NAME
autopanog - Autopano GUI frontend to create a panorama project.
SYNOPSIS
autopanog [options]
DESCRIPTION
GUI frontend for the autopano-sift package. It allows the processing of
input images to create and match keypoint information, from which a PTO
panorama project file can be created.
COMMAND LINE OPTIONS
--output <ptofilepath>
Preset the PTO output filepath in the GUI.
--imagelist <list.txt>
Read input image filepathes from a list file.
--absolute
Enable the use of absolute pathnames in the resulting PTO file.
PARAMETER DESCRIPTION
Source images
The filenames of the image files that will be processed. Using
the "Add images" and "Remove selected" buttons, the list can be
changed. At least two images must be loaded.
Downscale resolution
The maximum width and height resolution the image is downscaled
to. That is, if the image exceeds height or length compared to
this value, the image is scaled so its longest side is exactly
this number of pixels long. This value is the single most
important setting to optimizing memory usage. As a rough guide,
use 750 pixels for a 256MB RAM system, 1400 for a 512MB one.
Values smaller than 400 here lead to poor matching for most
digicam images, due to sparse keypoints.
Save option
There are three choices, "Save keypoints to files", "Save
keypoints to files (compressed)" and "Keep keypoints in memory
only". The save prefix is used to name the file, followed by
the original filename. For the first two available options, XML
files are created with the ending ".xml". If the compressed
option is selected, the XML files will be stored in compressed
gzip(1) format. For the last option, the keypoint data is piled
up in memory. For systems with low memory, this option should
not be chosen, otherwise it speed things up, if the keypoint
data is not needed afterwards.
Save prefix
How to name the keypoint files. The keypoint files are saved to
the current working directory plus this prefix plus the original
filename of each image.
Maximum keypoints per image pair
After all filtering (matching, pairing, join-matches, RANSAC)
has taken place, the final keypoints are filtered for the best
keypoints. A maximum of the supplied number is kept. If you do
care about optimization speed in the panorama layouting, choose
a low number. If you do manual work and want the best result,
you can safely set this to a high number, such as 20 or more.
Use RANSAC filtration
If enabled, the keypoint matches are filtered using a good
geometric model. That means, only matches are kept that "make
sense". Although the matches could be correct matches, some
matches are unwanted, like the matches moving objects (people,
cars, ...) produce. Those are removed as well. It is recommended
to leave this option checked except for special lens geometries,
such as fisheye lenses.
Use Area filtration
As we only keep a limited number of keypoints (specified in the
maximum keypoint option), we have to discard the rest. If this
option is checked, the points to discard are chosen in a way
that maximizes the area enclosed by the remaining points. It is
believed that a large coverage of area within the picture
generally leads to better optimization results later. It is
recommended to leave this option checked.
Automatic pre-aligning of images
This enables a set of options and will cause an image pre-
aligning algorithm to kick in. What it does is to estimate the
basic image parameters yaw, pitch and rotation based on the
individual image overlaps. See the autopano(1) manpage for
detailed instructions. In general, you need to take the pictures
in a specific order (strict left-to-right or strict right-to-
left) for the first row of images. It really pays off to learn
how to use this option properly, as the nona/PTStitcher
optimizers are a lot better on pre-aligned images. Additionally,
you can enable automatic horizon line creation, which
straightens the panorama.
Input orientation
Sets how the images were taken. If you have "vanilla"
orientation and the first row is taken as normal pictures, just
leave "normal" checked. Otherwise you need to tell the program
where the bottom is located within the images. The automatic
bottom finder only works well on flat-horizon images, so better
not use it in case you explicitly know where the bottom is
located.
Generate horizon lines
When pre-alignment is enabled, you can also enable the automatic
creation of horizon information. For this to work, the first row
of images must have its horizon roughly in the middle of the
image. The number of points to create can be given in the
combobox, whereas sums of powers of two (6, 14) work best. To
create as much horizon lines as possible/meaningful, choose "*".
PTO Output
The filename of the PTO panorama project file to create.
Use absolute pathnames for image files
If enabled, absolute filesystem pathnames are used to store the
image filenames in the PTO file. Using this option will ensure
the PTO file will work from anywhere. However, you can not move
the image files to another location afterwards (for example,
burning the images on a CD), as the files’ pathname change.
Disabling this option will result in only the filename being
stored in the PTO file.
Output subpixel coordinates
If enabled, sub-pixel float coordinates are used to describe
matches between images in the PTO file. This works with most
frontend programs, such as hugin, but old frontend programs may
have trouble with this. In this case, try to disable this
option.
BUGS
No bugs known, if you find any, please send a bug report to me. I will
try to fix it.
AUTHOR
Sebastian Nowozin <nowozin at cs dot tu dash berlin dot de>
SEE ALSO
autopano-sift(7), autopano-complete(1)