Stitch 2.0, Stitch.Efx, and Upload User Manual
Contents
1. bH Shi pS ites bed BEHE bed eed heel Site HSAH tied Pedi eb bread bebe bed babies be eal 8 emmm ED o o e a E m moa TIFF format supports picture as large as 4 gigabytes how big that is in pixels de pends on how well your image compresses and is widely supported and easy to work with RAW format aka Photoshop Raw not to be confused Camera Raw has essentially unlimited size but it is clumsier to work with since the file does not contain a header and does not record its own width and height This means that anyone working with Photoshop Raw files must take some care to record this information Stitch helps with this by putting the width and height in the filename e g a file named beach_12000x8000 raw is 12 000 pixels wide and 8 000 pixels high Once a picture is stored in a single file it can be opened in Photoshop edited modified and written back out To upload an image stored in a single image file as opposed to an image stored in a gigapan file and a data folder use the Upload app discussed below 1 6 GigaPan Stitch Efx Features Stitch Efx has the same great features as Stitch and additional features that can help make edits and adjustments to your images resulting in high quality images give you better control of results and save you time These features are Image Rear range Adjust Colors and Save Projected Images IMAGE REARRANGE Sometimes after shooting a panorama automatically with a panohea2. t delve into the data folder but if you want to retain the stitched result on your computer you ll want to retain both the gigapan file and the data folder 8 GigaPan Stitch User Guide Stitching takes between seconds and hours depending on the number of images being stitched It runs faster if your computer has multiple cores For a couple hundred images or less you ll often find that stitching runs about as fast as shooting the images that is just a few seconds per input image For large numbers of input images you might need to let stitching run overnight Note that the progress bar does not move at a constant speed even if it appears to stall you should remain confident that progress is being made The largest number of input images stitched with Giga Pan Stitch as of version 2 0 is about 2 400 Show Panorama About 1 3 of the way through stitching if you watch the progress bar a preview of the stitched result is displayed This has 1 4 of the final detail in the horizontal and verti cal directions but it allows you to check the alignment as stitching progresses and to start exploring your panorama There is a More Stitch Notes button that will tell you a number of facts about your gigapan such as the number of images that went into it when it was shot camera zoom and exposure information estimates of the field of view of the panorama and its total size in pixels With the Stitch application on t
3. Upload Technical Manual Miscellaneous Once an image has been stitched double clicking on its gigapan file will bring up the Stitch application and permit you to view it upload it or export it What to save what to delete If you have uploaded and you are happy with the result at GigaPan com and no longer want the input images or the gigapan file and data folder on your computer you could delete them to save some disk space but you will never get them back If you think you might want to re stitch the images in the future then we recommend you retain the input images and the gigapan file it is small and it contains a list of the input images which could save you a little time if you go to re stitch later And if you enjoy be ing able to look at your gigapans on your computer even when you do not have an internet connection or you think you might want to experiment with the Adjust Colors feature of Stitch Efx in the future or you plan to do your own Photoshopping or printing and you have not yet exported an image file in those cases it makes sense to retain the data folder also If you encounter trouble while stitching e g a program crash or improper alignment of images please click on Help and then Report a bug to let us know about it We are continually improving the Stitch software and user comments help us decide what is most important Questions Please contact Customer Support http GigaPan com cms supp
4. image and create a layer for each of the projected images 5 Position each layer 6 _Hand paint layer masks for each layer choosing the desired portion of each input im age 7 Flatten the layers into one 8 Save asa TIFF PSB Large Document Format or Photoshop Raw file this will be your improved version of the image exported in step 1 9 Run GigaPan Upload on that file if you wish to upload it to GigaPan com 2 Upload Application Whereas the Stitch application takes many overlapping images as input and stitches them together Upload is simpler GigaPan Upload takes an image in a single file typically hundreds to thousands of megapixels and uploads to GigaPan com This is useful if you ve stitched an image and edited it with software such as Photoshop or if you stitched using software other than GigaPan Stitch The Upload application is free it does not require a license key After starting the Upload application first choose a picture file that contains the panorama or large image you d like to upload As with uploads done inside the Stitch app there is a minimum size of 50 megapixels for uploads to GigaPan com The input file can be TIFF JPEG PNG Photoshop Raw not to be confused with Camera Raw KRO PSB or PSD format The limitations of each format TIFF files have a maximum size of 4 gigabytes Recommended if your image is small enough to fit within 4 gigabytes otherwise use Photoshop Raw JPEG fi
5. in upper right and check your account there before returning to Stitch As the upload proceeds the average throughput so far in megabits per second is given and an estimated time to completion The software is quite persistent and robust if you lose your internet connection or your computer goes to sleep for any length of time the software will re establish communication with the server and continue on when internet is restored or when woken from sleep If your computer crashes or you quit out of Stitch in the middle of an upload however you will need to re start the upload from the beginning You have the option to export your panorama as a TIFF or Adobe RAW file to make edits or enhancements in a program like Adobe Photoshop If you wish to upload to GigaPan com after processing your panorama you need to start the GigaPan Uploader Start gt Programs gt GigaPan Uploader in Windows or under Applications on the Mac The interface of the Uploader looks identical to the Upload screen in Stitch except you ll select a stitched image to upload using the Browse button instead of entering a title Please note that the Stitcher Notes will not automatically port over to GigaPan com as the bundled uploader does Once you have uploaded your panorama it ll give you a URL to view it online People can now view your panorama zoom in and out take snapshots of parts that they like and things they find They can also leave comments for you
6. unless each column has an equal number of photos 11 At this point you may want to select additional adjustments To access additional stitching options click on the Options button on the left side of the stitching software Vignette Correction activated by default Automatically corrects the darken ing around the periphery of input images so images do not show vertical band ing also Known as vignetting that would otherwise result Combine images in draft mode Draft mode causes seams between images to be visible but speeds up stitching some This option removes the blending step of the process which speeds up stitching and could be useful for quickly checking what your image will look like This option is typically not necessary Build panorama at 50 scale Using 50 mode will cause a loss of detail but speeds up stitching and results in a gigapan with 1 4 as many pixels as normal This could be useful for larger images that you may be printing instead of zooming into so the extra detail isn t necessary or when you know that your input images are a little blurry or if you d like to save upload time Keep the 50 megapixel minimum limit on uploads in mind however For example if normal stitching would have yielded a 160 megapixel panorama the 50 scale option would generate a 40 megapixel panorama which would be too small to upload Use larger blending region A larger blending region is useful if transition
7. If you checked Private before uploading this is the URL you send to the people you want to share the panorama with 10 GigaPan Stitch User Guide A few words about projections As noted inside the Stitch application you are view ing the stitched panorama with a perspective projection of the 3D environment with adjustable pan tilt and zoom When viewed on the GigaPan com website images look less three dimensional and more flat that is because the website uses a fixed spherical or Mercator projection analogous to a standard world map Objects near the poles zenith or nadir become stretched horizontally on the web site Whereas straight lines in the world remain straight in the Stitch viewer most lines become curved on the web site On the other hand the Stitch viewer never allows you to see more than 180 degrees at a time while the web viewer allows you to see 360 degrees at one time It is a tradeoff If you prefer a perspective view with adjustable pan tilt and zoom ina shareable form we recommend you use the features of the GigaPan com web site to geolocate your gigapan and then view it in Google Earth 1 5 Export If you desire to edit your image in Photoshop or other image editing software crop adjust contrast or colors resize or print it then you might want to output it as a single potentially huge image file Click File and then Export stitched image to and then either TIFF or RAW
8. Remove Images When images have been selected and arranged properly you should be able to scan across rows or scan down columns of images with your eyes and each neighboring pair of images should hopefully have roughly 30 overlap If you see major disloca tions or jumps in your image grid at this point due to missing or repeated images Stitch will probably not be able to align your images and produce a good stitched panorama so it is worth spending a minute to double check your work here before proceeding Change the Number of Rows so they line up properly The EPIC robotic mounts allow several different shooting orders 3 l G kk a The Epic Pro has FOUR shooting options the default cols right cols left rows down and rows up b The Epic Epic 100 hass three shooting options the default cols right rows down and rows up If your shooting order was not cols right then your first step should be to click on Options and set the shooting order You may also need to click the Options button so that you can choose the Image Shooting Order the settings on your EPIC used to capture the sequence of images shot columns right columns left rows down rows Up Stitch Alignment Examples Below the panorama was shot rows down Below An image grid with good overlap properly set up Leas ad men mep H lo DE Ga Below A bad imag
9. User Guide stitching It s much faster than the alternative exporting your gigapan reading that into Photoshop which can itself take many minutes adjustment with sliders there writing back out to an image file and then running Upload If you do color adjustments inside Stitch each color change takes a fraction of a second and the entire process of adjusting colors can often be done in just a minute or two From the Show Panorama tab click on the Adjust Colors button at bottom You ll see a set of sliders for adjusting different parameters Click on the bottom at lower right for help with the meaning of the sliders These sliders adjust the contrast and color of the stitched image The most commonly needed adjustments are black level white level and temperature e Black Level controls the input level that is displayed as black Increasing it will darken the picture and increase contrast Default is 0 White level controls the input level that is displayed as white Decreasing it will brighten the picture and increase contrast Default is 100 Gamma controls the grays Increasing it will darken the mid tones in the picture Default is 1 0 Exposure allows contrast to be adjusted up or down like exposure compensation on a camera Increasing by 1 doubles the light decreasing by 1 halves it Default is 0 Temperature adjusts the color temperature Positive values make the picture yellow er negative makes it bluer This is
10. d it is desirable to go back and re shoot certain grid images e g to photograph the batter at home plate or to re shoot part of a scene when it is not shadowed by a cloud Or if you shot a 360 degree panorama you might want to cut the cylinder of images at a different column In Stitch Efx each time you do Add Images the images being added are sorted by the numbers in their filenames and then appended to the end of the list To rearrange click the Select Images tab and use drag and drop on the images in the grid To select images You can select a single image by clicking on it it will tint bluish If you shot in standard order col right order then you can select a column by clicking on its column number at top If you shot in row order e g row down then you can select a row by clicking on its row number at left You can select multiple images using command click Macintosh or ctrl click Windows To rearrange images click anywhere within the blue highlighted set and then drag until the drop indicator a thin black line surrounding one image is around the image following the spot where you want to insert the selected images If you want to move some images to the end drag them to the margins of the image grid at right or bottom There s an Undo button that will undo all changes to the grid COLOR ADJUST The Adjust Colors feature of Stitch Efx allows contrast and color to be adjusted after __ GigaPan Stitch
11. e grid note that the image at column 8 row 3 is a repeat of the 6 GigaPan Stitch User Guide one above it column 8 row 2 This grid shot in cols right order The solution is to remove the image at 8 3 m ir m j arl ee mri Below A bad image grid not enough overlap note that there is no overlap between pictures that are vertical neighbors one above the other and no overlap between pictures that are horizontal neighbors near the horizon row 5 The only overlap is when the camera is tilted above the horizon or below the horizon Without at least 30 overlap everywhere you re likely to get bad alignment if you try to stitch The user probably forgot to do Camera Setup to set the field of view on their panohead eke p mmp T UAK AR ge Hovering the cursor over an image in the grid for a second will cause the filename to be displayed this can be useful for checking If you have Stitch Efx there is an image rearrange feature that can be used at this point to insert re shot images to reorder them or make other edits to the grid This feature is discussed later If you have Stitch the images are always in sorted order See Section 1 6 for more information about Stitch Efx 10 If you want to remove a photo click on it and choose Remove Images To select multiple photos for removal click and drag the mouse over them Note GigaPan Stitch software won t work
12. ew you can upload immediately to GigaPan com Simply select the Upload tab if you haven t already you need to have your free account activated at GigaPan com Give your panorama a name and a description The more detail you provide the more easily it will be found in searches Give it a few tags words that describe what you ve photographed For example Halloween backyard winter and so on You can use as many tags as you want separate them with a comma Multi word tags can be specified using quotes or underscores e g amazon river or amazon_river Without the quotes or under score you d get two tags amazon and river The gigapan name description and tags entered here can easily be changed later through the web site If you want only a select few to see your panorama check the box for Private This way only people you give the panorama s URL to can view it Enter your GigaPan com user name and password and click on Upload now To do an upload it is necessary to have an internet connection It is best if itis a fast one 10 megabits sec or more upload speed but even connections as slow as 05 megabits sec that is 50 kilobits sec should work If you encounter trouble with the username and password it probably means you do not have a login at GigaPan com or you are making an error in the username or password In this case we suggest you use a web browser visit GigaPan com click on Log In
13. he Show Panorama tab you are in a 3D viewer that displays a perspective projection that changes as you pan tilt and zoom around the scene Pan and tilt by left clicking with the mouse and dragging You can zoom using the mousewheel On computers without a mousewheel there are several alterna tives hold down CTRL key and left click while moving mouse up and down or right click with the mouse while moving it up and down or on a Mac trackpad two fingered motion up and down If you zoom all the way out the virtual camera backs up so that you can see an entire hemisphere at once This is most useful when you have shot a panorama that covers close to 360 degrees horizontally and 180 degrees vertically If you zoom in before stitching is completed you might see refining in the lower left of the window It means that the stitcher is still blending your input images in this region and it might be a minute before the detail you re requesting is available for viewing Once you have started stitching even before the preview image appears i e before the Show Panorama tab works you will be able to set up an upload Stitch Efx has additional advanced features to allow you to make contrast and color adjustments rearrange image prior to stitching and save projected images for editing See Section 1 6 for more information about Stitch Efx 1 4 Uploading in Stitch If you are satisfied with the panorama as viewed in the stitcher vi
14. ine control IMAGE RE ARRANGE Capture action insert additional shots later or shoot in any order you like Arrange im ages interactively in grid during stitch set up This is a useful tool for panoramas shot with subjects in motion for example if you paused the panorama went pack a few shots and resumed in different sections to wait for subjects to move out of frame With Image Re arrange it s easy to drop and drag these individual shots into the final panorama insert image and provide instructions SAVE PROJECTED IMAGES Sometimes there are errors in the alignment or blending that you might want to correct by hand For example if shooting a scene of people and a person moves during photography you might find that the automatic blending algorithm used by Stitch results in a stitched im age where a person s head is cut in half and you might want to fix that This can be done but will require some manual effort with Photoshop or other image editing software and some time For complete documentation on this see the GigaPan Stitch and Upload Technical Manual but the outline of steps is 1 Stitch the panorama and export the stitched image 2 Goto Select Images tab and select one or more images that you want to work with 3 Click File Save Projected Images and write out these images projected warped to the common spherical projection used by the gigapan to TIFF files 4 Run Photoshop and read in the exported stitched
15. les have a maximum width and height of 65 536 pixels PNG files have few size limitations Photoshop Raw files have few size limitations but this format does not store the width or height of the picture within the file so a convention we recommend is to put the width and height in the filename e g a file named beach_12000x8000 raw would be 12 000 pixels wide and 8 000 pixels high KRO files have few size limitations This format is output by the AutoPano Giga stitcher but is not otherwise widely used PSB format known within Photoshop as Large document format because of 14 GigaPan Stitch User Guide limitations of Photoshop has a maximum width and height of 300 000 pixels PSD format known within Photoshop as Photoshop format is the old variant of PSB and has a maximum width and height of 30 000 pixels To Upload As when uploading within Stitch enter a name for your gigapan a description optional tags all of these can be changed later and a GigaPan com username and password Once you begin the upload you ll get updates on progress throughput in megabits per second and estimated time to completion The largest image uploaded to GigaPan com to date is 1 terapixel i e 1 million pixels on a side Uploading an image that size takes several days The Upload application uses no disk space except when uploading a PSB or PSD format For more information on uploading large PSB documents see the GigaPan Stitch and
16. ort contact support Join the GigaPan com Forum Connect with other GigaPanners http GigaPan com forums Each time you start up Stitch the software automatically and silently does a check with our server computer if you have internet at that moment and will inform you if there is a software upgrade available You can also click on File Check for updates to make this check at any time
17. p GigaPan Stitch 2 0 Stitch Efx and Upload User Manual 2012 GigaPan Systems GigaPan and the GigaPan logo are registered trademarks of Carnegie Mellon University licensed for use by GigaPan Systems 2012 Carnegie Mellon University All rights reserved 1 Stitch application 1 1 License Keys 1 2 Select Images 1 3 Stitching 1 4 Uploading in Stitch 1 5 Export 1 6 Stitch Efx only Features 2 Upload application 1 Stitching Application GigaPan Stitch takes tens hundreds or thousands of overlapping images typically tens of megapixels each aligns and blends the images saves the resulting panorama on your computer You then have the option to upload the stitched image to GigaPan com for shar ing and web viewing The GigaPan Upload takes one stitched image and uploads it See Section 2 for more information on GigaPan Upload You can download the GigaPan Stitch and Upload installers here http www GigaPan com cms downloads sbl_stitch_efx System Requirements WINDOWS Windows XP Vista or 7 1GB RAM 2GB recommended MACINTOSH OS X 10 4 9 or later 1GB RAM 2GB recommended 1 1 License Keys The first time you start up the Stitch or Stitch Efx app you will see a license check dialog box that tells you that you have 14 days remaining in a trial period of the features of Stitch Efx If you have purchased the software and have received a license key the license key is a series of numbers and letters tha
18. rama from the folder where you ve saved them on your computer Hold down the shift key Shift to select many images at a time If you don t remember the file names just select the ones you think apply You can remove duplicate or extraneous images or add more later s ee Images can be added in two ways see by clicking on Add Images and then selecting one or more or by dragging and dropping some im age files from another application into the Stitch window ET ENTE s a E i E When images are added they are ordered according to the numbers in the filenames e g IMG_0200 JPG IMG_0201 JPG IMG_0202 JPG and IMG_0203 JPG and inserted in the grid consistent with the shooting order that s been selected e g cols right or rows down etc If there were a file named IMG_0202a JPG it would be considered to follow IMG_0202 JPG and precede IMG_0203 JPG Your images may look scrambled at first Set the number of columns or number of rows up or down until your grid lines up properly The Stitch software can be used when images are shot in a fairly regular grid of rows and columns Stitch assumes an equal number of images per row and per column If there are extra images that are not part of the panorama in the grid you can select them individually and click Remove Images or click on the row or column numbers and drag the cursor across a range to select a large block of images to operate on at once then click
19. s between images appear too hard edged and abrupt This option is typically not necessary Mercator projection instead of spherical Equirectangular The mercator projec tion doesn t squash objects above or below the horizon but cannot be used in Google Earth 12 When you re satisfied with your selections click Save Selection and Stitch and select a place on your drive to save your panorama Please proceed to Section 1 3 Stitch ing Your Images Make sure you have at least 30 GB free on the selected drive if stitching multiple images GigaPan Stitch will automatically blend and combine all the individual photos into a single gigapixel panorama Once the panorama is aligned you can explore it by clicking and dragging on the image 1 3 Stitching Your Images o lepe cb lS pl Sa SS Ss i The amount of additional disk space A Reckiehans RA used by Stitch is typically about 50 oe of the size of the input images if your input images are JPEGs If you save to a gigapan named beach say general information metadata Tij r about your panorama is saved to the a Searle file beach gigapan and your stitched er e result image will be stored broken up a 2 re into perhaps thousands of small tile PaaS ete files in a folder called beach data Breaking the image into tiles is what allows the Stitch software and the GigaPan web site to load and browse your panorama so fast Typically you needn
20. t looks like AATG XXXX XXXX XXXX then type it in now If you are just trying the software before purchase click the Continue Trial button If you need to check your license key at any time click Help and then License 1 2 Select Images 1 Upload your images from camera to your computer Note The input images must be in JPEG TIFF or PNG format Stitch does not accept Camera Raw format as input so if you have shot in a camera Raw format you will probably want to convert to JPEG using Adobe Lightroom or similar software before running Stitch Start GigaPan Stitch software you ll find it under Start gt Programs gt GigaPan Stitcher in Windows or under Applications on a Mac If you are stitching very large input images 30 mega pixels or more each or you are attempting to stitch more than 2 000 input images together we suggest you see the GigaPan Stitch and Upload Technical Manual 2 You will see five tabs Select Images Stitch Show Panorama Upload and Finished Tn bts 4 GigaPan Stitch User Guide 3 8 The Stitch software can be used when images are shot in a fairly regular grid of rows and columns It is optimized for use with the GigaPan EPIC series of panoheads but can also be used on images shot with other panoheads or shot carefully by hand It assumes an equal number of images per row and per column Select the photographs you took for the pano
21. useful if the white balance setting on the camera was set for daylight photography but the camera was used indoors with incandescent lighting for example Default is O Tint is similar to color temperature but positive values make the picture more magen ta and negative makes it greener This is occasionally useful to correct for fluorescent lights Default is 0 Saturation allows amplification or attenuation of colors Value O yields a grayscale picture values greater than 1 exaggerate color purity Default is 1 0 Reset restores all default values All color changes are global they affect the entire picture equally at all zoom levels The color adjustments are cumulative in top to bottom order User interface tip the mouse thumbwheel can be used to adjust sliders Up amp down arrow buttons on the text boxes give fine control Adjustments made here are saved and remembered in the gigapan file and they affect uploads exports and save projected images but they are non destructive within the Stitch application The gigapan file is rewritten when stitching completes on File Save or if color adjustments are changed before upload export or save projected images All color changes are global they affect the entire picture equally at all zoom levels The color adjustments are cumulative in top to bottom order User interface tip the mouse thumbwheel can be used to adjust sliders Up amp down arrow buttons on the text boxes give f
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