Project Question

[Users mailing list]

Good Day,

New here and have a question.  I want to create a photo backdrop for my
model railway.  It is an urban scene and I have taken a series of photos
laterally across the potential area.  I now need to 'stitch' them together
to form a continuous photo I can get printed and use as the backdrop.  My
question...can I use GIMP to get this done?

Looking forward to hearing from  some replies.

Doug
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[Ofnuts-2]

On 1/27/20 12:36 AM, Doug & Kathy Davies via gimp-user-list wrote:

> Good Day,
>
> New here and have a question.  I want to create a photo backdrop for my
> model railway.  It is an urban scene and I have taken a series of photos
> laterally across the potential area.  I now need to 'stitch' them together
> to form a continuous photo I can get printed and use as the backdrop.  My
> question...can I use GIMP to get this done?
>
> Looking forward to hearing from  some replies.
>

The best tool for this is Hugin: http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

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[Liam R E Quin]

On Sun, 2020-01-26 at 15:36 -0800, Doug & Kathy Davies via gimp-user-
list wrote:
>  My
> question...can I use GIMP to get this done?

You may find hugin or another panorama stitcher is better at it. Hugin
takes a little work to get used to, but can get good results. Then
maybe use GIMP to clean up the result.

There are four steps, whichever program you use:
(1) combine all the images into one big image, e.g.one per layer (File-
>open as layers in gimp)
(2) correct for rotation and make obvious exposure corrections to the
photos - this is especially necessary if the lighting, focus, or camera
settings such as exposure time and aperture varied between shots at
all;
(3) determine known common points in each pair of pictures and move
them to connect at these points, using perspective and barrel distort
as needed
(4) correct colour casts, darkness etc between separate parts of the
joined-up image and crop away the uneven edges.

Hugin will do step 3, which is the hardest part.
The others, you can do in gimp.

Liam (slave ankh)


--
Liam Quin - web slave for https://www.fromoldbooks.org/
with fabulous vintage art and fascinating texts to read.
Click here to have the slave beaten.

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[Akkana Peck]

Doug asks:
> > I have taken a series of photos
> > laterally across the potential area.  I now need to 'stitch' them together

Liam R E Quin writes:

> There are four steps, whichever program you use:
> (1) combine all the images into one big image, e.g.one per layer (File-
> >open as layers in gimp)
> (2) correct for rotation and make obvious exposure corrections to the
> photos - this is especially necessary if the lighting, focus, or camera
> settings such as exposure time and aperture varied between shots at
> all;
> (3) determine known common points in each pair of pictures and move
> them to connect at these points, using perspective and barrel distort
> as needed
> (4) correct colour casts, darkness etc between separate parts of the
> joined-up image and crop away the uneven edges.

(5) If the edges still don't match perfectly, use layer masks with
black/white gradients to fade out the edges of adjacent images so each
image blends into the next.

> Hugin will do step 3, which is the hardest part.
> The others, you can do in gimp.

Hugin can be hard to use and doesn't work on every collection of
photos, but when it works, it does an amazing job on steps 3 and 4
both. Definitely try it.

And Doug: when googling for more info on this technique, "panorama"
is a helpful search keyword. You should find lots of tutorials and
examples if you include that in your search.

        ...Akkana
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[Users mailing list]

I have used Hugin quite a bit (but by no means an expert),
and it does all 4 steps quite well, normally.
(if any of the exposures is WAY different in light level, you might
want to use GIMP on that one to bring it closer to the others.)
Once it Aligns the photos, you can move the conglomeration around
to straighten it, try a different projection, and then crop to what looks
good.
If things don't align as well as you like, you can add control points.
I have even thrown it four photos that were actually a vertical panorama,
and it figured it out and aligned perfectly on its own...

>There are four steps, whichever program you use:
>(1) combine all the images into one big image, e.g.one per layer (File-
> ->open as layers in gimp)
>(2) correct for rotation and make obvious exposure corrections to the
>photos - this is especially necessary if the lighting, focus, or camera
>settings such as exposure time and aperture varied between shots at
>all;
>(3) determine known common points in each pair of pictures and move
>them to connect at these points, using perspective and barrel distort
>as needed
>(4) correct colour casts, darkness etc between separate parts of the
>joined-up image and crop away the uneven edges.

>Hugin will do step 3, which is the hardest part.
>The others, you can do in gimp.
>
>Liam (slave ankh)
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