How can I reduce sharp bends and distortion when stitching a panorama from only a few photos?

Question

When I stitch a small number of rectilinear landscape images in Hugin using a cylindrical projection, straight features can show obvious bends or kinks at the overlap areas. If I instead shoot many portrait-orientation frames with heavy overlap, the panorama looks much smoother.

Is there a way in Hugin or similar stitching software to warp a sparse set of images more consistently, or is this mainly a limitation of using too few frames? I’m especially interested in whether lens distortion correction, manual control points/line constraints, or shooting technique can help. For context, the final use may involve video shot from inside a vehicle, potentially with a wider lens such as a GoPro.

user46861 · Answer

If memory serves me you can force Hugin to make certain points form a horizontal or vertical line in the final image. You might look into that. Note however that forcing one part of the image to adopt a particular geometry will typically result in other parts of the image being distorted.

Manually selecting matching point and lines can also help, but again may result in you forcing an image into an unrealistic mapping that will have other distortions.

However the way you get a good panorama is to use a large number of heavily overlapping shots. So you already know the correct solution to your problem.

Trying to wing it on a small number of images is exactly the problem. Hugin (and any other software) will have a very hard time without enough overlap to figure out a decent mapping without enough information. I'd normally aim for 50% overlap horizontally and 50% vertically if I'm doing a vertical pano as well.

How can I reduce sharp bends and distortion when stitching a panorama from only a few photos?

2 Answers

Your Answer

Related Questions