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Oops, I wasn't aware of this ... To my knowledge PTGui may offer equally advanced options, but I'm not familiar with this soft interface. Actually, once the sequence is properly shot (evenly spaced and overlapped), pretty much any decent stitching software should deliver, IMHO. All of them are using pretty much the same technology, more or less.
Howdy! In my further research I found this app that automates the camera/drone to obtain pianos. Looks pretty cool & versatile. Thought you would be interested if you haven’t seen it. SmartAerial PANO - Unlock aerial view with Giga Panorama for DJI Drones
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Knowing nothing about this new app, I must curb your enthusiasm a bit ... By the time I was trying to master this type of landscape photography with DJI drones (about a year ago) there was several dedicated apps on the market claiming such abilities. None worked reliably (or at all) with Inspire 1 Pro or Phantom 3 Pro. After several months of frustrating struggle I purchased Inspire 2 with X5S gimbal. Off about 5 panorama shooting apps only one (Litchi) was able to deliver properly executed sequence with yawing gimbal and solid hovering. Unfortunately Litchi is offering only 360 spherical pano mode. By all means try this new app with partial panos, and let us know the outcome.
For distortion-free stitching the best lens will be a long lens. The 50mm on the X7 (equivalent to a 75mm on a dslr) is fantastic. Multi row panos with the camera well back from the subject and PTGui or similar work very well. Lining up the shots can be done by eye, allowing about 1/3 image overlap for each shot. Always shoot DNG.
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I must disagree ... Long lens will deliver definitely better resolution of quilt, but it has not much to do with distortion. You can get equally well stitched image with few only fisheye shots. It's all about camera stability where stitching algorithm may introduce distortions.
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Kevin, drone panoramas aside you may consider Osmo Pro/RAW as a reliable alternative solution for ground level photography. Again, Litchi developed nice small app for Osmo, and again only full 360 spherical sequence is available. This results in time and space consuming workflow when only part of sequence is used for stitched image, but it works nicely. Here are two experimental examples I've made today. Both are cropped from full projections, containing approx.12 of 4:3 frames each.
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Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve got the ground covered with my Canon 5DsR & Zeiss Otus lenses. I’m hoping to come close to that resolution in the air. A lot of those panos would be done 20 to 50 feet in the air. Sort of a bird in a tree view. ?. Sticthcing is the only way to get that kind of resolution for 60” & larger prints. With regards to that I’m gathering the best method is for the body of the aircraft to be completely stationary and only the camera rotates?Kevin, drone panoramas aside you may consider Osmo Pro/RAW as a reliable alternative solution for ground level photography. Again, Litchi developed nice small app for Osmo, and again only full 360 spherical sequence is available. This results in time and space consuming workflow when only part of sequence is used for stitched image, but it works nicely. Here are two experimental examples I've made today. Both are cropped from full projections, containing approx.12 of 4:3 frames each.
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I found this guy who does amazing aerial panos. Thought you would enjoy. https://www.stefanforster.com/panoramaKevin, drone panoramas aside you may consider Osmo Pro/RAW as a reliable alternative solution for ground level photography. Again, Litchi developed nice small app for Osmo, and again only full 360 spherical sequence is available. This results in time and space consuming workflow when only part of sequence is used for stitched image, but it works nicely. Here are two experimental examples I've made today. Both are cropped from full projections, containing approx.12 of 4:3 frames each.
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Beautiful photography indeed. Take 40 years off my age and I may deliver similar imagery
...Until you've done a trailer wrap, you don't have a real appreciation for print resolution! Big difference on a 40' print whether seen from a roadway below or by someone only arm's length from the image. Software for interpolation varies greatly. The one I've settled with in nearly 20 years of digital imaging work is PhotoZoom Pro. They make a free "try before you buy" so you can test it out, plus "home" and "pro" versions.
I've had my work with PZP printed on metal for a Las Vegas casino's exotic car dealership. The graphics company in New Jersey wanted my untouched files, not having confidence in my work. I also sent my PZP files, ready to print. Then I got a call from their graphics manager asking what software I used because it totally smoked their stuff! The results are what count.
As an example, the attached panorama done in Death Valley (no, NOT a drone image due to national park anti-drone regulations) is roughly 5% of the resolution of the file I stitched together with Photoshop, then tweaked with PZP. The full-sized file is good for a print over nine feet (three meters) wide and still sharp enough to walk up to for viewing detail. (Original images shot with a Canon 1Dx MkII.)
I've had my work with PZP printed on metal for a Las Vegas casino's exotic car dealership. The graphics company in New Jersey wanted my untouched files, not having confidence in my work. I also sent my PZP files, ready to print. Then I got a call from their graphics manager asking what software I used because it totally smoked their stuff! The results are what count.
As an example, the attached panorama done in Death Valley (no, NOT a drone image due to national park anti-drone regulations) is roughly 5% of the resolution of the file I stitched together with Photoshop, then tweaked with PZP. The full-sized file is good for a print over nine feet (three meters) wide and still sharp enough to walk up to for viewing detail. (Original images shot with a Canon 1Dx MkII.)
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Oh, another masterpiece! What amazes me the most, however, it's not the final result (impeccable in this case), but the variety of tools to achieve practically identical results. The downside is the amount of time to get satisfying output off one particular tool, master it and develop efficient workflow. Once you've done this, there's not much left to desire ...
Very cool shot! That’s outstanding. I bet it looks killer as a big print. What was the original pano stitch size (megabytes)? I’m anxious to see how PZP works. Haven’t had the greatest luck with PS... it’s OK but not knock your socks off.
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I'm afraid Rivers misunderstood - in good faith - the topic of our conversation. We have no issue with the lack of resolution, which PZP software somehow, miraculously may improve. Instead, stitching quality and artifacts involved are discussed here.
I understood the question but truthfully, isn’t the destination really the goal here? Whether by stitching multiple images together or upsampling, or both, the final image is what’s important. If you want huge prints, you better have a lot of image resolution. Simple as that. Since that big print is going to show so much, they better be really handsome pixels too!
My response intended to explain that getting to that final result is often done through the combination of multiple techniques, not just one “magic bullet”.
The example I included included stitching (6 images), JPEG artifacts (mostly sky) and resampling (mostly for artifact cleaning and other related algorithms. While PZP did actually improve that image, it wasn’t as crucial here as it would likely be in the OP’s situation. Had I actually needed to upsample, to make pixels up, PZP uses mathematical algorithms far superior to any other available solution. For that, it’s my go-to tool.
Stitching is actually easy, especially if you don’t mind joints. If you do, blending becomes king. That’s my focus, softening that overlapping edge so there are no visible joints. In Photoshop, that means layers, masks, and a huge amount of attention to detail. To blend artifacts better, I may add some (film) grain which I then remove or weaken. That serves to kill off artifacts without destroying the sharpness.
With the Death Valley panoramic, I shot that in both RAW and Large (full resolution) JPEG. While RAW wouldn’t have had any artifacts, because of the number of images I knew I’d be combining, I wanted to test the stitching before converting all the RAW files. The stitched image had such promise that I just started working on that and forgot I had RAW files. No misdirection there, just real world image editing. Once I made the stitched image, until the final, minimally compressed JPEG, it was all PSD file, about 1-1.2Gb file size. Note that the image has also been significantly cropped. The fullsize moderately compressed (8) JPEG is over 10Mb, pretty large for a compressed JPEG.
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All good info. The final print with knife edge sharpness/acuity/resolution is the goal. I'd love to get drone stitches that could be enlarged to 144" with that kind of detail. I'm curious why you would use jpeg? Compression seems like something completely contraindicated. I never use jpegs in any of my workflow. I'd rather watch a spinning progress wheel on my computer screen that sacrifice image quality. Perhaps I'm missing something or have the wrong grasp of the process? I'm going to download PZP now & try it. I hope it takes RAWs or at least tiffs.
Using JPEG during the stitching process was more of a convenience than having to convert the RAW files, then experiment with the stitched panorama images to see if I liked what came together. In this case, I apparently nailed the "straight from the camera" shots enough so the panorama looked pretty decent. From there, my lack of patience had me playing with that panorama until I was far enough invested (time wise) that I just kept going until I had that final result.
Take a JPEG that's already compressed and open it in Photoshop. Look at its file size. Now compare that to the same resolution TIFF. Same size. So uncompressed, the two file types are identical. It's only in the closed, saved state that the JPEG with its compression will have an file size reduction. JPEG image quality is degraded ONLY when you save the opened JPEG file. If, like viewing on a web page, the JPEG is simply opened and closed, there's no degradation in image quality. Also, an opened JPEG (as in Photoshop) is the same file size as an opened TIFF, assuming both files are simple RGB 16-bit of identical resolution.
When you save and close, the JPEG allows you to set a compression level, 1-12, that will mathematically examine "like" or similar pixels to digitally compress the file. Instead of writing each pixel's description, a JPEG will write a bulk description for adjacent pixels with similar profiles. How big a net is used to batch those pixels is determined by how aggressive your compression settings are. If you pick a compression setting of 6-8. you'll knock half of your saved file size off and only moderately appear to "hammer" the image quality. That's important if you need to transmit or upload files. If I want to preserve a relatively finalized image, I'll likely save it as a 10-12 compression quality since I won't likely be editing it and working on it for later saving. If I do, I'll convert it to a TIFF without any compression, do my work with however many saves I need, then do a final save in whatever mode I feel is appropriate. Layered Photoshop files get so huge because essentially EACH LAYER is a full image, as in total number of pixels per layer. If you have six layers, don't be surprised if your file is 6X what the original flattened image size is.
Also note that Skylum software has a new product out designed to simplify drone photography. AirMagic. Might be worth checking out if your forté isn't digital imaging. One suggestion, whether it's software or drones or computers, the more you understand and know how to effectively use the TOOL, the better your results will be.
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That's all nothing but truth, although - again - this thread is slightly de-railing. Editing stitched image can be done in many ways and in a plethora of applications we have at disposal these days. All of them offers basically the same tricks delivered by Photoshop decades ago, more or less. However, the art of shooting properly the sequence of images for successful stitching, preparing RAW images and stitching process itself is the main topic of discussion. Whatever happens to rendered quilt after this stage is a different story ...
I've been a professional photographer for over 30 years. Owned the first digital camera in Northeastern PA was purchased in 1995 at a cost of $25,000. It produced a 120MB file.
JPG is compromised from the start! Don't use it for important work. RAW files are infinitely better and can be substantially improved in post with less degradation to image quality. Stay in Photoshop for your working files. Export tif if going to software that doesn't see PSD's. Only go to jpg for proofing on the web or output to print if making small prints.
Exposure is absolutely the most important thing. Shooting at critical aperture(usually 2 stops closed) is a close second for sharpness. Most drone cameras are marginal in quality so don't use jpg's
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