Wednesday January 19, 2005

Autostitch

I live around here - click on the thumbnail for the larger image :

This is a panoramic view from the rooftop of the Sengkang Community Hub (formerly Sengkang Community Building), looking due south. On the left, you can see the Compass Point shopping mall, and the Sengkang LRT line which leads from the integrated complex to the apartment blocks in the distance. On the right are the HDB apartment block numbers 300+ and the Shell petrol station at the road junction.

A series of 5 photos were taken using my Canon Powershot A70's "panoramic mode" which let me line up the images correctly from left to right, using the same exposure settings for each shot. Then I looked around for a good panorama stitching software - which was surprisingly hard to find. Finally came across this forum thread where the moderator recommended Autostitch. It's created by a PHD student, Matthew Brown, from the The University of British Columbia, Canada. It's currently a non-commercial freeware and freely downloadable.

Here's a news blurb :

We spotted news of some rather interesting research from the University of British Columbia this morning which promises to make the process of creating panoramas a whole lot simpler.

Anybody who's spent much time making panoramas knows that it can be a tricky process requiring you to carefully frame and overlap photos correctly for the best results, then spend time ordering the photos in your panorama software manually. Matthew Brown, a British PhD student at UBC, certainly noticed - and set to work on fixing the problem. As you'll see on his website, the results are rather impressive.

Brown built on research by UBC's Professor David Lowe to create Autostitch Panorama - software that can analyse a group of images, identify similarities between them, and then automatically order, arrange and stitch the images within several minutes. The software can handle 360-degree panoramas, and if we're understanding Matthew's website correctly, can even understand when a group of images contains image sets from several separate panoramas. If that's the case, you're presented with separate stitched panoramas, with unrelated images having been ignored altogether - a rather useful feature that would (for example) let a photographer return from a vacation and with a few mouse-clicks, process all their photos to let the software find and create multiple panoramas at once.

(2005-01-19 13:08:35 SGT) [Tech] Permalink

Most popular blog postings on lowem.log :

1. Singapore MRT rail network length to double by 2020
2. 2010 Nissan Leaf electric car specifications : 107hp, 24KWh lithium-ion batteries, 100-mile range
3. Live spot gold price quotes chart on COMEX
4. 2010 Toyota Prius specifications released : 50 mpg, 1.8L, 134hp, Ni-MH, solar roof option
5. AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 2011 direct download link
6. Real-time live gold and silver price quotes chart on COMEX
7. Singapore electric vehicles : Government agencies EMA and LTA to study EV introduction
8. Book review : Shut Down by William Flynn

Featured articles on lowem.log :

1. Book review : Shut Down by William Flynn
2. Singapore electric cars testing starts with 9 electric vehicles
3. Honda, GS Yuasa JV to make lithium-ion batteries for 2010/2011 Honda Civic Hybrid
4. 2010 Honda Civic Hybrid preliminary specifications released
5. 2010 Honda CR-Z hybrid, 2010 Honda Fit/Jazz hybrid models confirmed
6. 2010 Toyota Prius specifications released : 50 mpg, 1.8L, 134hp, Ni-MH, solar roof option
7. NYMEX crude oil recovers from $32.40 low after 2.2 mbpd OPEC production cut announced
8. Singapore : Nuclear power not ruled out