PanEdit Lite: Panorama stitching tool, v 1.0.9

PanEdit Lite is a basic tool for creating seamless panoramic scenes from original images captured with either film or digital cameras. The primary purpose of PanEdit Lite is merging two or more conventional ("flat") images into a single cylindrical panorama covering the entire range of scenery captured in the original images. The resulting cylindrical panoramic image may represent a complete panorama covering a full 360 degrees, or it may be a partial panorama covering less than 360 degrees. Instructions on how to combine several flat images into a seamless panorama are provided below.

PanEdit Lite may also be used to align the ends of an original panoramic image captured directly with a rotating panoramic camera.


Creating a panoramic image

The following steps may be used to combine two or more conventional ("flat") images into a single seamless panoramic image:

  1. Getting started

    This step includes importing the original images and putting them in the right order.

  2. Stitching flat images

    Adjacent images are compared and aligned to form a complete panoramic image.

  3. Balancing exposures

    Exposure values for each image are adjusted to provide consistent color intensities for all images.

  4. Blending images

    Overlapping portions of adjacent images may be blended to provide soft smooth transitions from the part of the scene coming from one image to the areas coming from the neiighboring images.

  5. Saving the results

    Fillets above and below each seam may be removed and the panoramic image may be saved as a TIFF or JPEG file.


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Troubleshooting

Depending on the quality of the images used to capture a scene, the means used to aim the camera, etc., it is possible to encounter problems which present obstacles to the creation of a satisfactory panoramic image. The following pages describe various conditions that may prevent creation of a seamless panoramic image:


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Copy and Paste operations

Any standard Windows-based image processing software tools, such as Adobe PhotoShop, can be used to modify the original images serving as the source of the current panoramic scene.

The following procedure may be used to modify any of the original images in the current scene:

  1. Browse the scene until the area to be modified can be seen in the main window.
  2. Double-click on the main window to open the Image Edit window.
  3. Press "Ctrl-c" to copy this image to the Windows clipboard.
  4. Open the preferred image processing software tool,
  5. Use tool-dependent techniques to paste this image into the chosen software tool.
  6. Use tool-dependent techniques to modify this copy of the image.
  7. Use tool-dependent techniques to select all or part of the modified image, and to copy the selected area to the Windows clipboard.
  8. With the Image Edit window still open, press "Ctrl-v" to paste the modified image into the Image Edit window.
  9. If the pasted area does not cover the entire original image, use the hand cursor to drag the pasted area to the desired destination within the Image Edit window.
  10. Right-click the mouse (or left-click outside the selected area) to confirm the destination of the pasted image.
The "Ctrl-c" and "Ctrl-v" functions are the standard Windows methods for "copy" (to clipboard) and "paste" (from clipboard).

After copying the contents of the Image Edit window to the Windows clipboard, it is advisable not to change which image shown in the Image Edit window until the modified result is pasted back to this window. If the image shown in the Image Edit window is changed after the copy operation, one must return to the originally selected image before performing the paste operation. Otherwise, the paste operation will alter the selected image shown in the Image Edit window at the time the paste operation is performed.

Images modified by the cut and paste operations cannot be saved by PanEdit Lite. If one needs to preserve a copy of one of these modified images, one should use the file save or image export functions provided by the image processing tool used to make the modifications.

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Panorama stitching tool (top).
Last modified January 13, 2000.