Straightening panoramas

Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 | Tags: fotografie

Stitching perfect 360×180° panoramas is not easy. Especially when shooting without a tripod or panoramic head. One of the most common problems is the misalignment of the horizon, and, consequently, everything else on the panorama: buildings, trees,…

I found an interesting link today about straightening panoramas (using panorama tools) on the Panotools mailinglist by Bernhard Vogl. His tutorial really helped me out on some panoramas which I was unable to straighten before. In particular this is what I’ll try to keep in mind while using PTGui:

• straightening is one of the last stages in the stitching process
• don’t use horizontal control points (only vertical ones)
• try to add one pair of vertical control points on each photo
• only add one pair of vertical control points per photo
• straightening is done in a separate optimization session, only affecting yaw, pitch and roll
• optimize using the panorama tools