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Panoramic Image Stitching Tools for Unix?
jbuberel asks: "I just got myself a fancy new Canon Powershot S400 camera. One of it's nifty features is it's 'Panoramic Assist' mode that helps you line up a series of images that can later be stitched together to form one larger panoramic image. Of course the software that ships with the camera to do the stitching is Windows-only. After spending some time probing freshmeat.net and google.com, I came across one dead project, and another relatively academic project who's tools are largely undocumented. So are there any up-to-date tools for composing panoramic photos in Unix? With so many digital photo afficianados out there, I was surprised there wasn't an easy-to-use GIMP plugin for this."
Check the archives of Apple's QTVR Mailing List - this question comes up all the time, and the pros and cons of every existing image stitching program for every operating system have been discussed at great depth many times.
You might want to try Pano Tools if you can track down a copy, I've heard good things about them, but I think there was a problem with iPix claiming they infringed on a patent related to unwrapping spherical images.
Personally, I use Vr Worx 2.1 for stitching together panoramas, and making simple QTVR scenes. I've been very happy with it. It does only run under OSX, so it may not be suitable for your needs.
Check out this link at The ScreenSavers. They had this guy come in talking all about the equipment, software, etc that he used to make 360 degree Panoramic views.
HTH
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Sorry if this is too vague, but maybe someone who knows more (or has more time to google) can follow up. There was someone who wrote freeware for this application, and then got sued by someone who claimed to have patent rights on the whole idea of digitally assembling a panoramic view. IIRC, he had to stop distributing his software.
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I also searched for easy to use panorama software. So far the best solution I have found is running The Panorama Factory with wine. Works great.
I have a feeling I've seen a tutorial somewhere on how to do this with the Gimp manually. ... unfortunately I haven't a clue where to begin googling for it :/
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There is an 'app' I have used before called Freedom VR - http://www.honeylocust.com/vr/t wait for the images then click and drag.
Short sweet and does a good job. You can see an example I put together here: http://www.museums.org.za/sang/exhib/j_alex/
Jus
The comparametric project *has* a GIMP plugin. Its there in the download (or it was last time I looked a year and a half ago)
Here you go!
Panotools is available for many platforms and compiles and runs fine on linux. The software is a bear to use but is regarded by many to be the best panorama software out there. It works great for me.
The java frontend is even pretty good and works fine on about anything that can run java (and is REALLY fast)... if you're on Windows, though, PTGUI is pretty much the same as the java interface, just faster, and on the mac, PTMac fits the bill for a front end.
Just search the net for panotools to find it; it's everywhere.
~GoRK
Panoramic Image Software
Or were you looking for something open-source that could be ported to _all kinds_ of UNIX? ;)
The free Netpbm toolkit includes a pnmstitch program which can do what you describe (lest the fact that right now it can only join two photos, left and right). It's a relatively new addition to the suite. These operations can be easily strung together to join multiple images (via pipes, most operations with these tools employ the use of stdin/stdout, though other options are availible).
These tools are the default utilities for mainipulating images serverside with the Gallery web based photo album.