I’m using Hugin for stitching panoramas and I define the control points manually. (I feel I have better control over the control points when doing it manually than letting Hugin search for matches.)
I have defined control points for the adjacent images, and also for the next image, if they overlap. I started now to think am I wasting my effort, and it would be enough to work only on the adjacent images.
My thinking behind my current approach has been that I get better alignment when as much is aligned with as many images as possible.
Now I started to think that when the software is stitching the panorama, it will be (almost) always built from the adjacent images. So how well image n aligns with image n+2 is not visible in the final panorama. Only the alignment between n and n+1 matters.
What is your opinion, should I continue my original practice or work only with adjacent images?
I have Hugin but haven’t used it in years. Working with only neighbor images makes sense for panoramas, even ones with multiple rows or columns or both.
OT but, for image alignment, I find the command line .exe much more flexible than the GUI.
Most of the points are ok, but then there are points the automatic process has picked that are close, but not the same. I feel it easier to define the points than to search and eliminate/fix the misplaced control points. This is probably just a personal preference.
Having control points between images n and n+2 can help to optimize the lens parameters (field of view and distortion parameters). And this affects then all images in the pano.
These control points can also help to prevent a false bending of the whole pano.
There has been a lot of work invested to have an automatic cp finder. But your feeling is better?
There may be use case where user selected points can be better, because the user can take additional measures into account.
So maybe you give it a try. If you find a example where it does not work, then please open a ticket with these file - and don’t keep it for your feeling. Then the cp finder can be improved and this is beneficial for all other users.
How about when there is tall grass or trees with wind (even a gentle breeze)? Or bodies of water?
When using auto control point finder, I always need to go through and remove ones that were placed in trees or tall grass, or on water. If my pano has any of these items I find it less work to simply place control points myself.