I have gone lower or zoomed in and taken more images?

 

[Meta4]

I recently photographed a block of commercial units + land using a Mavic 4 at 120m and no zoom. It was too much area to get everything in 1 image from my max allowed height and I needed a plan view so I took a grid of 20 shots.

Individually the 20 photos are great but when I came to stitch the photos together (I tried using both Photoshop and PTGUI) neither program could accurately piece together the images.

I touched on some of the issues you've run into in this thread:

J

How to take a vertical panorama?

Aug 20, 2025

My friend own quite a large area of forrest and he wanted to have a picture of it from above.
I said i could do it with my mavic 3 pro but now that i have tried, im not happy with the result.

He said it have to look like satelite image from google maps, the same angle so the camera have to point in 90 degree angle.
The problem with this is that beccause the area is like 2x1km big, the angles on the trees will be different depending on how far they are from the camera.
The trees directly down the drown looks good but the more toe the edges of the picture you see, the more you will see...

• johndrone33
• Replies: 5
• Forum: Editing & Techniques

I had shot approx 50% overlap, but the programs were unable to accurately put the roof together. They get close, but the complicated roof lines had too many editing errors.

Any tips for shooting 'corrugated style complicated roofs'? There are so many straight lines involved any errors really stand out.

Should I have gone lower or zoomed in and taken more images?

Going lower will only make things worse.
Using a planar projection will help with better stitching to show a topdown plan view.

For roofs, it might help to include oblique images as well as topdown shots.
The folks that do this often fly their horizontal grid and follow that with an orbit around the subject area shooting at -30° or -45°.
If you were wanting to do this as more than just a one-off, you'd need good 3-D software like Agisoft or use a service provider to manipulate your data.

A lot of good information on roof mapping is available online.
Here's something to start you off:

https://www.hammermissions.com/post/drone-roof-inspections-mapping-an-exhaustive-guide

 

[motocatfish]

AutoPano Pro was considered the reference standard since ~2005 to stitch panos. $100 back then &
worth every penny. Just point it to a directory & it will find all
panos available to stitch together. Many perspective & rendering
options. Good GPU support for large & faster renderings.

The latest Giga version for HDR (2018) is available for FREE!
<AutoPano Giga is Now Free • HDRMAPS™>
Read the blog comments for the easy fix (rename a file) to work in Win11.

Good luck!

Catfish ...