What piece of software can I use to stich multiple photos into panoramas?
And what about multi shots with exposure bracketing to get an HDR photo?
And finally, what about focus stacking to increase depth of field?
Thanks for your suggestions! Cheers!
Hugin
HDR Merge or Luminance HDR
Chimp Stacker, focus-stack, or enblend-enfuse
Maybe one indirectly related question. Do you think the last two tasks, focus stacking and exposure bracketing, could be implemented directly in Darktable?
I have to admit, I really love Darktable. For me it’s like a violin to a violinist, and if I have to use some other program, I feel like someone is sending me to play percussions.
Hi there
in DT you can use the ‘create HDR’ option in the Lighttable ‘selected images’ tab. Bruce Williams illustrates the use in his no 30 tutorial. However, I would advise against this option in DT, as the module does not align the images, it seems to simply superimpose images and that is it.
in this way you can images composed of totally unrelated ones and obtain a nice mess
I also like Darktable, but I don’t think that either fits very well into its profile.
The key features are alignment and masking: an algorithm aligns the images (hugin really shines here), and then another algorithm selects which images contributes to the final one (you manually correct this). Darktable has no comparative advantage here: the algorithm would have to be ported from some other software, and its GUI is designed for something else.
Once a high bit depth large image is created, you get to the point where Darktable really shines. Last time I used Hugin I would do demosaicing, lens correction and CA, export to TIFF, and then use Hugin, and then take back the result to Darktable. But it appears that Hugin can just call Darktable now for the first step. If anyone tested this, I would be curious about it.
I use the “HDRMerge” Lua script for exposure stacking. In contrast to the built-in darktable HDR function, it can actually align the images, so with my IBIS camera I can do exposure bracketing handheld.
Can I recommend microsoft’s Image Composite Editor (ICE) for panorama stitching, but of course you needs a windows computer. I have not tried it in the Wine environment yet. But it is an incredible free panorama stitcher which I prefer over hugin. But Hugin would be a good option on a Linux or Mac computer.
I’ve used Hugin a lot over the years for panoramas, and I’m told it will also do a good job of focus-stacking, although I’ve never followed the extensive instructions on how to get it to do that.
I’ve had a couple of times(out of hundreds, I guess) where Hugin didn’t like some aspect or other of my images, and yielded unpredictable results. For example a 5-image panorama of our archery target range was processed to have a nasty bend on the far left by Hugin. My daughter’s copy of Affinity Photo gave an image that had the correct perspective.
I now use paid software routinely for image stitching.
I followed a number of tutorials on focus stacking in GIMP, and though tedious, it’s possible to get some excellent results. (Example in mono.)
I’ve also found that working with a mouse (to focus-stack in GIMP) is not a pleasurable process. I use a graphics tablet - I have a wireless “Ugee” brand that works an absolute treat in windows and Linux. It cost me about AUD$80 during the last November sale on AliExpress.
This one?
If I remember, also Hugin can do focus stacking. Are these other pieces of software easier to use, or do a better job?
Yes, that’s the one.
Enblend-enfuse is the underlying program of hugin. I haven’t used chimp stacker (yet) but the demo photos are impressive. Focus-stack works pretty well for landscapes but not that well on macro, lots of photos exhibit out of focus blooming (not sure what this artifact is called).
I have used Hugin before, but it often didn’t work well. I tried Affinity Photo and Capture One as well, which had similar problems: alignment sometimes failed, moving objects were only partially in/excluded.
Nowadays I use PTGui, an expensive, proprietary tool (Win/Lin/Mac) that shares some history with Hugin. It is however much faster, alignment is much more robust, and it can export an aligned image stack, allowing you to mask out layers and objects manually. The only other tool I know of that has this functionality is Photoshop. It has rescued many a lost cause, though. It truly is good software, seemingly developed by a single person, and runs on Linux.
@patdavid has written tutorials many years ago:
https://patdavid.net/2013/01/focus-stacking-macro-photos-enfuse/
And there are some articles on the main pixls.us site:
For focus stacking:
I just use Hugin for panoramas, and sometimes align_image_stack and enfuse from scripts to merge exposure-bracketed JPGs from the phone.
