panoramastudio manual

Manual

and

Version 2.6.6

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c© 2005-2015 Tobias Huellmandel, Tobias Huellmandel Software

PanoramaStudio Manual

Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation.

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contents

1 Introduction 11.1 Overview on PanoramaStudio/PanoramaStudio Pro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 System requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.3 Program features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

2 Quickstart - Creating your first panorama 4

3 Shooting the individual input images 63.1 What to take into account while shooting the photos? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

4 Workflow -Creation of a panorama 94.1 How to create a panorama project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94.2 How to import images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94.3 Single-row panorama: How to edit images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94.4 Setting parameters for the stitching process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

4.4.1 Focal length and camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114.4.2 Lens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114.4.3 Other settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114.4.4 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

4.5 Aligning the images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124.6 Applying manual adjustments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

4.6.1 Which correction is to apply for which defect? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134.6.2 Adjust focal length and horizon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134.6.3 Change image alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144.6.4 Multi-row panorama: Edit control points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144.6.5 Single-row panorama: Change detail adjustments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144.6.6 Single-row panorama: Change blendings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144.6.7 Adjust exposure correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154.6.8 Multi-row panorama: Straighten horizon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154.6.9 Insert graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4.7 Render the panorama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154.8 Post-process the panorama - Resizing and optimizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154.9 Inserting hotspots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164.10 Saving and printing the panorama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

5 The user interface 185.1 The action toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185.2 Other toolbars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

5.2.1 The project toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195.2.2 The view toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205.2.3 The arrangement toolbar (single-row panoramas only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205.2.4 The overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205.2.5 The task type bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

5.3 The menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215.3.1 File menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215.3.2 View menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235.3.3 Input images menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

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5.3.4 Panorama menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255.3.5 Window menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265.3.6 Help menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

5.4 Image manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275.5 The dialog boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

5.5.1 The Rotate image dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285.5.2 The Edit mask dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285.5.3 The Image information dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295.5.4 The Panorama properties dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295.5.5 The control point editor (only PanoramaStudio Pro) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305.5.6 The Create projection dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315.5.7 The Edit location (Geotagging) dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325.5.8 The Resize panorama dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335.5.9 Filters for optimizing image quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335.5.10 Print preview dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355.5.11 The Save as interactive Panorama / Zoom Image dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . 365.5.12 Advanced settings for the PanoramaStudio Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385.5.13 The Save As Screensaver/.EXE dialog box (Windows only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405.5.14 The Edit camera settings dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

5.6 Keyboard shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425.7 Start using the command-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

6 The adjustment and editing modes 436.1 The input images mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436.2 The preview mode after the image alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436.3 The parameters and focal length mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466.4 The image alignment mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496.5 The detail adjustments mode (only single-row panoramas) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496.6 The blending mode (only single-row panoramas) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516.7 The exposure mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526.8 The horizon mode (only PanoramaStudio Pro) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546.9 The insert graphics mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556.10 The render mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556.11 The hotspot mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576.12 The panorama mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

7 Configuring PanoramaStudio 60

Index 63

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Overview on PanoramaStudio/PanoramaStudio Pro

PanoramaStudio enables you to assemble wide angle panoramas as well as 360 degree panoramas froma row of images. In addition PanoramaStudio Pro provides the ability to stitch multiple rows of imagesto create panoramas up to full spherical 360x180 degrees. Sequences of overlapping images shot with acommon digital or analog camera is all you need to achieve outstanding results. The input images will beassembled seamlessly into a great panorama. Hence, panoramic photography isn’t an expensive privilegeto professionals with high-end equipment anymore!

PanoramaStudio focuses on best possible comfort with the automatic generation of high-quality pano-ramas. And still, full control of all steps throughout the entire stitching process will be maintained byoffering exhaustive post-processing tools.

Figure 1.1: Automatically generated wide angle panorama

The output options include the common image file formats, interactive 3D Flash and HTML5 panoramasfor webpages, and screensavers. The integrated poster printing function allows you to print a panoramaover several pages.

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2 Introduction

1.2 System requirements

• supported systems:Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8Mac OS X 10.5 or newer

• free hard-disk space: 40 MB for the program, at least 1 GB temporary disk space for processing

• main memory (RAM): 1 GB of RAM, (4 GB of RAM recommended)

• CPU: min. 1 GHz Pentium III/IV and AMD Athlon respectively

• graphics: resolution of at least 1024x768 pixels at hi or true color

• optional for interactive panoramas: HTML5 compatible browser or Adobe Flash Player, version 10or later

1.3 Program features

PanoramaStudio and PanoramaStudio Pro offer the following features:

• seamlessly assemble individual images into wide angle or 360 degree panoramas

• provides the ability to create full spherical 360x180 degree panoramas from multiple-rows of images(PanoramaStudio Pro only)

• control point editor for manual editing of the image alignment (PanoramaStudio Pro only)

• realtime preview of the panorama in 2D and 3D (PanoramaStudio Pro only)

• images may come from any ordinary camera - no high-end equipment necessary for panoramas

• a tripod is not required for most shots, although recommended for multi-row panoramas

• automatic alignment and blending of the images

• complete 16 bit workflow for 16 bit images

• automatic vignetting correction

• automatic exposure adjustment of the input images

• automatic exposure correction of the panorama

• functionality for printing posters (spanning several pages)

• functionality to export interactive 2D and 3D Flash panoramas

• functionality to export interactive HTML5 3D panoramas for devices without Flash

• functionality to export panoramas as screensavers or self-running programs (Windows only)

• supported image file formats (export): JPG, TIFF, BigTIFF, PSD, PSB, BMP, PNG, PCX, RASand TGA

• supported image file formats (import): JPG, TIFF, BigTIFF, PSD, BMP, PNG, PCX, RAS, IFFand TGA

• support for numerous RAW file formats: DNG, CRW, NEF, CR2, RAW, MRW, DCR, ORF, ARW,PEF, ...

• thumbnail previews while importing images

• automatic detection of more than 2100 digital cameras based on their Exif information

• automatic detection of Exif focal length for supported cameras

• support for focal lengths from 12 to 1000mm (35mm equivalent) and fisheye lenses

1.3 Program features 3

• automatic focal length detection if required

• automatic barrel/pincushion correction for wide angle lenses

• option to edit and adjust all steps of the stitching after the automatic assembly of the panorama

• hotspot editing for Flash/HTML5 panoramas →Allows links to other panoramas and websites

• functionality to insert graphics into the panoramic image (e.g. logos, text, ...)

• filters for post-processing of image colors and sharpness of the created panoramic images

• export of panoramic images as layered Photoshop file, as row of TIFFs, or as a Multipage TIFF

Chapter 2

Quickstart - Creating your firstpanorama

This chapter will quickly enable you to create your first panoramas based on your own shots by guiding youbriefly through all steps necessary. Detailed information on advanced options (e.g. manual adjustments)will be presented to you in subsequent chapters. Chapter 4 illustrates the versatile processing capabilitiesin detail. The graphical user interface of PanoramaStudio is described in chapter 5.

There are only a few simple steps for you to have your first panorama on your screen. Let’s start withthe shooting of your images:

• Taking photos of the scene (chap. 3, p.6)Having found a nice scene for a panorama, please take notice of the following rules. The finalpanorama will be an assembly of a series of individual images. For the software to be able to auto-matically stitch the images without loss of information, adjacent images must overlap. Arrange theimages so that they overlap each other by approximately 30 percent. In order to achieve a correctpanorama, the camera had to be exactly in the center of the panoramic scene. Thus, try to rotatethe camera while shooting your pictures rather than turn your camera around you. Holding yourcamera quite close to you will be a good approximation for a correct positioning in most cases. Toachieve a larger field-of-view in a single-row panorama, hold the camera in portrait format ratherthan landscape.

The use of a tripod is recommended especially for indoor shoots and for full spherical, multi-rowpanoramas. A tripod together with a panoramic head is the best equipment for optimal results.The photos in a row and the rows of photos should normally also overlap by about one third or onefourth.

• Importing your images (chap. 4.2, p.9)Your first step in PanoramaStudio is to import the images. First you have to choose the type of yourproject. Choose Create single-row panorama or Create multi-row panorama (only PanoramaStudioPro) depending the arrangement of your images. After that you can load the individual imageswith the Import... button. For a sequence of images you may select several images in the importdialog box for importing multiple images at once. PanoramaStudio processes images from nearlyany common digital camera. For analog cameras, the images need to be digitized with a scansoftware.

• Arranging and rotating your images (chap. 4.3, p.9)In the single-row mode PanoramaStudio expects that the images are already arranged in the rightorder and orientation before it continues with the alignment of the images. You will find thecommands for rotating in steps of 90 degrees as well as for reverting the image arrangement inthe Input images menu. Alternatively, you may use the corresponding buttons on the arrangementtoolbar.

• Parameters (chap. 4.4, p.10)You now may set some parameters which enhance speed and quality of the rendering process. Clickon the Parameters button to open the dialog box.

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You can specify here values for the focal length and if necessary with lens correction the cameraproperties during the shoot. Normally it is sufficient to enable the use of the focal length fromEXIF if your camera is known to PanoramaStudio. Furthermore, you have to set the position ofthe horizon in the mode for single-row panoramas. You may adjust the horizon simply by movingthe red marker line.

• Align (chap. 4.5, p.12)Once the parameters are set, you may start the automatic alignment of the images. After clickingthe Align button in a single-row panorama, you may choose between Align (partial) panoramaand Align a 360 degree panorama. Building with the 360 degree panorama option will result in apanorama with seamlessly fitting margins on the left and on the right. You just have to make sure,that the first and the last image also overlap one another for about one third to two thirds.In the multi-row mode of PanoramaStudio Pro the alignment process starts just with a click onAlign.

• RenderAfter aligning the images PanoramaStudio shows a preview of the panorama. To make manual ad-justments with the edit modes, please read the chapter manual editing (chap. 4.6, p.13). Otherwiseyou may continue and finish the panoramic image. Click Render to switch into the mode to cropthe image. There you can set and adjust the region for the final image with the red marker lines.Furthermore, you can set the output size of the image in the dialog box. Then PanoramaStudiorenders the panoramic image in high quality.

• Saving and printingAfter the image is rendered you can save it as an image file or as interactive HTML5/Flash pa-norama. In addition, the integrated poster printing functionality allows to print the image acrossseveral pages with crop marks and glue margins. Thus, you may create really large and impressivepanoramas.

Chapter 3

Shooting the individual input images

3.1 What to take into account while shooting the photos?

Panoramas generated by PanoramaStudio are based on a series of individual images. PanoramaStudio isdesigned to produce panoramas from images shot with an ordinary camera without special equipment.One major advantage is for example the independence from any tripod. Whenever you happen to ex-perience any stunning landscape e.g. on your holiday trip which isn’t possible to capture with only onesingle shot you may just use your regular camera without any other equipment, take several images andassemble them to a panorama later at home.However, the use of a tripod results in better input images which can be more easily processed byPanoramaStudio than freehand shots. Thus, a tripod with a panoramic head is for multi-row panoramaswith PanoramaStudio Pro quite recommended.For both cases, please take notice of the following tips to obtain the best results possible without needfor exhaustive post processing.

Images need to overlapTo align the images, they have to overlap. Shoot your images with approximately 30 percent overlap forbest results. It might be helpful to memorize one object in the right third of your viewfinder while takingthe first image. For the next image, you just aim the camera so that this object occurs within the leftthird of your viewfinder. Going on like this clockwise for each image will guarantee best results later forPanoramaStudio to assemble the images.For 360 degree panoramas with a seamless transition from the last to the first image, you should makesure, that the last and the first image also overlap one another in the same way than the others do. Incase of doubts, don’t hesitate to take an extra image just to play it safe. Redundant images may laterstill be removed easily.Because the overlap amount is hard to guess just with the viewfinder, the software will tolerate somedegree of uncertainty. But still, you should allow at least 20 percent overlap so that mapping won’t beaffected disproportionately. Having more than 70 percent will just increase rendering time and the diskusage for no reason. Anyway, in case you have a lot of images with big overlapping areas, you may decideto exclude selected images from import into a panorama project, if the others still overlap properly.The same rule applies for the overlap of the rows of a multirow panorama in PanoramaStudio Pro.

Shooting clockwisePanoramaStudio allows you to import multiple images at one time. In this case, the input images willbe arranged alphabetically and numerically respectively in ascending order. Since a series of imagestaken with a digital camera is also numbered serially in ascending order, shooting your scene clockwiseis recommended. Thus, you may save time reverting the series.

Maximum vertical coverage, zoomIn order to get maximum coverage of the scene, you should zoom out to wide angle position (shortestfocal length) if your camera is equipped with an optical zoom lens. If you like to use a long focal lengthfor higher detail, please use optical zoom. Digital zoom should be avoided whenever possible.

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3.1 What to take into account while shooting the photos? 7

Avoid zooming during shooting a series!It is critically important not to alter the focal length (zoom setting) during shooting a set of images fora panorama!

Single-row panoramas: Keep the horizon at constant altitude in your viewfinderTo achieve only minor clipping in a single-row panorama, you should try to aim your camera in a waythat the horizon is always located at constant altitude in the images especially when shooting withouttripod.Because of this, always try to shoot approximately in a constant angle relative to the horizon - upwards,downwards or straight ahead. Otherwise, the images would show up with a cascaded skew to one anotherafter assembling. Moreover, parts of the images would have to be removed during the cropping stage.The series of images will be assembled to a panorama such that they are projected either onto the surfaceof a cylinder or of a sphere.PanoramaStudio takes the actual position of the horizon into account in order to produce properlyadjusted projections with the right perspective. Therefore, you are not forced to arrange the imageswith the horizon vertically centered. Especially when capturing a landscape from an elevated viewpoint,aiming the camera downwards to the objects of interest rather than ‘waisting’ more than half of the canvaswith blue sky is recommended. You are also able to produce panoramas aiming upwards at high buildingsin a city. The adjusted perspective will also be reproduced correctly in interactive panoramas, so thatthe effect of ‘looking up’ or ‘looking down’ as experienced at the original shooting will be conserved.

How to turn around when shooting whitout a tripodMost important for the quality of your panorama is to turn around yourself and the camera properly.Basically, the camera needs to be as close as possible to the center of the scene. For this reason, try toturn around the camera rather than turning around yourself, so that the camera is the center. Holdingthe camera as close as possible to your body will be helpful. This is necessary anyway since you shouldalso use the viewfinder to keep control of the overlap of the images as discussed earlier. Therefore, youmight want to locate a turning point on the ground which you can use to verify the position of yourcamera before each image. Between any two images, this will help you to guarantee to turn aroundyour camera properly rather than around yourself. PanoramaStudio tries to minimize the remaininginaccuratenesses refering to that kind of shooting technique beetwen any two images as good as possible.Significant deviation from the optimal center of rotation will cause differences to consecutive imageswhich PanoramaStudio won’t be able to defeat. The reason for this is pretty easy to understand. If thecamera was not centered correctly to the scene, it would suffer a displacement when turned between twoimages. For two objects, their relative positions in the image would vary according to their distance tothe camera and its displacement. The resulting effect is called parallax. Thus, increased attention to thiseffect is recommended for scenes with very close objects.

How to turn around when shooting with a tripod

If you try to stick to the recommendations for shooting without a tripod as given above, PanoramaStudiowill be able to create high quality panoramas. The accurate but more intricate way of course is to use atripod. As for overlap and horizon, the same rules as given above apply. If you have a tripod available,it’s possible to perform the shooting with the camera centered to the scene almost perfectly. But still,a small parallax may remain. This is based on the fact, that actually, the focal point which is situatedsomewhere inside the lenses, needs to match with center of rotation.In this case, a special panoramic head for your tripod might help you out. A tripod/panoramic headis especially recommended for indoor shots. It is also very helpfull for multi-row panoramas withPanoramaStudio Pro, where you have to take several rows and a lot of images. This ensures a parallax-free panorama and you can rule out that you miss regions while shooting the scene.But, to point it out once again: tripods and corresponding special equipment might help to improve thequality of panoramas, but this type of equipment is not necessarily required.

Problems concerning exposureInhomogeneous lighting in the scene might cause problems. Especially the sun often causes signifantdifferences to the exposures of the images. Anyway, using automatic exposure control of the camera stillis recommended. PanoramaStudio equalizes a different brightness between the images. If you try to usea fixed exposure setting throughout all images, you would run the risk to over- or underexposure areas

8 Shooting the individual input images

in many images. Details which could have been restored otherwise using digital brightness adjustmentswould be lost.

Moving objectsMoving objects are a problem for panoramas spanning multiple images taken at different times, becausethey will appear at different locations in the scene. It’s always best to wait until no person or no carmoves anymore before you start shooting. This can be infeasible sometimes. Serious problems only arise,when a moving object appears in the overlapping area of two images. Thus, if movements cannot beavoided, try to shoot the images so that the moving objects are centered in the images not striking theoverlap areas. The closer the movements affect the left or right margin, the harder the differences beetwentwo overlapping images are to eliminate.

Hint: use panel/portrait format for single-row panoramasIn order to achieve maximum vertical coverage of the scene, of course, zooming out to the shortest focallength (wide angle) will be helpful. Further on, you still can gain even better results by holding thecamera in portrait orientation.

Chapter 4

Workflow -Creation of a panorama

4.1 How to create a panorama project

Every panorama is managed within a project which may be saved to disk and loaded again for furtherprocessing. The program always starts up with a dialog box where you can choose the project type.Here you have the option to assemble a single-row panorama, a document, or a multi-row panorama (onlyPanoramaStudio Pro). You can also import an existing panoramic image or open a PanoramaStudioproject file here.In addition you may create a new project by clicking on the New project icon in the toolbar or by choosingFile→New project from the menu.

4.2 How to import images

For a new panorama, the first step will always be to import the required individual input images into theproject. You may read in image files by clicking on the Import... symbol in the toolbar. Additionally,the same function is available in the menu at File →Import images... . Moreover, you may drag&dropimages with your mouse directly from the Windows user interface into the panorama project.When using the file chooser dialog box for importing, a thumbnail preview helps you to navigate easilythrough your images for your convenience. You may choose multiple images at one time arbitrarily withthe mouse from the file chooser dialog box by holding the Ctrl key. With the Shift key, you may choosemultiple successive images. Thus, all images required for one panorama can be imported easily in justone step.

In addition to the conventional image formats, PanoramaStudio can open images in RAW format for alarge number of cameras. This feature represents just a simple solution for quickly importing and stitch-ing such images. An extensive processing while converting and reading the RAW files is not provided.Please use a suitable RAW converter software if required. However, PanoramaStudio offers some basicoptions for importing RAW images. Select a RAW image in the import dialog box then you can openthe RAW options dialog box which provides some options to change the brightness, white balance, andcolor depth.

4.3 Single-row panorama: How to edit images

In a single-row panorama it may be neccessary to edit the images at first. The most frequent operationsare: arranging and rotating the images. The following options are not available for multi-row panoramas,because they are not required for the further processing.

Reverse order and re-arrangingIf multiple images are imported at the same time, PanoramaStudio arranges them in lexicographical orderby their filenames. In general, images shot with a digital camera are numbered consecutively. Thus, the

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10Workflow -

Creation of a panorama

images will appear in correct order, if they were taken clockwise. In any other cases, it may be necessaryto alter the arrangement of the images in the project.The menu item Input images→Reverse order as well as the corresponding button in the arrangementtoolbar (chap. 5.2.3, p.20) enables you to reverse the order of the images. If only some separate imageswere selected with the mouse, the arrangement will be reversed only for this images.Moreover, the position of the images may be altered via drag&drop. It’s recommended to switch to theoverview mode (see also chap. 5.2.2 (→ p.20)) and dragging the images to the desired position holdingthe left mouse key.

How to rotate imagesTo rotate images in steps of 90 degrees, use the menu items Input images →Rotate right, Rotate left, andRotate 180 degrees. As an example, you may want to rotate images from a series shot in portrait formatback to the right orientation by clicking either Input images →Rotate right or Input images →Rotateleft. Since these operations are used quite frequently, they may be also performed by clicking on thecorresponding buttons in the arrangement toolbar (chap. 5.2.3, p.20). These operations apply to eitherall images at a time, or just to the selected images, if an active selection exists.

How to select and rearrange individual imagesTo select either one or multiple images, just click on the corresponding image. Your selection will bevisualized by a red borderline. In order to gain better usability, you might want to switch to Overviewmode provided by the menu View. In this case, images will be displayed down-scaled in favor of a highnumber of visible images at a time. You can include several images into your selection by holding theCtrl key when clicking on the desired images. In order to select a contiguous sequence of images, holdthe Shift key.Selected images can be rearranged by moving them around via drag&drop. Just move the images to thedesired position while holding the mouse button. While moving around, a blue vertical line will show theresulting position of your selection.

How to rotate arbitrarilyIf the horizon slopes away in some images, it may be helpful to align just these images as horizontally aspossible. First, select the image which you want to adjust. For this operation, you may just select oneof the images. Now, choose Rotate current image arbitrarily ... from the Input images menu to open theRotate image dialog box (chap. 5.5.1, p.28). This dialog box enables you to enter any desired angle foryour rotation.

How to crop the imageScanned images for example may need to be cropped. Again, before calling the command Input images→Crop current image, the corresponding image has to be selected. The program automatically switchesto the crop mode for this image. Now, you can specify the cropping region by moving around the redlines. In order to rotate the red rectangle, click in one of the corners and move your mouse. By pressingthe OK button from the cropping dialog box, you confirm and apply the specified cropping.

How to remove images from the projectIt may happen that your project contains unnecessary images - e.g. if you shot a part of the scene twice,or if you did a 360 degree panorama where the first image might be identical to the last one. If youwant to remove such images from your project, just select the desired images and press the Del key.Alternatively, you may choose Input images →Remove selected images from the menu.

How to restore the original imagesIf you like to undo resizing, rotating, or cropping operations of input images, PanoramaStudio offers youto restore all images by reloading the original ones from disk. Clicking Input images →Restore originalimages causes the program to re-import the original images.

4.4 Setting parameters for the stitching process

Do parameters have to be declared?PanoramaStudio is able to automatically generate panoramas without any custom parameters specified

4.4 Setting parameters for the stitching process 11

by the user. However, specifying optional parameters may increase speed and quality of the stitchingprocess. There are two important parameters: the focal length of the images and the position of thehorizon.

4.4.1 Focal length and camera

A vital parameter for the computation is the focal length.If the imported images are shot by a digital camera, they might already provide information about theused focal length. According to the fact, that the images are taken by a digital camera or not and thatthe digital camera is known by PanoramaStudio, either one of the following cases applies:

Known digital cameraIf the images come from a digital camera which is present in the database of PanoramaStudio, you maysimply activate the Use focal length from EXIF option. Focal length will be taken from the so called Exiffocal length included in the image files.

Unknown digital cameraIf the digital camera cannot be recognized automatically on the base of the image files, but Exif infor-mation is still available, PanoramaStudio offers you to add this camera to its database. In this case, youwill find a button labeled New camera ... in the box Camera and lens (see also chap. 5.5.14 (→ p.41).As soon as you add the camera to the database, the camera will be detected afterwards, and image datawill be evaluated properly.

Other cameraIf the cases mentioned above don’t apply, you can specify the type of the camera with Camera type aswell as the type of the film. If you cannot specify the focal length, just leave the setting for the focallength at Focal length unknown (automatic). Apart from that, you can give either the exact value or anestimation for the focal length in the input field focal length. In the latter case, you will also have tospecify a percentage for the maximum deviation from the estimated value.

4.4.2 Lens

For most cameras and lenses the default setting Regular (low distortion) is appropriate. Only fewcameras need another setting here. For special wide angle lenses (fisheyes) you can switch to fullframefisheye or circular fisheye for a proper handling of such images.With Circular crop for circular fisheye images you have the option to edit the boundaries around theimages which will be cropped before further processing.

Some images, often from wide angle lenses, show a visible reduction of brightness to the imagecorners (vignetting). When you enable the Vignetting correction PanoramaStudio will automaticallyeliminate an existing brightness falloff so that the panorama shows a constant brightness afterwards.

When using the focal length from Exif data the information might be ’falsified’ if you used anadditional lens or converter lens mounted on top of the original lens because the camera might not takethe modified focal length into account. In this case, select the option Accessory lens used and specify thecorresponding conversion factor added by your accessory lens in the field Wide angle or tele converter .

4.4.3 Other settings

Single-row panorama: How to adjust the horizonFor single-row panoramas it is necessary to adjust also the horizon. You can either drag the red line onthe work space, or you directly enter it expressed as a percentage in the dialog box.Please note, that hills or mountains may be misleading since the actual horizon which is the line betweensky and flat countryside resides slightly beneath them. In case of buildings hiding the line of sight to thehorizon you still may give an estimation. If the camera didn’t always point to the same vertical anglewhile shooting, the position of the horizon may vary throughout several images. It is best to estimatethe horizon so that it corresponds to the middle of the horizons of all input images.

12Workflow -


Single-row panorama: ProjectionYou can specify the type of projection used for presentation of the panorama in the box Projection. It canbe chosen either Cylindrical projection or Spherical projection. Cylindrical projection causes the programto transform the images so that they fit to the surface of a cylinder when being assembled. If you wantthe images to be projected on the surface of a sphere, choose spherical projection in order to transformthe images properly. This type of projection causes the appearance of the upper and lower parts of thepanorama compressed/smaller for higher vertical angles when viewed on a flat canvas. The cylindricalprojection in contrary extends the appearance of the upper and lower parts of the images. It is up to youto decide which type of projection better suits your taste for further processing and printing.

Multi-row panorama: Quality of image detection / Optimize control pointsMulti-row panoramas offer the option to change the quality of the automatic image detection here. Asa rule the default setting (Normal) is the best choice for most panoramas. If some images could not beassigned or if images are not well aligned you can set the detection here to a higher level (High or Veryhigh ) to achieve a better alignment of the images. However, a higher detection level results in a moretime-consuming alignment.When the option to Optimize control points automatically is enabled, PanoramaStudio tries to sort outbad control points automatically while aligning the images. This often improves the overall quality of theimage alignment noticeably, since less bad or wrong control points affect the alignment of the images.

4.4.4 Glossary

What is the focal length?The focal length specifies the distance from the focal point of the lens to the projection layer. The projectionlayer is either the film or the CCD sensor. By taking the size of the film or the size of CCD sensor intoaccount, the focal length allows to compute the covered visible angle of the image. In order to process apanorama, the focal length needs to be given as precise as possible. As for analog cameras, the shortestadjustable focal length usually is in the range of 28 to 45mm.

What is 35mm film?The type of film which is used by most analog cameras - SLR or viewfinder - (so called 35mm cameras)is called 35mm film. A negative film has the dimensions of 24mm x 36mm. The APS format is anotheranalog film format with different dimensions.

What does 35mm equivalent mean?Since all analog 35mm cameras have the same film dimensions, they allow to directly compute the coveringangle of the image just with the given focal length.For digital cameras with their big variety of different CCD sensor dimensions, things are not that easy.The focal length itself is not that expressive or comparable. The specific CCD sensor dimensions wouldhave to be known.To achieve better comparability throughout different camera models, reference values are given expressedin focal lengths of corresponding 35mm cameras. PanoramaStudio uses this reference value, namely the35mm equivalent as focal length for digital cameras.

Exif dataMost digital cameras include additional information in their image files. This tagged information complieswith the so called Exif Standard. The exif data contains values for date of shooting, exposure, aperture,focal length, focus and numerous other information. PanoramaStudio uses the information about focallength and camera model. Therefore, the exif data is used to detect a digital camera model automaticallywith the image files. Such images from cameras known by PanoramaStudio can processed faster.

4.5 Aligning the images

After having imported the images and specified the according parameters, PanoramaStudio is able tostart the automatic alignment of the images of the panorama. Click on Align to choose between Create(partial) panorama and Create 360 degree panorama for a single-row panorama. Take into account thatthe first and the last image have to overlap for about 20 to 70 percent for a 360 degree single-rowpanorama. Check if the first or the last image may be removed from the project due to exhaustive

4.6 Applying manual adjustments 13

overlapping. Given these prerequisites, a 360 degree panorama with seamlessly matching edges to theright and to the left can be build.For a multi-row panorama the automatic alignment starts immediately after clicking Align. The multi-row mode does not distinguish between partial and 360 degree panoramas.The following calculation may take some minutes depending on the size and number of the image.

4.6 Applying manual adjustments

PanoramaStudio is designed to gain the best results possible for creating panoramas. However, if defectsor faults still occur in a generated panorama, you are free to manipulate every single processing step inorder to correct them.As a matter of fact, the harder the input images are to process, the more defects and faults will occur.Therefore, it is always best to take care for optimal input images in advance when shooting the scene.Please refer to the advices given in chap. 3.1 (→ p.6).

4.6.1 Which correction is to apply for which defect?

The most frequent defects and problems occuring in generated panoramas are listed in the following.

Two input images don’t match in the overlapping areaPlease refer to Change image alignment in chap. 4.6.3 (→ p.14).

Single-row panorama: Moving objects appear only partialPlease refer to Change blendings in chap. 4.6.6 (→ p.14).

Single-row panorama: Ghosting in images - parts of images which appear twice in parallelPlease refer to Change detail adjustments in chap. 4.6.5 (→ p.14).

Brightness differs between two imagesPlease refer to Adjust exposure correction in chap. 4.6.7 (→ p.15).

The entire panorama is too dark or too brightPlease refer to Adjust exposure correction in chap. 4.6.7 (→ p.15).

Lines between two images are not continuousPlease refer to Adjust focal length and horizon in chap. 4.6.2 (→ p.13).

The assembled images don’t seem to fit properlyPlease refer to Adjust focal length and horizon in chap. 4.6.2 (→ p.13).

Multi-row panorama: No assignment found for some imagesTry to re-align the images with a higher setting of the quality of detection parameter in the paramtersdialog box or insert manually some control points for these images with the control point editor. Pleaserefer also to Edit control points in chap. 4.6.4 (→ p.14).

Multi-row panorama: The panorama appears wavy or completely twisted in the previewPlease refer to Straighten horizon in chap. 4.6.8 (→ p.15).

4.6.2 Adjust focal length and horizon

The correct determination of focal length and horizon is critical for the quality of the panorama. Whereasthe horizon usually can be set easily from the Parameters dialog box (chap. 4.4, p.10), specifyingthe correct focal length might turn out to be quite sophisticated. If no data is available, automaticdetermination of the focal length will be exact mostly. However, there might be exceptions occasionally.Symptoms caused by an incorrect focal length are (see also figure 4.1):

• Straight lines get bended so that they form waves.

14Workflow -


• Even moving the image overlaps around manually doesn’t yield a proper overlap at all.

• Lines spanning multiple images bend differently.

Figure 4.1: Left: too much bending caused by a focal length set too short; right: insufficient bendingcaused by a too long focal length

Vertical lines, which appear arcuated in a panorama are cues for wrong barrel/pincushion correction.Either more correction is necessary, or the applied correction is overdone.To read about correction of focal length and horizon in more detail, please refer to chap. 6.3 (→ p.46).

4.6.3 Change image alignment

Image alignment depends on the position of two adjoining images relative to each other. If the relativeposition of two images cannot be determined properly by PanoramaStudio , several reasons are possible.If the image hosts only very view detail, automatic determination will become very difficult. But even awrong focal length may lead to wrong overlappings.However, overlapping between two images may be adjusted manually. Therefore, call the commandPanorama→Edit→Change image alignment. Further information for this adjustment mode is given inchap. 6.4 (→ p.49).

4.6.4 Multi-row panorama: Edit control points

In the multi-row mode the image alignment can also be affected with the Control point editor. Thereyou can inspect and edit all image links as well as add new links by adding control points between yetun-connected images. For further information please refer to chap. 5.5.5 (→ p.30).

4.6.5 Single-row panorama: Change detail adjustments

Since in practice even for exact processing and correct assembling two images never really match on apixel-by-pixel basis, the overlappings additionally will be subdivided into small tiles and adjusted locally.But it’s still possible, that no correction may be found automatically, or a tile will be processed faultily.A lack of details in the image can lead to faulty automatic detail adjustments for example.Visible ghosting - parts of images which show up twice and translucent like ghosts in the panorama -are an indication for a detail adjustment failure. The effect comes from two corresponding parts fromadjoining images which don’t match. Thus, the same part of the scene appears semi-transparent atdifferent locations. Great deviations even might lead to deformations of the panorama for parts of theimage.Such faults can be defeated by manually adjusting details. The detail adjustment mode allows you tomanually move around image tiles relative to each other in order to match them together.The detail adjustment mode can be reached by clicking Panorama→Edit→Change detail adjustments.The use is explained in more detail in chap. 6.5 (→ p.49).

4.6.6 Single-row panorama: Change blendings

The default procedure for blending two images will always blend throughout the entire overlapping areafor seamlessly assembling the images. However, defects or faults may occur in the panorama which cannot

4.7 Render the panorama 15

be defeated by the processing steps before.The most frequently occuring defect is caused by moving objects inside the overlapping area. Due toblending, these objects may appear twice like a ghost image.In the blending mode, you can modify the areas for blending so that problematic spots will be blindedout, as long as they don’t span the entire overlapping area.You can enter the blending mode by clicking Panorama→Edit→Change blendings. For further details,please refer to chap. 6.6 (→ p.51).

4.6.7 Adjust exposure correction

Adjusting the automatic exposure correction is the last step of the adjustment options. You may improvethe overall brightness of the entire panorama, or the brightness of individual input images.In case of a significantly differing brightness between two images, manual adjustments are recommendedto compensate the differences between adjoining images. Problems concerning the overall brightness ofthe panorama may be tackled by either affecting the strength of automatic exposure correction, or bycontrolling the brightness manually.Please refer to chap. 6.7 (→ p.52) for more details.

4.6.8 Multi-row panorama: Straighten horizon

PanoramaStudio Pro estimates the horizon of a multi-row panorama with an automatic procedure. Thisworks quite well for most scenes. In the remaining panoramas you can edit the orientation of the horizonmanually with the Straighten horizon mode. Use the command Panorama→Edit→Straighten horizon.You will find further details on how this mode works in chap. 6.8 (→ p.54).

4.6.9 Insert graphics

You can embed graphics, e.g. logos, into the panoramic image, which will be blended in the panoramawhen rendering the image. Call Panorama→Edit→Insert graphics to switch into the mode to edit andinsert graphics (chap. 6.9, p.55).

4.7 Render the panorama

When the image alignment with its optional adjustments is done, then you can finish the panoramawith the Render command which renders the panorama in high quality. Therefore, choose either Renderfrom the action toolbar, or Panorama→Render from the menu. PanoramaStudio switches then in amode where you can set some parameters regarding the output size, the quality and primarily the thecropping region.The initial rectangle for the cropping region is a suggestion from PanoramaStudio and indicated by ared rectangle. You can adjust the edges of the rectangle by dragging them with the mouse. By clickinginto a corner of the rectangle, you may rotate the cropping area if it is a partial single-row panorama.This will be indicated by a circular mouse pointer.You can also set the exact output size in the dialog box. Set the desired size either with the slider in theOutput size box or set the exact pixel size with the edit fields.As an option for a higher sharpness of image details you can set the Interpolation from bilinear tobicubic.You can even select a cropping region larger than the panorama. Thus you can accept some gaps tominimize the clipping of the panorama. The remaining gaps can either be filled with a color or smallgaps can be filled with a simple edge completion method matching the surrounding region. Select Addcolor in Color completion to fill the gaps with a color and choose the color with the color selectionbutton or select the Simple edge completion to fill the gaps with content similar to the surrounding regions.

You can confirm your settings and start the final calculation then by clicking the OK button. (chap.6.10, p.55)

4.8 Post-process the panorama - Resizing and optimizing

16Workflow -


Resizing: Change the pixel dimensionsTo change the size of the panorama, you may either select Panorama→Resize or click the Resize buttonfrom the action toolbar. A dialog box will appear where you can enter the new desired size either givenin pixel dimensions or as percentage. Please refer to Resize Panorama chap. 5.5.8 (→ p.33) for furtherdetails.

Optimizing image sharpness and colorsIf you want to optimize sharpness or coloring of the created panorama, you will find a range of filters eitherat the menu Panorama→Optimize or at the Optimize button on the action toolbar. More informationabout the use of the individual filters is given in chap. 5.5.9 (→ p.33). This is only a short summary oftheir functionalities:

• Sharpen - standard sharpening with several levels of intensity

• Unsharp mask - advanced sharpening

• Brightness/Contrast - adjust brightness, contrast and gamma correction

• Tone curves - arbitrarily adjusting tonal values

• Levels - adjusting the brightness intervals and gamma correction

• Color balance - adjusting colors for different brightness values seperately

4.9 Inserting hotspots

What are hotspots?A hotspots comprises an abitrary image area with a certain action attached to it. PanoramaStudiosupports hotspots containing URLs - links to websites. A URL may point to arbitrary destinations.These destinations usually contain other panoramas, or may provide additional information about themarked area of the particular hotspot.PanoramaStudio embeds hotspots into interactive panoramas using the PanoramaStudio Viewer. Thisformat either presents the hotspot by altering the mouse pointer when hovering over the marked areas, orsimply by showing these areas. Clicking on the hotspot will open the corresponding website or panorama.Thus, you may generate virtual tours just by linking several panoramas together with hotspots. The usermay switch to other panoramas by clicking on the hotspots. For information about how to generate apanorama for the PanoramaStudio Viewer please refer to chap. 5.5.11 (→ p.36).

Inserting and editing hotspotsTo switch to the hotspot mode for inserting and editing hotspots, just click on Hotspots in the actiontoolbar or select Panorama→Hotspots from the menu. The corresponding hotspot dialog box will appear.Existing hotspots will show up when switching to hotspot mode. To select and move hotspots around,just click on them. The markers allow you to modify their shape and size. With the dialog box, you caninsert new hotspots or delete existing ones. The URL for a selected hotspot can be entered as well as ashort description. Further details about editing hotspots are given in chap. 6.11 (→ p.57).

4.10 Saving and printing the panorama

Save the projectTo save the current project, select File→Save project or File→Save project as .... Additionally, you mayclick Save from the action toolbar and choose Save project as....The project may be saved at stage of the creation process - except while inside an edit mode. All necessaryinstructions will be saved into a project file, so that the current editing state with all its adjustmentsmay be restored when loading the project again.To avoid huge files, the input images will not be embedded into the project files. Therefore, the originalinput images will have to reside in the same directory as they were when saving the project file.

4.10 Saving and printing the panorama 17

However, to be able to pass on the project to other computers, just save the project file in the samedirectory where the input images are. The project file and the input images may be copied arbitrarily aslong as they reside in the same directory.

Save as imageTo export the panorama to the image file format of your choice, select Save as image ... from the Filemenu or from the Save button in the action toolbar. You may choose from the formats JPG, TIFF, BMP,PSD, PSB, PNG, TGA, PCX, and RAS. As for JPG, you may specify additional options concerning typeof compression, file size and image quality.

Save as interactive Panorama / Zoom ImageThe PanoramaStudio Viewer offers the option to save a panorama for interactive viewing. It showspanoramas embedded in websites using Flash or HTML5. The Viewer can display a panorama either in3D where the user is in the center of the scene and can view around or as a flat 2D zoom image wherethe user can scroll and zoom in the image. This allows to display nearly arbitrarily sized images andpanoramas on your local computer and embedded in webpages on the internet. This requires only aHTML5 capable web browser or the widely popular Flash plugin.Call File →Save as interactive Panorama / Zoom Image... or click on the corresponding command fromthe Save button in the action toolbar to save a panorama for the Viewer.Please refer to chap. 5.5.11 (→ p.36) for further information about the PanoramaStudio Viewer.

Save As Screensaver/.EXE (Windows only)Panoramas can also be saved as screensavers or self-running Windows programs. This type of interactivepanoramas can be viewed on all Windows computers without additional plugins. Call the File→Save AsScreensaver/.EXE... command or use the same command from the Save button in the action toolbar.Please refer to chap. 5.5.13 (→ p.40) for further information on panoramas in this file format.

Print the panoramaThe printing functionality of PanoramaStudio provides special features to support the requirements forwide format panoramas. Thus, the panorama may be printed as an extra large image spanning multiplepages. The size may be specified exactly. To generate an image without margins like a photographicpaper, the margins need to be cropped manually after printing the panorama. Printing crop marks willbe helpful for this purpose. Additionally, gluing marks maybe printed to assist you when assembling thesheets.When selecting File→Print from the menu or Print from the action toolbar, the Print preview dialog boxshows up. The preview sticks to the “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” paradigm by presenting the pagesexactly as they will be printed.

Create, save, and print other projections In the menu Panorama you find the Create projectioncommand. This allows to create perspective/planar projections from regions in the panoramic image.Furthermore you can create here the so called ”‘Little Planet”’ projections.Please refer to chap. 5.5.6 (→ p.31) for further information on these projections.

Chapter 5

The user interface

5.1 The action toolbar

Figure 5.1: The action toolbar

The buttons of the action toolbar correspond to the processing steps needed for creating and editing apanorama. Viewed from left to right, they represent the consecutive order of processing steps. Thus,you find every function needed starting from importing the images in order to create a panorama and toexport it to different file formats or to print it.

The buttons of the action toolbar viewed from left to right are...

Import...Opens the Import images dialog box. This dialog box enables you to load the input images into yourproject. See also chap. 4.2 (→ p.9).

Input imagesOpens a pop-up menu which is identical to the menu Input images from the menu bar. Mainly for single-row panoramas provides this pop-up menu all commands necessary for preparing the input images priorto the alignment. This involves e.g. changing the arrangement of the sequence, rotating and cropping.Please refer to chap. 5.3.3 (→ p.23) for an overview on the particular commands.

ParametersClick on Parameters to enter the mode for specifying focal length and camera information (chap. 6.3,p.46).

AlignCall Align to start the automatic alignment of the panorama. If you are in the document mode you cansimilarly start here the aligmnent of the images of the document. More on this in chap. 5.2.5 (→ p.21).

EditOpens a menu to choose from various edit modes. To gather more information about which type ofadjustment should be applied for an observed defect or fault, please refer to Applying manual adjustments,(chap. 4.6, p.13). The particular edit modes are explained in chap. 6 (→ p.43).

18

5.2 Other toolbars 19

RenderThis command starts the final calculation and renders the panorama in high quality and full resolution.See also chap. 6.10 (→ p.55).

ResizeUse the command Resize to alter the pixel dimensions of the panorama. The dialog box Resize panoramawill open to specify the new dimensions (chap. 5.5.8, p.33).

OptimizeThis pull-down menu offers you a selection of different image filters for improving sharpness and coloring(chap. 5.5.9, p.33).

HotspotsBy clicking Hotspots, you can enter the hotspots mode which enables you to insert and edit hotspots andalso lens flares in an interactive panorama. See also chap. 6.11 (→ p.57).

SaveThis command provides different options to save your panorama. You can save it as a project, as animage, or as interactive HTML5/Flash panorama.

PrintThe Print command will open the print preview. The print preview enables you to spread your panoramaover an arbitrary number of pages in any size and print it. Further details are given in Print previewdialog box (chap. 5.5.10, p.35).

5.2 Other toolbars

5.2.1 The project toolbar

Figure 5.2: The project toolbar

New ProjectCreates a new empty panorama project.

Open projectOpens an existing project from disk. The project will be restored to the state when stored the last time.Please notice that the imported images are not embedded into the project file, so that they have to residein the folder where they were originally imported from.

Save project Saves an existing project with its current filename. If the project was not saved before,the dialog box Save project as... will be opened.

Properties of current image/Panorama propertiesDepending whether the project still consists of individual images or a panorama already exists, a dialogbox providing image properties corresponding to the current image or to the existing panorama willappear.

Open manualOpens the PanoramaStudio manual.

20 The user interface

Figure 5.3: The view toolbar

5.2.2 The view toolbar

You can change the zoom of the view on the working area for single-row panoramas and the 2D view inmulti-row panoramas with the controls in the view toolbar.

Choosing the zoom levelA drop-down list offers a selection of different zoom scales for displaying the current project.

Zoom inIncreases the displayed image size for the current project.

Zoom outDecreases the displayed image size for the current project.

View in original sizeMatches the pixel resolution of screen and image. Each image pixel covers a pixel on the screen.

5.2.3 The arrangement toolbar (single-row panoramas only)

Figure 5.4: The arrangement toolbar

PanoramaStudio expects the images of a single-row panorama arranged in the right order and rotated inthe right orientation previous to the automatic alignment. All necessary commands are available in thearrangement toolbar.

Reverse orderThe command Reverse order reverses the arrangement of the images in the project. If no images areselected, the order of all images will be reversed. If two or more images are selected, only the order ofthe selected images will be reversed.

Rotate rightRotate right applies a clockwise rotation by 90 degrees to the selected input images. If no images areselected, all images of the project will be rotated.

Rotate 180 degreesRotate 180 degrees rotates either all images or if images are selected, just the selected ones by 180 degrees.

Rotate leftRotate left applies a counter-clockwise rotation by 90 degrees to either all images or if images are selected,just the selected ones.

5.2.4 The overview

The overview toolbar provides a thumbnail display of the entire project. The currently visible area ofthe project is indicated by a red rectangle. You may navigate through the project by clicking with themouse to the area of your interest. Holding down the mousebutton and moving it around enables you toscroll through the entire project canvas.A large overview window can be opened by double-clicking or right-clicking the small overview.

5.3 The menu 21

Figure 5.5: The overview

5.2.5 The task type bar

Figure 5.6: The task type bar

In an empty project you can change the task type with the selection in the task type bar. Besides Single-row panorama, PanoramaStudio provides with Merge document a mode for merging overlapping partialimages of a large document. PanoramaStudio Pro offers as task type also Multi-row panorama, whichallows to stitch arbitrary arranged images.

5.3 The menu

5.3.1 File menu

Figure 5.7: The File menu

• New projectCreates a new empty panorama project.

• Open projectOpens an existing project from disk. The project will be restored to the state when stored the lasttime. The imported images are not embedded into the project file, so that they have to reside inthe folder where they where originally imported from.

• Save projectStores an existing project with its current filename. If the project was never saved before, the dialogbox Save project as... will be opened.


• Save project asOpens the Save project as... dialog box to store the current project with a new filename.

• CloseCloses the current project.

• Import imagesOpens the Import images dialog box. This dialog enables you to load the input images into yourproject. See also chap. 4.2 (→ p.9).

• Save as imageTo export the panorama to the image file format of your choice, select Save as image ... from theFile menu or from the Save button in the action toolbar. You may choose from the formats JPG,TIFF, PSD, PSB, BMP, PNG, TGA, PCX, and RAS. For JPG, you may specify additional optionsconcerning the type of compression, file size and image quality.

• Save as interacive Panorama / Zoom ImageOpens the dialog box to save the panorama for the PanoramaStudio Viewer. Here you may save thecurrent panorama as interactive 2D or 3D Flash or HTML5 panorama including hotspots. This typeof panorama format can be viewed with any Flash enabled or HTML5 capable internet browser.Please refer to the section Save for PanoramaStudio Viewer dialog box (chap. 5.5.11, p.36) forfurther details.

• Save as Screensaver/.EXEOpens the dialog box for saving the current panorama as a screensaver or self-running Windowsprogram. A detailed description of the functionality can be found in the section Save as Screen-saver/.EXE dialog box (chap. 5.5.13, p.40).

• Import/ExportThis menu item comprises the various possibilities to either import existing panoramas or exportthe current panorama project as a series of individual images for further processing.

– Export individual imagesThis function allows you to export the transformed images after the stitching process forfurther editing with external professional image editing software.The function Export individual images will save the images separately so that they can beassembled later to the panorama as computed by PanoramaStudio.Three different image file formats are supported. You may specify for each of these three fileformats whether you like to embed the blending information within the alpha channel or not(Blendings in alpha channel). These image file formats are available:

∗ Photoshop PSD format. Each image will be stored in a separate layer of a photoshopimage file.

∗ Series of TIFF files. A numbered series of tiff files will be generated. Each file will containone transformed input image of the panorama.

∗ Multipage TIFF. A multipage TIFF image file will be generated. Every page will containone transformed input image of the panorama.

– Import panoramic imageThis item serves to import an already existing panoramic image. After loading the desiredpanoramic image, a dialog box for setting parameters for further processing will open.These parameters are necessary for converting the panorama correctly into an interactivepanorama since no information about the type of panorama as well as the covered viewingangle is provided with the image file. However, these parameters are critical for correctlyprojecting the panorama with interactive viewers.These parameters should be set as accurate as possible. As for 360 degree panoramas, theadjustable parameters are restricted to the projection type (cylindrical or spherical) and theposition of the horizon. If the panorama doesn’t cover 360 degrees, the Horizontal field-of-viewshould be guessed as accurate as possible.

• Print panoramaOpens the print preview. Here, the panorama can be spread over multiple pages in an arbitrarysize. It then can be printed as poster with glue margins and crop marks. As a matter of fact,printing to just one page is possible as well. See also Print preview dialog box (chap. 5.5.10, p.35).

5.3 The menu 23

• Settings...Opens the Settings dialog box for program configuration and administration of the camera database.Please refer to section Configuring PanoramaStudio (chap. 7, p.60) for further details.

• ExitCloses all open panorama projects and exits PanoramaStudio.

5.3.2 View menu

Figure 5.8: The View menu

• Zoom inUse Zoom in, if you want to display the images or the panorama at a higher zoom level.

• Zoom outUse Zoom out, if you want to display the images or the panorama at a lower zoom level.

• Original sizeUse Original size to match the pixel resolution of the screen and the images. Each image pixelcovers a pixel on the screen.

• OverviewUse Overview to fit the display size of the images or the panorama to the current window size.

• Work spaceThe Work space item contains a selection of color schemes for the work space. Among the choicesare white, dark gray, and black as background for the images, the preview, and the dialog boxes.

• Show gridIn multi-row projects PanoramaStudio Pro shows a grid overlay in the 3D and 2D view to illustratethe spatial orientation. Use Show grid to show or hide this grid.

• Image ManagerOpens the input image manager. See also chap. 5.4 (→ p.27).

5.3.3 Input images menu

• Select allUse Select all to select all images.

• Deselect allUse Deselect all to deselect all images.

• Mask current imageOpens the dialog box for editing a mask, which allows to exclude image regions from being used inthe panorama (chap. 5.5.2, p.28).

• Show in Explorer/FinderOpens the folder containing the selected image in the Windows Explorer and OS X Finder respec-tively.


Figure 5.9: The Input images menu

• Properties of current imageOpens the Image information dialog box with in-depth information about the selected image (chap.5.5.3, p.29).

• Replace selected imagesReplaces selected images with others while transfering all calculated parameters to the new images.Allows for example the creation of identical panoramas for HDR panoramic images. After thecreation of a panorama from one exposure level replace the images with the correspondent imagesof another exposure level to create another panorama with a different exposure.

• Remove selected imagesRemoves the select images from the project.

Only for single-row panoramas and documents:

• Reverse orderThe command Reverse order reverses the arrangement of the images in the project. If no imagesare selected, the order of all images will be reversed. If two or more images are selected, only theorder of the selected images will be reversed.

• Rotate rightRotate right applies a clockwise rotation by 90 degrees to the selected input images. If no imagesare selected, all images of the project will be rotated.

• Rotate 180 degreesRotate 180 degrees rotates either all images or if images are selected, just the selected ones by 180degrees.

• Rotate leftRotate left applies a counter-clockwise rotation by 90 degrees to either all images or if images areselected, just the selected ones.

• Rotate current image arbitrarilyThis function is available for input images as long as just one image is selected. The Rotate imagedialog box allows to specify an arbitrary rotation angle (chap. 5.5.1, p.28).

• Crop current imageThis function is also available for input images as long as just one image is selected. PanoramaStudioswitches into Crop image mode (chap. 6.10, p.55).

5.3 The menu 25

• Restore original imagesReloads the images from disk to reset them to their original state from the very beginning.

5.3.4 Panorama menu

Figure 5.10: The Panorama menu

• ParametersBy clicking Parameters a dialog box opens for specifying the focal length and other camera infor-mation → p.46.

For single-row panoramas:

• Align (partial) panoramaStarts the automatic alignment of the images for a partial single-row panorama.

• Align a 360 degree panoramaStarts the automatic alignment for a single-row 360 degree panorama.

For multi-row panoramas:

• Align panoramaStarts the automatic alignment for a multi-row panorama.

For documents:

• Merge documentYou can start the image alignment in the document mode with Merge document. More on this inchap. 5.2.5 (→ p.21).

• EditOpens a menu to choose from various edit modes. To gather more information which type ofadjustment should be applied for an observed defect or fault, please refer to Applying manualadjustments, (chap. 4.6, p.13). The particular correction modes are explained in chap. 6 (→ p.43).

• RenderHere you set the parameters for the final step of the panorama creation which renders the image inhigh quality. Therefore, PanoramaStudio switches to an edit mode where you can set the outputsize and the cropping region of the panorama. See also chap. 6.10 (→ p.55).

• ResizeUse the command Resize to alter the pixel dimensions of the panorama. The dialog box Resizepanorama will open to specify the new dimensions (chap. 5.5.8, p.33).


• OptimizeThis pull-down menu offers you a selection of different image-processing filters for improving sharp-ness and coloring (chap. 5.5.9, p.33).

• HotspotsBy clicking Hotspots, you may enter the hotspots mode which enables you to insert and edit hotspots.See also chap. 6.11 (→ p.57).

• Create projectionUse Create projection to create other projections from the panoramic image. You can create hereprojections from image regions in a perspective correct manner and also so called ”Little Planet”projections. This command opens the corresponding dialog box. For details please refer to chap.5.5.6 (→ p.31).

• Reset completelyUse Reset completely to discard all settings and adjustments for the panorama project and to restorethe input images to their original state.

• Edit locationOpens the dialog box Edit location where you can add and edit GPS coordinates of the panorama(chap. 5.5.7, p.32).

• Panorama propertiesOpens the Panorama properties dialog box which provides information about the panorama in thecurrent state (chap. 5.5.4, p.29).

5.3.5 Window menu

Figure 5.11: The Window menu

• CascadeArranges the project windows so that they overlap.

• Tile verticallyArranges the project windows vertically in a non-overlapping style.

• Minimize allMinimizes all project windows.

5.3.6 Help menu

• Open manualOpens the PanoramaStudio manual.

• How to order PanoramaStudioProvides information on how to purchase PanoramaStudio .

• Enter license keyOpens a dialog box to enter the license key you obtained for PanoramaStudio .

• AboutShows program information.

5.4 Image manager 27

Figure 5.12: The Help menu

5.4 Image manager

You can open the Image Manager with View→Image Manager. It shows in any stage of the panoramacreation an overview of the used input images. The image manager shows image information and afterthe image alignment the detected parameters for every image.

After the image alignment you can use the image manager e.g. to open an edit mode for a spe-cific input image (chap. 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, or 6.7). You can also edit the mask of a specific image (chap. 5.5.2,p.28) or replace selected images with others while keeping all calculated parameters for each replacedimage.

Replacing images after the Render stage e.g. allows for HDR panoramas to render at first a pa-norama from one exposure step and then using Replace to create an identical panorama of thecorresponding images of another exposure step.


5.5 The dialog boxes

5.5.1 The Rotate image dialog box

Figure 5.13: The Rotate image dialog box

The Rotate image dialog box allows you to rotate an image by an arbitrary angle very precisely. Therefore,even subtly misaligned shoots may be corrected so that the horizon will match horizontally again. This iscritical for assembling the images, because adjacent images can only be merged correctly when all imagesare in line with each other.The option auto-crop borders automatically crops the undefined areas caused by rotating the image. Agrid can be displayed by clicking Show grid for better orientation while rotating.

5.5.2 The Edit mask dialog box

You can mask the input images of the panorama. With a mask you can prevent unwanted regions of animage from being used in the panorama. This allows to exclude moving persons (which would otherwisemaybe appear twice in the result), a tripod or other moving objects within the overlapping regions of theimages from being used in the resulting panoramic image.With this dialog box you can edit the mask of an image. Choose an image from the list and edit themask with the mouse. You can add regions to the mask with the left button and remove regions withthe right button. With the controls on the right side of the dialog box you can change the brush size andthe preview color indicating the mask.

5.5 The dialog boxes 29

5.5.3 The Image information dialog box

Figure 5.14: The Image information dialog box

This dialog box provides information about the selected image in the current project. This informationcomprises location on the storage device, file type and image dimensions. If available, existing Exifinformation will be displayed as well. This includes focal length, exposure, ISO setting, aperture, etc.

5.5.4 The Panorama properties dialog box

Figure 5.15: The Panorama properties dialog box

The Panorama properties dialog box displays information on the created panorama, especially the pixeldimensions, the corresponding size expressed in megapixels, the applied focal length and the resultingcovering angle of the entire panorama.


5.5.5 The control point editor (only PanoramaStudio Pro)

To edit the image alignment for a multi-row panorama you can use the control point editor as an alterna-tive to the Change image alignment mode. The images of a panorama are connected with pairs of controlpoints. PanoramaStudio tries to match the control points in the alignment stage as exactly as possible.To modify the image alignment you can therefore add, edit, and delete control points in this editor.On the working area of this dialog box you can contrast one image with another. You have the option toselect the images from the image lists above the working area or you can select an existing pair of linkedimages with a double-click in the image links tab.The list on the image links tab shows all existing image connections. It shows each link with the numberof control points and their average difference in the aligned panorama. The difference is a measure onhow good the images are matched. Bad values are an indicator for a wrong image link or for at leastsome bad control points. If numerous image links have a bad alignment then this is an indicator for awrongly set focal length or strong lens distortion.

Edit image links and control pointsTo add an image link open the two corresponding images in the editor and add at least three controlpoints. If two images are connected wrongly, you can remove the connection using Remove link.

Add a control point pair using the point tool by selecting a common feature in the two images inthe left and right editor window. With the area tool you can select common areas and PanoramaStudiowill automatically search and add control points within these areas.To delete existing control points, select them in the control point list or in the working area and removethem with the Del key. With the point tool active you can drag and adjust bad placed control pointswith the mouse. PanoramaStudio shows a small magnifier attached to the mouse pointer or the selectedcontrol point to allow a better estimation of the control point position. The exact position of the controlpoint accords to the cross-hair in the middle of the magnifier.

With Re-arrange all control points PanoramaStudio calculates all control points again based onthe current parameters and all current image links. The command Remove bad control points checks allcontrol points in the panorama and deletes automatically control points, if they are classified as bad orwrongly assigned.PanoramaStudio re-aligns the images with Update alignment and updates the information about thequality of the control points. The images of the panorama will be re-aligned also if you leave the editorwith OK.


Figure 5.16: The control point editor

5.5.6 The Create projection dialog box

Planar/perspective projection

The completed panorama is either represented by a cylindrical or a spherical projection. Such imagesget bended when displayed on a flat surface rather than a cylinder or a sphere. Horizontal, straight linesturn into curves. On the other hand, a flat surface may not display a 360 degree panorama otherwise.However, it is possible to extract regions of the image for flat presentation so that they actually look likebeing taken with an ordinary camera. This is the purpose of perspective or planar projection.The dialog box for planar/perspective projections enables you to extract views from the panorama witha covering angle of up to 160 degrees. Thus, it is possible to artificially create images which actuallywould have required a super wide angle lens under real world conditions.For this purpose, the dialog box provides a preview as it can be seen in figure 5.17. It shows a certainsection of the panorama. With the left mouse button pressed, you can scroll left, right, up, and down.With the mousewheel you can zoom the view in and out.The section may also be set explicitly by specifying numerical values in the Parameters box. The inputboxes Horizontal direction and Vertical direction are to specify the viewing direction. Possible valuesfor horizontal direction range from 0 degrees to 360 degrees depending on the panorama. The verticaldirection theoretically may vary between -90 degrees and +90 degrees whereas negative values symbolizeviewing downwards and positive values symbolize viewing upwards.The Horizontal field-of-view (HFOV) expresses the angle which covers the visible image area along ahorizontal line. This value directly corresponds to the focal length or zoom level the image was actuallyshot with the camera.

So called converging lines are often an unwanted effect e.g. in architectural photography. Tiltingthe camera up or down results in converging verticals. Straight, vertical lines appear no longer vertical,objects (buildings) seem to tilt backwards. Enable the option Avoid converging verticals to avoid thiseffect and keep verticals vertical up to a certain tilt of the virtual camera.The option Restrict to valid area restricts the virtual camera to areas, which are covered by thepanoramic image. If you disable this option you can pan the camera within the complete environment.The option Bicubic interpolation lets PanoramaStudio render the image using an interpolation methodresulting in higher image sharpness as the default bi-linear interpolation method. To specify the pixeldimensions of the new image, enter the desired values in the Destination size box. Defaults providessome frequently used standard values. Max. width and Max. height allows to specify custom values. For


Figure 5.17: The Create projection dialog box

example, a pixel dimension of 4000 x 1800 pixels corresponds to the resolution of a five-megapixel digitalcamera which is far sufficient for printing on letter format. Note that the Destination size box specifiesonly maximum values. The actual image dimensions can be smaller in case of unsufficient width orheight of the original panorama. The resulting dimensions are displayed in the Result line. The previewarea shows the actual resulting display window.Further on, image quality of the perspective projection depends on the size of the panorama. Thus, theline Initial size in the Parameters box displays the size of the underlying panorama. The initial size givesan idea for reasonable dimensions for the projected image. Destination sizes unreasonably exceedingthe initial sizes will cause blurred image details due to extensive magnification. The same applies forprojections with high zoom settings - blurring will be clearly identifiable with the preview in such cases.To assist you selecting reasonable projection parameters, PanoramaStudio rates your current settings atQuality of image resolution for the selected window size. This rating comprises destination size, displaydetail and initial pixel dimensions.The Render button triggers the generation of the projected image as displayed in the preview area withthe specified dimensions. When done, the dialog box switches to the Result tab to show the renderedimage. This tab allows you to save the image (Save as...) or to print it using the built-in poster printingfeature (Print...).

Little Planet projection

Besides the option for planar projection you can also create so called Little Planets or stereographicprojections from a panoramic image. This projection type is especially suitable for full spherical 360x180degree panoramas created with the multi-row mode of PanoramaStudio Pro. The Little Planet projectiondisplays a spherical panorama projected from above onto a plane. This allows to create fascinating viewsfor suitable panoramic images.

5.5.7 The Edit location (Geotagging) dialog box

With Edit location you can assign or edit the GPS coordinates of a panorama. The GPS data will beadded as metadata to the panoramic image when saved. This allows numerous other applications andonline services to automatically assign the panorama to a location.Longitude and latitude can be written in decimal notation (e.g. -74.0445) or degree notation (e.g. W74◦2’40.2” or 74◦2.670’ W). Alternatively, you can copy a Url from Google Maps, Bing Maps, or Yahoo Maps


Figure 5.18: Little Planet projection

containing location information into one of the fields for latitude or longitude. You can furthermore definethe orientation of the image center in degrees and the height above sea level in meters.

5.5.8 The Resize panorama dialog box

The Resize Panorama dialog box allows you to alter the pixel dimensions of the created panorama.

Height, widthChange width and height of the panorama. Specify new pixel sizes for width and height either directly, orexpressed as percentage. Changing a value automatically causes the corresponding value to be updated.

Keep aspect ratioWhen selected, this checkbox causes width and height to be updated so that the original aspect ratioalways remains constant.

Real-world dimensionsComputes the real-world image dimensions for the panorama assuming it was printed or displayed at thegiven resolution. You may choose from mm, cm and inches. The Assuming resolution textbox allows youto enter an arbitrary resolution given as Dpi (pixels/inch) as input to this computation. The resolutionof a 17-inch CRT monitor with 1024x768 pixels per inch for example roughly corresponds to 80 dpi.

5.5.9 Filters for optimizing image quality

All filter dialog boxes comprise a preview. The two buttons beneath the preview allow to switch betweena split and a regular view. With the split view, you may directly compare the original image with thefiltered one whereas the regular view only displays the latter.


Figure 5.19: The Resize panorama dialogbox

All filter dialog boxes can be closed without any effect by clicking Cancel. Reset restores the settingswhen the dialog box was opened.

Sharpen

Sharpen offers simple sharpening with three levels of intensity to choose from.

Unsharp mask

Contrary to how it sounds, this filter provides a high-quality sharpening. The name stems from the fact,that the image will be compared with a blurred copy and the differences will be used to increase contrast.With the Radius box you can adjust the radius where sharpening information for a pixel will be searched.Threshold determines the minimum brightness difference to the original pixel sufficient to replace it.

Brightness/Contrast

Adjusts contrast and brightness of an image. Additionally, Gamma correction can be applied to brightenor darken the midtones of an image. In general, the latter method performs better since light and darkareas remain unchanged.

Tone curves

The Tone curve dialog box enables you to redistribute the levels of luminances. It provides a histogrammillustrating the luminance distribution by clustering the pixels according to their gray value for yourconvenience. Initially, the dialog box starts up with no changes to the luminance distribution which isrepresented by a straight line from the lower left to the upper right corner of the graph. Each point ofthis tone curve corresponds to a distinct original luminance value and some destination luminance value.The original value can be found in the horizontal gray scale beneath its corresponding point, and thedestination value is displayed by the vertical gray scale to the left at the vertical position of the point.Moving or bending the tone curve upwards for example would brighten the image.Additionally, this redistribution can be applied to single color channels specified by the Channel listboxin the same way. The Mode listbox offers three manipulation procedures for the tone curve:

• Manual: The course of the tone curve can be modified by redrawing it with the mouse. Applyingthe Smooth button will smooth the curve.

• Curve: Set anchors by clicking with the mouse and move them around to the desired position.Pulling one anchor very close to another one removes it. These anchors specify the tone curvewhich is automatically interpolated through all of them.


• Linear: Anchors are to be set and moved around like in Curve mode. In contrast to the previousmode, this mode generates the tone curve by directly connecting the anchors with straight lines.

Load and Save enables you to save your custom redistribution settings for later use.

Levels

The Levels dialog box serves to adjust the luminance distribution of the image. The ruler for the Inputvalues limits the input luminance range. This range will be stretched to the range given in Outputvalues. To enhance contrast for example, limit the input range, but leave the output range maximal.While light and dark areas will collapse, the contrast for the midtones will increase. To make the imagelook foggy, leave the input range maximal but compress the output range. The entire image will loosecontrast. Very light and very dark areas turn foggy.Additionally, the Gamma ruler enables you to apply a gamma correction to the result of the levelstransformation.All operations may be applied either to all colors at once (grey channel), or to each color channel,namely red, green and blue, at once.

Color balance

The Color balance control enables you to perform color correction in selected light, mid or dark areas ofthe picture. Incorrectly balanced colors in a picture can be corrected by adjusting the balance betweenred-cyan, green-magenta and blue-yellow.

5.5.10 Print preview dialog box

Figure 5.20: The Print preview dialog box

You can adjust the size and position of the image to be printed, and configure your printer using thePrint preview dialog box. A panorama can be printed on a single sheet of paper, or in poster size on anynumber of sheets. Additionally, you can print crop marks and glue edges.

The preview windowThe chosen position and arrangement of the panorama picture on the poster pages can be viewed in thepreview window. Particular problems, for example low ink levels, can occur when printing a poster on


more than one page, sometimes making it necessary to re-print some pages. For this reason, each page inthe print preview has a checkbox. If every page is checked, the entire poster will be printed. To re-printindividual pages you should open the pop-up menu by a right-click. There, you can call Deselect all andmark just the desired pages again.

The toolbar

• Print - Starts the printing process

• Setup... - Opens the System dialog, so you can select and configure the printer (e.g. page orienta-tion)

• Fit poster - Fits all pages of the displayed poster into the preview window.

• Zoom in - Increases the size of the previewed image

• Zoom out - Decreases the size of the previewed image

• Quit - Closes the Print Preview

Image

• Width, Height - Here you can define the exact size of the image to be printed, in millimeters orinches

• -10%, +10% - Increases or decreases the present size of the image in 10 percent increments.

• Fit to page width, Fit to page height - increases the size of the panorama image so that the widthor height corresponds to the width or height of the allocated page.

• Position - Here you can determine the position of the panorama on the paper.

Settings

• Page Borders - This is used to specify the page margin, again in mm or inches.

• Markers: Crop marks and glue edges - Mark these fields when you want to print crop marks orglue edges with your picture. The glue edges indicate where to apply the adhesive used to stickthe individual pages together. Crop marks show you where to trim the pages in order to obtain aborderless poster.

• Trapping - One of the difficulties encountered while joining the individual pages is the accuratecutting of page edges. The slightest inaccuracy can lead to white edges showing between gluedsheets.This can be avoided by using the trapping tool, which enables you to print an overlap of up to 2mm, at the left and upper page edges. This means you don’t have to cut the sheet edge quite soprecisely, and you can also avoid gaps when gluing the sheets together.

5.5.11 The Save as interactive Panorama / Zoom Image dialog box

This dialog box lets you save your panorama as an interactive 2D or 3D panorama. Therefore,PanoramaStudio provides its own viewer, called the PanoramaStudio Viewer. This is a stand-alonesoftware included in the PanoramaStudio installation. The PanoramaStudio Viewer is based on Flashand HTML5. In this dialog box you can configure many of the parameters of the PanoramaStudio Viewer.PanoramaStudio creates then all necessary data for the Viewer fully automated when you save the pa-norama. The saved panorama can be viewed in any Flash enabled internet browser and on supporteddevices and browsers using HTML5 also without Flash. The panoramas can be viewed locally on thecomputer as well as embedded in websites on the internet. Users can control these panoramas using themouse or on touch enabled devices with the finger.


Figure 5.21: The Save as interactive Panorama / Zoom Image dialogbox

The hotspots feature in PanoramaStudio also allows to build virtual tours of multiple connected panora-mas. You can read more about this topic at chap. 6.11 (→ p.57).When you save a panorama for the Viewer, a number of files are generated in the target folder. Themain file is a HTML file, which is opened in your internet browser. Furthermore, a XML file with allparameters, a folder with the image data and the Viewer files itself are copied to the target folder. Toview such a panorama just open the main HTML file. If you copy a Viewer panorama ensure that youcopy all created files and that these files remain in the same folder.With the selection at Display type you can select if the panorama is displayed as a flat 2D zoom imageor as interactive 3D panorama. In a 3D panorama the viewer is in the center of the scene and can lookaround. In a 2D zoom image the user can zoom and scroll in the image.

SettingsIn the Settings field you’ll find the most important parameters for the configuration of the panoramaand the Viewer respectively.The Advanced settings button opens a further dialog, in which many more parameters for the configu-ration of the Viewer and the panorama playback can be adjusted. You can find a description of thesefunctions in the section Advanced settings for the Viewer.

The Field-of-view... button opens a small dialog box for the adjustment of the field-of-view pa-rameters.The easiest way to set the viewing direction is the use of the graphical preview with Set in preview mode.It opens another dialog box showing a view similar to the initial display of the saved panorama. Thereyou can set the position and the field-of-view with the mouse and the mouse wheel, respectively.You can also set viewing direction numerically with the parameters Pan and Tilt. They respectivelydetermine the position of horizontal pan and vertical tilt of the field-of-view. You can adjust the extentof the initial field-of-view by setting the HFov (horizontal field-of-view). In the Min and Max fields youcan set the smallest and largest field-of-view. Usually, using a low resolution means there’s no reasonto set a very low value here, as zooming in too tightly merely reveals a lack of detail. In this case, it isuseful to limit yourself to a relatively large minimum field of view.

At Quality settings... you can open a dialog box for configuring the image file and display qual-ity. First, you can set the quality of the image files with image quality (JPEG). The images are stored


in the JPEG format. You can set three quality levels affecting the file size and image quality of the JPEGs.

Create additional HTML5 versionThis option enables you to create an additional version based on JavaScript/CSS3/WebGl especially formobile devices which often doesn’t support Flash. PanoramaStudio creates all necessary files automati-cally without any additional effort for you to provide interactive panoramas also for these devices.The HTML5 version is embedded together with the Flash version in the HTML page and it will auto-matically select the right version for the device it is running on.However, the HTML5 export in the current version does not support all the features of the Flash version,partly due to technical reasons. For virtual tours only bitmap hotspots can be used and there are notoolbars, tooltips, textboxes, and no lens flares available.

Window sizeThe Window size is the size in pixels of the Viewer window. This will be the size of your panoramawindow as it appears in the browser. If the Fit to page option is checked, then the panorama or zoomimage will cover the complete browser window. The HTML5 version always covers the complete browserwindow.

Panorama output sizeYou can use the Output size option to save a downscaled version of the panoramic image. But, since thePanoramaStudio Viewer loads only the parts of the image which are necessary for display, the outputsize has not that much influence on the bandwidth or the loading time. Therefore you can also save verylarge panoramas in full size even for displaying them on websites. Large panoramas just need more diskspace.

License informationYou will need a separate license for the Viewer, if you wish to use the PanoramaStudio Viewer as part ofa commercial website. When you have acquired a license key for this purpose, you can enter it here. Youfind more information and the current version of the Viewer on our website: http://www.tshsoft.com

5.5.12 Advanced settings for the PanoramaStudio Viewer

In the Advanced settings... you can configure several parameters of the PanoramaStudio Viewer.

GeneralYou can enter a name for your panorama in the field Title. This name will appear in the Viewer’s statusbar. The Language setting allows to set the Viewer texts to english, french, and german. You can choosethe color and background color of the embedded text with the Text color and Shadow color buttons.Furthermore, registered Viewers allow to feature an own logo in place of the PanoramaStudio Viewerlogo. Therefore you can select an image file as logo at Own logo. The URL field can be used to providea hyperlink on your logo.The Background music or sound field allows to embed a MP3 sound file into the panorama.If the Visible hotspots field is checked, the hotspots will be visible with the startup of the Viewer,otherwise they remain invisible and will only appear when the mouse hovers over a hotspot.

ToolbarAmong other things, the Viewer offers the option of a toolbar with buttons for navigation and for showingor hiding hotspots. If you wish to show this toolbar within the Viewer, please check the Show toolbarbox. By clicking on the Configure toolbar... button, you can modify the appearance of the toolbar in anadditional dialog box.

Toolbar Settings: GeneralIn the General box you find the settings for the Layout, Button design and the Position of the toolbar.There are three pre-defined layouts and 14 pre-defined button designs you can choose from.

http://www.tshsoft.com


Figure 5.22: The dialog box Settings for the PanoramaStudio Viewer

Toolbar: Button settingsThe button settings allow to change the size of the buttons and you can configure if the toolbar containsa fullscreen button and an Auto Play button.

BorderYou have the option to add a small border around the Viewer. Check the Show border box to do this.The color of the field can be chosen by clicking the Border color button.

Controls (in 3D view)In the Controls box you can configure the properties for the interaction with the Viewer in the 3D view.With Mouse control and Touch control you can configure the control type for mouse and touch devices.Set it to Move camera to pan the scene in the direction of the movement, set it to Drag image to graband drag the panorama.

Auto PlayAuto Play allows you to set the parameters for the automatic playback of your panorama. Auto play isactive when the Activate auto play box is ticked. User interaction with the Viewer stops auto play. Itthen restarts after the amount of time which is set in the field Restart after user interaction is elapsed.The direction of movement can be set by entering the desired values in the Auto pan rate and Auto tiltrate boxes. The first defines the horizontal movement of the camera, and the second defines the verticalmovement. Each time the viewing direction reaches the edge of the panorama, the direction of movementis reversed. The auto zoom behaves in a similar manner, and is set in the Auto zoom rate field. A valueof 1.0 has no effect. Values less than 1.0 perform a “zoom in”, values bigger than 1.0 perform a “zoomout”.

SettingsAll settings can be saved for future use by clicking the Save button.


5.5.13 The Save As Screensaver/.EXE dialog box (Windows only)

Figure 5.23: The dialog box Save As Screensaver/.EXE

This dialog box allows you to save the panorama as screensaver or self-running Windows program. Inthe self-running panoramas you can navigate and zoom with the mouse. A panorama as screensaver islimited to the auto play.By saving a panorama for this type of file the current panorama will be integrated into a self-runningfile. Links to other panoramas with hotspots or virtual tours are not possible for this type.

Window sizeThe window size is the size in pixels that the initial display window will have. If Fullscreen is set, thepanorama opens in fullscreen mode. This setting is not valid for screensavers, since these will always bedisplayed full screen.

Panorama output sizeVery large panoramas with a size of hundred or more megapixels may badly affect the system performcewhile displaying. Therefore it’s often reasonable to scale down a panorama with the Panorama output sizeparameter. In the case of a very large panorama PanoramaStudio already shows a notice and proposesan suitable size.

SettingsThe basic parameters for configuring the panorama are located in the Settings box. The panoramic imageitself will be embedded as a JPEG image into the output file. Therefore, you can set the compressionfactor with JPEG options... just like saving the panorama as an image.The Display quality of the panorama while showing can be set at five levels. The lowest level demandsthe least computing power, but the picture quality will be low. The higher levels improve picture quality,so that the best picture quality is applied, respectively, in freeze frame, autoplay, and finally, at thehighest setting, while the user is interactively navigating the panorama. The window size and availablecomputer performance determine whether the picture will judder during playback. A solution providingthe optimum playback performance at all times, regardless of processor power, is the setting dynamic(adaptive). The dynamic display quality setting reacts to a deficiency in computer power by accordingly


reducing playback quality, reverting to high quality playback wherever possible.With Advanced settings... you can open a dialog box for configuring various parameters for adjusting thedisplay of the panorama. The parameters refering to Auto Play and Controls are just like the parametersas for the PanoramaStudio Viewer. Further details on them can be found in section chap. 5.5.12 (→p.38). In addition there is the parameter Display. Here you can choose if the panorama is displayed inthe full window, or with a black border, or in 16:9 mode.The functionality of the Field-of-view settings... is the same as for interactive panoramas and can befound in section chap. 5.5.11 (→ p.36).It’s recommended to enable the Use Direct3D box, because this mode uses hardware acceleration for thethree-dimensional display of the panorama and results in higher quality and frame rates.

5.5.14 The Edit camera settings dialog box

In this dialog box you can enter data for digital cameras which are identifiable by their EXIF information.The technical data for the focal length of the digital cameras as well as their EXIF identifier are required:

NameIn the Name box, you can enter the camera maker and model, as you wish them to appear in the program.

Entering the camera specifications using the specification via 35mm equivalent focal lengthor focal length multiplierThe camera or lens attributes can be entered in the 35mm equivalent focal length or focal length multiplierfields. The 35mm equivalent focal length is the more commonly used in compact digital cameras anddescribes the focal length required to produce results equivalent to those achieved by an analog cameraloaded with 35mm film, whereas a focal length multiplier is common in digital SLR cameras with inter-changeable lenses. The factor is identical to the size of the camera’s digital image sensor relative to a35mm film negative.

Entering data via 35mm equivalent focal length

35mm equivalent focal length Here, you can enter the focal length in a form identical to thatof a 35mm analog camera. The focal length equivalent to 35mm camera can usually be found in themanufacturer’s technical data. Enter the minimum and maximum focal lengths in the correspondingfields. If your camera has a fixed focal length, in other words, no optical zoom, enter the same value inboth fields. For more information on focal length read chap. 4.4 (→ p.10).

Effective focal length of digital cameraIn this box you can enter the effective minimum and maximum focal lengths. These are usually smallerthan the 35mm equivalent focal lengths. Again, the information can usually be found in the manual. Forfixed focal length cameras, with no optical zoom, it’s once again necessary to enter the same value inboth field.

Entering the data using the focal length multiplierWhen entering the data using the focal length multiplier, you need to enter only this value. Digital SLRcamera users can often find this multiplier in the camera’s technical data. Otherwise, it is possible tocalculate it by working out the size of a 35mm negative (36x24mm) in relation to the digital CCD orCMOS camera sensor. Common values are 1.5 or 1.6.

EXIF ID of the cameraIf you insert a new camera manually, you can enter the identifier by which the camera is to be recognizedthrough its image files. To identify the camera, the MAKE and MODEL tags are evaluated. Therefore,you have to enter here exactly the respective values.We recommend using the Focal length and horizon dialog box for adding a new camera. There, you canswitch to this Settings dialog box with the New camera... button, if the camera is not already found inthe database, but contains nevertheless the necessary EXIF information to be recognized here. In thiscase PanoramaStudio will already have completed the fields for the EXIF ID.

5.6 Keyboard shortcuts

Here is a list of commands for which shortcuts are available in PanoramaStudio.

Command ShortcutNew project Ctrl+NOpen project Ctrl+OSave project Ctrl+SSave project as... Ctrl+UImport images... Ctrl+ISave as image... Ctrl+JPrint panorama... Ctrl+PZoom in Num+Zoom out Num-Original size F8Overview F10Image manager Strg-MEdit location Strg-LSelect all Ctrl+ADeselect all Ctrl+BReverse order Ctrl+TRotate right Ctrl+WRotate 180 degrees Ctrl+ERotate left Ctrl+RRemove selected images DelParameters F2Create panorama F3Create 360 degree panorama F4Crop F5Resize F6Hotspots F7Help topics F1

5.7 Start using the command-line

You can start PanoramaStudio using the commmand-line interface / terminal. The syntax is:<path>PanoramaStudio2(Pro).exe -ms <files>

Starts PanoramaStudio 2 (Pro) in the single-row mode and imports the image files <files>

<path>PanoramaStudio2(Pro).exe -md <files>

Starts PanoramaStudio 2 (Pro) in the document mode and imports the image files <files>

<path>PanoramaStudio2Pro.exe -mm <files>

Starts PanoramaStudio 2 Pro in the multi row mode and imports the image files <files>

<path>PanoramaStudio2(Pro).exe <file>.pap

Starts PanoramaStudio 2 (Pro) and opens the PAP project file.

<path> means the full path to the PanoramaStudio program folder.

Chapter 6

The adjustment and editing modes

6.1 The input images mode

In the input images mode - before the alignment of the images starts - all input images are arranged inthe project as series of individual images. This images can be selected with the mouse. To select severalimages, hold the ctrl key at the same time. To select a continuous series of images, hold the shift keysimultaneously.In a single-row panorama project you can rearrange selected pictures using drag&drop.In a multi-row panorama PanoramaStudio shows only small thumbnails of the images, further editingprevious to the alignment is not available and not necessary in this mode.

6.2 The preview mode after the image alignment

Single-row panoramas and documentsAfter the image alignment for single-row panoramas and documents you will see a full-size preview whichshows already a quite precise view of the final panorama. However, the detail sharpness and especiallythe brightness adjustment of the final panorama will clearly be even more improved over this preview.On the basis of this preview you can switch in various edit modes for manual adjustments or you cancontinue with the Render mode and finish the panorama.

Multi-row panorama (only PanoramaStudio Pro)In the mode for multi-row panoramas PanoramaStudio offers three views on the aligned images. You canswitch between the views with tabs on the bottom of the window:

• Input images overviewIn the input images overview you will see small thumbnail images of the input images and theconnections between them. The connecting lines indicate with their color and the attached differencevalue the quality of the match for the individual image pairs. Green indicates a very good match,red a bad match. To edit an image link double-click on a connecting line to open the control pointeditor for this image pair. Double-click on an image to open the control point editor for this image(read also chap. 5.5.5 (→ p.30)).Images which could not be automatically assigned to the panorama, are shown in the upper partof the window without connections to the other images. Unconnected images can be added to thepanorama using drag&drop. PanoramaStudio switches then into the image alignment mode (chap.6.4, p.49) and allows there to move the added image into the right position.

• 3D viewThe 3D view show the aligned image in a spatial 3D environment. It shows the panorama in anapproximated preview assembled from reduced input images and without a blending of the images.This preview is to evaluate the quality of the image alignment. Even in a well alinged panoramayou will still see some transitions between the images. These will be eliminated in the followingRender stage automatically.You can pan around with the mouse similar to a real camera. Use the mouse wheel to zoom inand out.

43

44 The adjustment and editing modes

This kind of 3D view is very similar to the interactive view in the 3D panoramas displayedwith the PanoramaStudio Viewer. You can read more about the PanoramaStudio Viewer in chap.5.5.11 (→ p.36).

• 2D viewThe 2D view shows also an approximated preview of the panorama. This view conform with theview if you render the panorama as image. Like in the 3D view this is still only a rough previewusing reduced input images and no blending.Besides the image alignment and the quality of the exposure adjustment you should use thisview to especially to evaluate the right orientation of the horizon in the panorama. If thepanorama is displayed skewed or twisted an adjustment of the horizon is necessary. Therefore callEdit→Straighten horizon. More on the Straighten horizon mode in chap. 6.8 (→ p.54).

To edit the image alignment you can either use the control point editor (chap. 5.5.5, p.30)or switch to the mode for the manual image alignment (chap. 6.4, p.49). Using Edit→Adjustexposure correction allows to post-process the automatic exposure correction (chap. 6.7, p.52).

6.2 The preview mode after the image alignment 45

Figure 6.1: a) Input images overview, b) 3D view and c) 2D view in the multi-row mode


6.3 The parameters and focal length mode

You can enter the mode to set the camera properties and focal length if you call Panorama→Parametersbefore the image alignment, or afterwards with the menu item Panorama→Edit→Change settings / focallength.

The work spaceFor single-row panoramas it is also necessary to specify the position of the horizon in this mode. A redline indicates the current position of the horizon in this case. To move this line, just drag it with themouse.

Figure 6.2: Set parameters and focal length

The tool windowYou can specify or adjust the focal length and other camera properties in the tool window.

The options Focal length unknown, estimated and exactly knownDepending on what you know about the focal length of your photos, select one of the three entries. Ifyou don’t know anything about the focal length of your photos, mark Focal length unknown (automatic).Then PanoramaStudio tries to find a matching focal length.If you can roughly estimate the focal length, mark Focal length estimated.If you know the focal length exactly, mark Focal length exactly known.

Focal length value, toleranceIf you know the focal length exactly, enter the corresponding value given in millimeters in the inputbox Focal length. In the case you previously selected Focal length estimated, this input box is to give anestimate which needs to be restricted by a maximum tolerance given as a percentage in the input box

6.3 The parameters and focal length mode 47

right next to it.For digital cameras use the equivalent to the 35mm film instead of the effective focal length. For allanalog cameras, especially the different APS picture ratios, use the actual focal length.

Use focal length from EXIFIf you have used a digital camera, that embeds EXIF information into the images and PanoramaStudiorecognizes this, it is possible to transfer the focal length via Use focal length from EXIF as an estimatedvalue.

List of different camera typesThe used type of camera can be chosen out of the following list.

• Digital camera - A digital camera was used.

• 35mm analog film - An analog camera with a 35mm film was used.

• APS panorama - Images are a scans of an APS shoot in panorama format.

• APS HD - Images are scans from an APS shoot in the HD format.

• APS classic - Images are scans from an APS shoot in the Classic format.

• Other film size - Images are scans from a film of an unknown format. You can enter the dimensionsof the film in the associated input boxes.

New camera...If the button New camera... is visible, PanoramaStudio has detected a new camera which provides focallength information within its EXIF data. However, that camera was not yet added to the database.When clicking this button, a dialog box for adding this camera to the database appears. Just enter thedata about focal length provided by the camera manual.For further details see chap. 5.5.14 (→ p.41).

Accessory lens usedThis field is only relevant if the EXIF focal length is used. If this is the case and an accessory lens isused the actual focal length from EXIF may differ from the real focal length which is modified by theadditional lens. Check Accessory lens used in this case.

Wide angle or tele converterAfter checking Accessory lens used, this input box turns active and allows you to specify the factor ofyour accessory lens. The actual focal length will be computed by PanoramaStudio from the EXIF focallength multiplied by the specified factor.

Single-row panorama: Projection: Cylindrical or SphericalSelection of the panorama projection. Please refer to Projection in chap. ?? (→ p.??) for further details.For multi-row panoramas you can set the projection type later in the Render mode.

Single-row panorama: Position of the horizonEnter the position of the horizon as a percentage of the image height.

Lens correctionThe Lens correction contains the correction for barrel/pincushion distortions as well as the vignettingcorrection.

Barrel/Pincushion correction This section is only relevant in case of recognizable distortions causedby your lens, such as clearly bent and originally straight lines. For single-row panoramas you can choosebetween a manual and an automatic correction. Enter the correction in the Amount field for manualcorrection. Correction values up to 100 minimize the pincushion distortions, correction values down to-100 minimize barrel distortions.For multi-row panoramas you have two automatic corrections. One default correction for slightly distortedimages and a strong correction for heavy distortions.


Vignetting correction Vignetting is a flaw where photos have a brightness falloff to the imagecorners. You should use the Vignetting correction if the image overlap regions look darker than theoverall panorama. This correction brightens the corners of the input images in an adequate way. WithAutomatic PanoramaStudio tries to detect a suitable correction automatically.The single-row mode also allows a manual correction using Radius and Amount.

Figure 6.3: Barrel distortion

Figure 6.4: Pincushion distortion

Multi-row panorama: Quality of image detection / Optimize control pointsMulti-row panoramas offer the option to change the quality of the automatic image detection here. Asa rule the default setting (Normal) is the best choice for most panoramas. If some images could not beassigned or if images are not well aligned you can set the detection here to a higher level (High or Veryhigh ) to achieve a better alignment of the images. However, a higher detection level results in a moretime-consuming alignment.When the option to Optimize control points automatically is enabled, PanoramaStudio tries to sort outbad control points automatically while aligning the images. This often improves the overall quality of theimage alignment noticeably, since less bad or wrong control points affect the alignment of the images.

Load and save settingsYou can save the various settings which can be adjusted in the Parameters dialog box for a later re-use.The current settings can be saved by a click on the disc symbol. With the folder symbol you can choosea setting out of a list of the previously saved settings.

6.4 The image alignment mode 49

6.4 The image alignment mode

For an aligned panorama, you can enter the image alignment mode from the menu itemPanorama→Edit→Change image alignment. This mode allows you to adjust the image overlaps byaltering the positions of the images. Pressing the Done! button leaves this mode applying your changes.The Reset button restores the overlaps to their initial state.

The work spaceIn a single-row panorama the active image overlap is indicated by a red frame. You can change therelative position of the images in the overlap by dragging the overlap with the mouse.In a multi-row panorama in PanoramaStudio Pro you can select an image with the mouse and move itrelatively to all other images. Grab the corners of an image to rotate it. This works in the 2D view aswell as in the 3D view.

Figure 6.5: Adjust an image overlap with the mouse

The tool windowIn a single-row panorama you can edit the active image overlap here pixel by pixel with the Horizontaloverlap and

Vertical offset controls.

In a multi-row panorama you can edit the spatial position of the image using the angles Yaw,Pitch, and Roll for the horizontal and vertical position and the rotation of the image.

6.5 The detail adjustments mode (only single-row panoramas)

For an aligned panorama, you can enter the detail adjustments mode from the menu atPanorama→Edit→Change detail adjustments . This mode allows you to adjust small regions within


Figure 6.6: The image alignment tool window for a single-row panorama

the overlapping area. Thus, it is possible to fix problems concerning only parts of the image in an over-lapping area. Pressing the Done! button leaves this mode applying your changes. The Reset buttonrestores the overlaps as they were when entering detail adjustment mode.

The work space

Figure 6.7: Change an image tile

The work space displays the active overlapping area split up into small tiles. Each tile represents onedetail overlap of the active overlap for which the relative positon of the two overlapping images may beset individually by drag and drop with the mouse. Hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple tiles. Thisallows to edit areas consisting of multiple tiles in one step.To assist you finding the right position, each image is displayed semi-transparently. You found the bestposition, when both image tiles match and look like just one image.To move the focus from the active overlap to another, just click with the mouse on the desired overlapto activate it.

6.6 The blending mode (only single-row panoramas) 51

The tool window

Figure 6.8: The Detail adjustments tool window

The corresponding tool window of the detail adjustments mode enables you to specify the pixel offsetsfor each tile of the the overlapping images individually.

Arrow buttons for the tile positionA click on an arrow of the arrow button field increments or decrements the relative position for a pair oftiles by one pixel. Thus, you may adjust the relative positions for each tile precisely in both dimensions- horizontally and vertically. Clicking on the X in the middle of the arrows resets your changes to theoriginal position.

Previous tile, next tileMoves the focus to the previous, or the next tile in the active overlap.

All tiles to 0/0Resets all tiles to the zero position and consequently discards all correction values determined in theautomatic alignment as well as all manual changes.

Reset tilesResets all changes on details made since entering the adjustment mode.

Show difference-viewSwitches to alternative kind of view while working on tiles. Rather then blending the two overlappingimages, this view shows their differences with mid gray indicating no difference. in some cases, this viewallows better judgement of the detail adjustment success.

6.6 The blending mode (only single-row panoramas)

Merged images are continuously blended within the image overlaps. Width and position of the blendingarea can be individually adjusted in blending mode for every individual overlap. For a processed pano-rama, you can switch to blending mode by calling Panorama→Adjust→Change blendings.... Clicking the


Done! button causes PanoramaStudio to apply your changes and exits the blending mode. Clicking theReset button restores the original values when entering blending mode.

The work spaceWidth and position of the blending area are displayed on the work space in a dark red color. The active

Figure 6.9: Removing doubles of moving objects by reducing the blending area

area appears in red - the others are dashed.To activate an area, just click with the mouse on it. You can drag the marker lines now to the desiredposition. Thus, you can hide e.g. duplicates deriving from moving cars or walking persons.Doubles - so called ghosts objects or ghosting - are problems often occuring when blending images. Theyare caused by moving objects which occur often only partial or doubled at different positions in adjacentimages. There are two ways to diminish such effects. First, you should enable the Adaptive multibandblending which takes the visual content into account when blending the images and tries to find a blendingaround moving objects and other differences in the overlapping images. A second way to deal with thisproblem is to change the overlapping areas by moving and resizing them on the working area so that theghosting vanishes.

The tool windowYou can adjust width and position of the active blending area in the corresponding blending tool windowvia sliders. Furthermore, the blending method can be selected.

Width of blending regionThis slider controls the width of the blending.

Position of the blending regionThis slider controls the position of the blending area inside an overlap. As the blending area must bepart of the overlap area, this slider only allows positions inside the overlap.

Adaptive/Static multiband blendingThe Adaptive multiband blending is a method which tries to minimize the differences between the imagesin the blending process. While it is more time expensive, it takes the visual content of the images intoaccount to find an optimal blending, in contrast to the static method. This avoids blendings throughmoving objects and other troubles which can occur in the static method.

6.7 The exposure mode

For an aligned panorama, you can switch to exposure mode by calling Panorama→Edit→Adjust exposurecorrection... . In this mode it is possible to change the automatic exposure adjustments made by

6.7 The exposure mode 53

Figure 6.10: The tool window Edit blendings

PanoramaStudio. You can adjust both, the brightness of the whole panorama as well as the brightnessof each individual image. You can leave this mode via the Done! button or reset all changes made inthis mode by clicking the Reset button.

The work spaceSelect an image with the mouse to adjust its brightness parameters in the exposure adjustments dialogbox. The active image is framed in red color.In a multi-row panorama in PanoramaStudio Pro you can work in the 2D view as well as in the 3D view.

The tool window

Automatic correctionIf you have Automatic correction enabled, PanoramStudio uses the computed exposure adjustments.

Correction amount of the panoramaYou can control the intensity of the automatic correction in steps from 0 to 100 percent, if automaticcorrection is enabled.

Overall brightnessYou can adjust the brightness of the panorama in addition to the automatic correction via the sliderOverall brightness.

Automatic adjustment of the input imagesIf you enable the automatic adjustment, the brightness of adjacent input images will be adjusted auto-matically.

Correction amount for the input imagesIf automatic adjustment of input images is enabled, you can regulate the intensity of this effect via slider.This setting has an impact on the correction of all input images.

Brightness of an input imageThis slider lets you adjust the brightness of the currently selected input image.


Figure 6.11: Tool window for exposure adjustments

Hide image borders (only single row panoramas)You can hide the red frames around the images via Hide image borders. This makes it easier to controlthe effect of the brightness adjustments, without being disturbed by the markers.

6.8 The horizon mode (only PanoramaStudio Pro)

In contrast to a single-row panorama the horizon is not adjusted until the image alignment isdone. There PanoramaStudio tries to automatically find the right orientation. With callingPanorama→Edit→Straighten horizon you can open a mode to edit this manually.

The work spaceThe work space show the 2D view of the panorama in his current orientation. To illustrate the spatialorientation a red grid overlay is displayed on the panorama. The horizon is indicated by a fat line. Youcan grab the panorama at an arbitrary spot and change the orientation by dragging it with the mouse.The goal is to find an orientation where the panorama is straight without being wavy or twisted.A further indication for a correct orientation is that all vertical lines from the input images are againvertically aligned. With grabbing and dragging the panorama on different spots you should be able tofind little by little a correct orientation.

The tool window

In the tool window you have the buttons Rotate 90 degrees to the right, Rotate 180 degrees, and Rotate90 degrees to the left to rotate the panorama. In addition you can call the automatic straightening againwith the Automatic horizon button.To move a panorama only on the horizontal axis, e.g. to relocate the center of the panoramic image, youcan check the option Constrain to horizontal moving. This allows to move the complete panorama easilyon the horizontal axis.

6.9 The insert graphics mode 55

6.9 The insert graphics mode

This mode allows you to insert graphics files into the panorama. That way you can insert for example alogo into the panorama to cover a tripod.

The work spaceThe work space shows a preview of the aligned images of the panorama. You can move inserted graphicsusing the mouse. When grabbing the corners or egdes you can rotate and resize the graphics. In themulti-row mode of the Pro version you can also switch between the 2D and 3D preview.

Figure 6.12: Insert graphics

The tool windowWith Load graphics file you can load and insert PNG, GIF, TIFF, and JPEG image files into the pano-rama. Besides placing the graphic using the mouse you can edit the position and size also numerically inthe tool window.Moreover, the multi-row mode allows the projection of graphics as planar 2D image as well as spatialimage in 3D. With Projection type you can switch between these two types of embedding a graphic intothe panorama.Depending on whether a multi-row panorama will be rendered in cylindrical or spherical projection inthe following Render stage you can set the 2D preview here to an appropriate view with the selectionat Target projection of the panorama. This will provide an accurate preview of the panorama with theembedded graphics.

6.10 The render mode

After the image alignment you get into to the Render mode where you set the region for the panoramicimage and other parameters previous to the finishing of the panorama if you call Panorama→Render...


The work space

Initially, when entering the render mode, PanoramaStudio proposes a cropping area indicated by a redrectangle. This represents the area for the final panoramic image. To change the size of this area, justdrag the lines of that rectangle.

For single-row panoramas the vertical markers can not be moved independently in a 360 degree panoramasince their lateral borders have to match exactly. Moving them only relocates the joint position of thelateral border so that it will in all cases result in an image with matching vertical edges. Furthermore,for single-row non-360 degree panoramas, the cropping area can be rotated by dragging the corners ofthe red rectangle. Your mouse cursor indicates the rotation option when hovering over a corner.

Figure 6.13: Rotating the cropping area

The tool windowAfter you set the parameters and the cropping area confirm your adjustments with the OK button tostart the high quality rendering of the panorama.

Output sizeIn the Output size box you can set the exact size of your panoramic image. PanoramaStudio shows thesize in megapixels as an indication for the resulting size. You can change the dimensions either with theslider or exactly pixel by pixel with the width and height controls.

Other optionsColor depthHere you can set the color depth for multi-row panoramas to 8 or 16 bit, if the input images have anadequate color depth. For single-row panoramas you had to choose this already in the parameters dialogbox.InterpolationFor the sharpness of details in the image you can set the Interpolation from the bilinear to the morecomplex bicubic method.BlendingFor multi-row panoramas the blending procedure can still be changed here before the final computationof the panoramic image. The standard blending procedure provides a fast, high-quality blending, whilethe adaptive algorithm additionally analyzes the images and tries to avoid blending errors for movingobjects (ghosting).Edge completionIf the cropping region contains areas which are not covered by an image, you can fill this empty spaceseither with a color using Add color or with a Simple edge completion method.To add a color you can choose the color with the color button right to the edge completion control. Thesimple edge completion tries to fill the empty spaces within the cropping region with a color matchingthe environment around. With this method you can fill small gaps nearly un-noticeable for the viewer.

6.11 The hotspot mode 57

Switch to an edit modeWith Switch to an edit mode you can directly switch to one of the previous edit modes, e.g. to changean image alignment or the orientation of the horizon.

6.11 The hotspot mode

To edit hotspots in your panorama, you can switch to Hotspot mode by calling Panorama→Hotspots orusing the Hotspots button in the toolbar (chap. 4.9, p.16). There you can insert and edit hotspots (linksto other panoramas or webpages) (chap. 4.9, p.16). The hotspots will be embedded in the interactivepanoramas you can create with the output option Save as interactive Panorama / Zoom Image (chap.5.5.11, p.36).This edit mode also allows inserting artificial lens flares into an interactive panorama to get a morerealistic look of the scene.

The work spaceAll hotspots and lens flares contained in the panorama are displayed in this mode. They can be selectedand moved with the mouse. Furthermore, size and shape of a hotspot can be modified with the anchorsdisplayed around them. The anchors can be moved by dragging them with the mouse.

Figure 6.14: Edit hotspots

The tool windowIn the tool window of this mode you can add, edit and delete hotspots and lens flares.

New hotspotHere you can select a hotspot from a list of hotspot types. Then you can place this hotspot with themouse on the desired position in the panorama. There are five pre-defined shapes, a polygon hotspot typeand bitmap hotspots available. Polygon hotspots are only available in the Flash version of the interactivepanoramas. Only bitmap hotspots can be displayed also in the HTML5 version.If you select Polygon you can draw a shape with the mouse on the panorama and end the drawing with adouble-click. If you select Bitmap you can select an image file from the file system (PNG, GIF, or JPEGformat) and insert this as hotspot.

New lens flareSelect an artificial lens flare from a list of pre-defined types. A lens flare should be placed on a lightsource in the panorama, e.g. the sun. When displaying the panorama with the PanoramaStudio Viewerthe lens flare produces a typical reflection of light in the lens system of the virtual camera similar to areal camera.

DeleteDeletes the active hotspot or lens flare.

ShapeShows the current shape of the active hotspot or lens flare. You can open here a list of alternative shapesand change the type of the current hotspot or lens flare.

URLEnter a hyperlink to a webpage where this hotspot should refer to. Furthermore, the PanoramaStudioViewer offers the option to refer directly to another panorama and to open this in the same Viewerwindow. All properties of a panorama which you may have saved before e.g. as Panorama1.html, werestored in the file Panorama1.xml. If the hotspot URL refers to such a XML file together with the keywordmyself in the HTML target field the referred panorama will be opened in the same Viewer window.

HTML targetLike for regular HTML pages, this field allows to specify a target frame for the hyperlink. When the userclicks on the link, the specified URL will open in the given frame. The usage is conform to HTML, e.g.entering ’ blank’ as HTML target will open a new browser tab or window for the refered URL.A special case is the keyword myself noted above. This allows to open another panorama in the cur-rent Viewer window. You find more information about this topic also in the documentation of thePanoramaStudio Viewer.

TooltipHere you may enter a short description of the hotspot appearing when the mouse hovers over the hotspot.The tooltip field supports some basic HTML tags including , , , <li>, <img>, ,and .

DisplayYou can select the display type for bitmap hotspots here. A bitmap hotspot can be displayed eitherfloating at its position over the panorama or spatially embedded into the panorama. If the hotspot isembedded, then it is fixed permanently on the panorama. You can rotate and scale the hotspot on thework space to the desired position and size.

Fill color and Border colorYou can assign an individual fill color and a border color to each polygon hotspot using these colorchoosers.

6.12 The panorama mode 59

Transition while opening a new panoramaIf the hotspot targets another panorama, then the Viewer can optionally show a transition effect whenclicking the hotspot. The Viewer can zoom to the clicked position and then smoothly fade into the otherpanorama. You can configure the transition with this selection.

6.12 The panorama mode

A project is in panorama mode after the stitching process is finished and when no adjustment or correctionmodes are active. This mode allows to directly navigate through the panorama by dragging the panoramaon the work space with the mouse. The panorama mode is indicated by a hand-shaped mouse cursor.

Chapter 7

Configuring PanoramaStudio

The preferences allow you to set the parameters needed for processing the panorama, the display modefor the monitor, the use of temporary disk space as well as to edit the information about digital camerasprovided by the database of PanoramaStudio.The Settings dialog box can be opened through the menu File→Settings.

Assigning a drive for temporary dataThe tab Folders/Import allows you to specify a hard-disk drive for storing temporary data which occursduring the stitching process.To give an example, the data demand for a 360 degree panorama comprising about 16 to 18 imagescoming from a 3 megapixel camera may easily exceed 500MB of temporary disk space. This disk spaceis only needed during the stitching process - it will be released automatically later. However, it mightbe possible, that the available disk space runs short for the predefined hard disk drive. In such cases,PanoramaStudio indicates that problem and asks you to specify an alternative drive if available.The default setting is the Windows-Temp folder. This applies when Use Windows temp folder is checked.To select a different folder, check Use other folder and enter the desired folder in the corresponding inputfield or press Folder... to open a dialog box for selecting the folder. Temporary data will be stored in asubfolder of the specified folder and automatically deleted when not used anymore.

Auto rotate according to EXIF orientationSome modern digital cameras capture the orientation of the camera when shooting. Thus, it is possiblefor PanoramaStudio to automatically detect whether a photo was made in portrait or landscape format.If Auto rotate according to EXIF orientation from the Folders/Import tab is ticked, PanoramaStudioautomatically rotates the images when importing them into a project if the corresponding information isavailable.

Transfer EXIF data into panoramaEnable this option to embed the adjusted EXIF data of the first input image into the panoramic image.This allows to transfer camera and location information to the panoramic image.

Suggest source folder when savingWhen activated, this field causes PanoramaStudio to always suggest the import folder as folder for savingthe panorama project. This setting is recommended in case you want to store your projects in the samefolder where your input images are.

Suggest panorama name based on input imageIf you activate this option PanoramaStudio suggests a file name based on the file name of the first inputimage of your panorama at the first time you save a panorama. This shall help to achieve a betterassignment of panoramas to their individual input images.

Add metadata for Google+TM/Google MapsTM ViewsThis option adds metadata to spherical (equirectangular) panoramas for the automatic detection inGoogle+/Google Maps Views.

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Changing parameters for the stitching processThe tab Stitch parameters allows you to set parameters for alignment and blending of the panorama.

Parameters for single-row panoramasMinimal overlap and Maximal overlap defines the range for valid overlaps. The automatic overlapsearch algorithm only searches withing this range. Manual adjustments are also limited to this area.You may extend these overlap regions if needed. Diminishing the overlaps will result in slightly reducedcomputation time for the stitching process. This can be helpful, if the overlaps of your panorama are allquite small.The same applies to the slider for Max. vertical offset which restricts the accepted vertical displacement.

Both parameters of the Detail adjustments between images section may influence the quality ofthe stitching process considerably.The most important setting is the Number of iterations. The greater the value, the finer the detailadjustments in the overlaps. Computation time will rise roughly with the desired quality. As the Numberof iterations decreases, the overlap matching will become more and more coarse.The parameter for Minimal tile size defines a lower bound for the fragmentation into tiles for detailadjustments. This value is to be specified as number of pixels.The Blending procedure can be set either to the standard Static multiband blending or to the more complexAdaptive multiband blending (Anti-ghost), which takes the visual content into account when blending theimages and tries to find a blending around moving objects and other differences in the overlapping images.

PanoramaStudio already shows a quite detailed preview of the final panorama in the single-rowmode after the alignment of the images. But due to the large amount of image data it is recommendedto create this preview not based on the full sized images but on images somewhat reduced in size. Thisdecreases the computing time for the preview as well as the required memory and doesn’t affect thequality of the final panoramic image. A maximum size of the individual images used for the previewcan be set with the selection at Reduce the preview size of the images to.... The default setting is 3megapixels per image and delivers already a very accurate preview of the panorama even if the actualimages are noticeable bigger. The original images in their full size will be used then for the final stageof the panorama creation when the panoramic image is rendered.

Parameters for multi-row panoramasFor multi-row panoramas you can control the effort used to find control points for the image alignmentwith the Quality of image detection parameter. The higher the setting the more control points will beused for the image alignment. As a rule the default setting is the best choice for most panoramas. Youcan also change this parameter in the parameters dialog box for an individual panorama.When the option to Optimize control points automatically is enabled, PanoramaStudio tries to sort outbad control points automatically while aligning the images. This costs some processing time, but oftenimproves the overall quality of the image alignment noticeably, since less bad or wrong control pointsaffect the alignment of the images.The default Blending procedure can be set also for multi-row panoramas. You can again choose betweenStatic multiband blending and the more complex Adaptive multiband blending. The blending procedurecan be set depending on the output size of the panorama, since the adaptive blending delivers in fact aslightly better quality, but for large panoramas occasionally also very long computing times.

Common parametersThe box Exposure correction allows to set preferences concerning exposure correction. When activated,the field Match the input images causes PanoramaStudio to automatically defeat differences in exposurealong the input images. Select Exposure correction of the panorama to activate an automatic exposureadjustment for the entire panorama after the alignment process. With ’Use focal length from EXIF’ asdefault you can enable that the corresponding button in the parameters dialog box is always pre-selected.

Editing digital cameras in the built-in databaseThe Cameras tab provides a list of all digital cameras which will be recognized through their EXIF datafor further processing by PanoramaStudio .You may edit camera information, add new cameras or remove existing ones. However, adding a camera

62 Configuring PanoramaStudio

can be done more comfortably via the focal length/horizon dialog box. Please refer to New camera...from section chap. 6.3 (→ p.46) and chap. 5.5.14 (→ p.41).

Configuring the color managementPanoramaStudio supports color profiles embedded in images and and provides the option for a colorcorrected rendering on the display and printer. The color corrected rendering on the screen uses thedisplay profile of the computer and the color profiles of the images.On the Color management tab you can change the settings. With the Color management check box youcan enable and disable the complete color management system. With Display rendering you can control,if the display shows a color corrected rendering or if the ICC color profiles from the input images are justhold and transfered into the saved panoramic output image.

Index

35mm analog film, 4835mm equivalent, 1235mm film, 12360 degree panorama, 5, 12

accessory lens, 11action toolbar, 18adjustment mode, 44APS Classic, 48APS film, 48APS format, 12APS HD, 48APS Panorama, 48arrangement toolbar, 20arrow buttons, 52automatic adjustment, 54automatic correction, 54automatic exposure correction, 62

barrel/pincushion correction, 48blending, 13, 52blending mode, 52blind out, 15BMP, 2brightness falloff, 49brightness/contrast, 34

camera model, 12camera type, 11, 48CCD sensor, 12color balance, 35color management, 62command-line interface/terminal, 43control point editor, 30converging verticals, 31converter lens, 11CPU, 2Create projection, 17crop marks, 35cropping, 10cropping rectangle, 15cylinder, 12cylindrical projection, 12, 48

database, 11, 62defects, 13detail adjustments, 13detail adjustments mode, 50dialog box

create projection, 31edit camera settings, 41

edit location, 32edit mask, 28image information, 29panorama properties, 29print preview, 35resize panorama, 32rotate image, 28save as interactive Panorama / Zoom Image,

36save as screensaver/.EXE, 40

difference-view, 52digital camera, 11, 48disk space, 61disk usage, 2distortion, 11distortions, 48doubles, 53drag&drop, 10, 44

edge completion, 57editing mode, 44equivalent focal length, 41EXIF data, 62Exif focal length, 4EXIF ID, 42EXIF rotation, 61Exif standard, 12exposure, 7exposure correction, 13, 54exposure mode, 53

faults, 13file menu, 21film type, 11filter, 33fixed focal length, 41Flash, 36Flash panorama, 36focal length, 4, 47

conversion factor, 11multiplier, 41tolerance, 47

focal point, 12

gamma correction, 34geotagging, 32ghosting, 53glue edges, 35graphics, 2

help menu, 26

63

64 INDEX

horizon, 4, 7, 47horizon and focal length mode, 47Hotspot

display, 59Farbe, 59

hotspot, 16delete, 59HTML target, 59mode, 58shape, 58tooltip, 59URL, 59

image alignment mode, 50image data, 11image file, 9image overlaps, 13images

ordering, 10rearrange, 10rotate, 10rotate arbitrarily, 10select, 10

import, 4, 9input images menu, 23input images mode, 44Insert graphics mode, 56interpolation, 57introduction, 1

JPG, 2

keyboard shortcuts, 43

landscape, 11lens distortion, 11Lens Flare, 59levels, 34lighting, 7Little planet, 31

main memory, 2manual adjustments, 13mask, 28masking, 28minimal tile size, 62mode: straighten horizon, 55moving objects, 14multiband blending, 53

number of iterations, 62

operating systems, 2optimization, 33output size, 57overall brightness, 54overlap, 6

maximal, 62minimal, 62

overview, 20

panel/portrait format, 8panorama menu, 25panorama mode, 60panorama project, 9parallax, 7parameters, 4, 10, 47PCX, 2perspective, 7, 31photos

arrange, 4rotate, 4

pixel dimensions, 15planar, 31PNG, 2preview mode, 44print, 17, 35printing poster, 35project toolbar, 19projection, 47, 48projection layer, 12PSB, 2PSD, 2

quality, 10quickstart, 4

RAS, 2rectilinear, 31reference values, 12render, 15render mode, 56resizing, 15restore, 10reverse order, 10

save as image, 17save Project, 16screensaver, 40selecting, 44settings, 61sharpen, 33sharpness, 16shooting, 4signifcantly differing brightness, 15single lens reflex, 12speed, 10spherical projection, 48stitch, 5stitch parameters, 61system requirements, 2

Task type bar, 21tele converter, 48tele converter lens, 11temporary data, 61TGA, 2TIFF, 2tone curves, 34tool window

blending mode, 53

INDEX 65

crop mode, 57detail adjustments, 51edit image alignment, 50exposure adjustments, 54horizon and focal length, 47hotspots, 58insert graphics, 56straighten horizon, 55

unsharp mask, 33URL, 16user interface, 18

view menu, 23view toolbar, 20viewfinder camera, 12vignetting, 49vignetting correction, 49

wide angle converter, 48wide angle converter lens, 11wide angle panorama, 12window menu, 26windows, 2

zoom, 6

panoramastudio manual

Documents

panorama mode

panorama dialog box

panorama menu

panorama project

interactive panorama

image alignment mode

horizon mode

dialog box windows