Hugin improves

[Giles Orr]

Great news for fans of photography who use Linux or FOSS: Hugin has
improved dramatically since I last used it.  Hugin is a
photo-stitcher/panorama-maker.  In my previous experiences with it
(which go back about five years), it was initially incomprehensible
and unusable, then tricky and in desperate need of hand-holding (you
had to point out to it every place where two photos matched), then
crash-prone and still in need of hand-holding.  But this morning,
having not used it in perhaps a year, I handed it four photos and it
said "is this what you wanted them to look like?"  It got it in one.
And it did it twice more, no hand-holding.

That's not a long enough session for me to feel sure it's no longer
crash-prone, but it's seriously got its stuff together on matching
pictures.  The next big test is to pass it a vertical pano, or a
horizontal pano composed of vertical ratio images (I could never get
that to work in the past).  Or a bunch of overlapping images in both
directions.  But the ease of use on basic panoramas was spectacular.
Take a look if you have the slightest interest.

The panoramas I created this morning are from a recent trip, and they
aren't on my website yet.  Back when it still needed hand-holding, I
made this: http://www.gilesorr.com/travels/Rome2009/Rome2009panos.trevi_pano.html
- you can do good things with Hugin.  The thing about the Trevi
fountain ... it turns out that it's in a rather small square, and you
simply can't back up far enough to take a single shot of the place
without a fisheye lens.  Another good moment from Hugin:
http://www.gilesorr.com/photography/200906/200906.guild_pano.html .
The trick with people is you need them not to be crossing the image
join-lines.  :-)

-- 
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
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