[ptx] Autopano-sift -> Hugin -> Enblend Workflow

[Ian Sydenham]

Mike Runge wrote:
 > I didn't managed to compile autopano-sift on my own. I treid several times
 > the autopano.exe shipped with hugin, but only with bad results. Even autopano
 >  did not incule all images belonging to the pano or it finds to much unwanted
 > points. I also have difficulties with the created pto-file, where each images
 > seems to have its individual lens. I corrected that editing the pto-file by
 > hand, but till now I never managed to get good results using autopano.
I had the same problem with autopano.exe - needing to go into the generated
pto-file and fix up the image lines so that Hugin did not think each image was
with a different lens. It took a fair bit of the "auto" out of "autopano". Being
lucky enough to get autopano-sift going it is not a problem for me any more :-)

 > How do you do 14a and 15?
 > I understand, that in the moment it is nessesairy to remove the blank 1 Pixel
 > column, but how do you save that in gimp preserving the multiple layers for
 > the later enblend run?
My Humble apologies. The patched enblend had not been out for long and I
changed my workflow description at the last minute to use multi layer tiff and
suggest cutting the pixel before enblend, but (*cringe*) I had not actually done
it and I now know it is not possible - at least not by me. My usual workflow up
to now has been to use "multiple tiff" and PTstitcher in Hugin to create one
image per tiff file, not one multiple-layer tiff file. This makes lots of tiff
files, but the batch file I use with enblend means I do not have to type out
every file name on the command line.
Cutting the extra pixel AFTER enblend gives a  discontinuity at the 180deg
boundary and is not too good.

 > 16:
 > If I understand to right, you can edit the multilayer Tiff and save it back.
 > Could you step back to 14a and do some tweaks (e.g removing ghosts) before
 > running enblend? I understand, that some of the nessesairy tweak will be
 > identifyable after the enblend run and that you want to avoid running enblend
 > again. And I still don't understand how you remove the 1 pixel column and
 > save back the file?!
Again I got it wrong. I can not edit and save back as tiff the multilayer tiff
file using Gimp. I can edit and save single layer tiffs, or edit a multiple
layer tiff and save it as an xcf.
Using the *single* layer tiffs I can go back and modify the original files (e.g.
remove a few people, shift something) then run enblend again, but normally I
find that it is quicker to just paste something into the already enblended image
- unless there are a lot of things to modify.

regards,

Ian Sydenham

PS never again will I send out how to do something without actually trying it first!