# Hugin Panorama Workflow

From PanoTools.org Wiki

Hugin provides different work flows for generating panoramas. This page will list some possibility and give you some suggestions for your own work flow.

This is not a step by step instruction. Not all projects will need all steps. It will give you some ideas for your own projects.

The panorama creating consists of two major steps:

1. generating project file and align images
2. stitching of project file

The following chapters will give you some details for both steps. You can combine both steps as you like. You can run all full automatic, or you can run all manual, or you can generate the project on the command line and stitch with PTBatcherGUI[*], or you can all do on the command line, or or or...

## Generating project file

### Fully automatic generation

PTBatcherGUI[*] provides an option to create a project file and run the assistant on these generated project files. Go to File>Search directory for...>Images and select the path to your images. After pressing Start PTBatcherGUI will search for possible projects depending on the EXIF information in the images. When the search is finished, the bottom list box displays all found panoramas. Select the panoramas you want to process and then click Send selected panoramas to queue to send these panoramas to the assistant queue. When you now start the batch processing, the assistant is running on all project files.

If you tick the option Automatic stitch after assistant the panoramas will be stitched after running the assistant. This will give you a full automatic panorama processing from the input images to the final panorama.

Also in Hugin an automatic alignment can be achieved. After adding the images (and checking projections and focal length) run the assistant on this project. You can also send the projects to the assistant queue and process the project files later (e.g. during night).

### Manual generation

Project file can be generated and aligned in Hugin. A possible work flow would be

1. Add images.
2. Assign lens and stacks.
3. Find control points, e.g. with cpfind.
4. Control point checking (celeste, cpclean, manual)
5. Geometric optimisation (yaw, pitch, roll, lens parameters).
6. Photometric optimisation (exposure values, vignetting, white balance[*]).
7. Select output parameters (projection, canvas size, ...)

### Scripting

The project can also be created and aligned with command line tools (see here for more details).

A work flow similar to the assistant would be like:

        pto_gen -o project.pto *.jpg
        cpfind -o project.pto --multirow --celeste project.pto
        cpclean -o project.pto project.pto
        linefind -o project.pto project.pto
        autooptimiser -a -m -l -s -o project.pto project.pto
        pano_modify --canvas=AUTO --crop=AUTO -o project.pto project.pto

If the normal assistant works okay, this can be shortened to

       pto_gen -o project.pto *.jpg
       hugin_executor --assistant project.pto

An other approach for multi-row panoramas with featureless images could look like:

        pto_gen -o project.pto *.jpg
        pto_var -o project.pto --set y=-100+(i%6)*40,p=(i<6)?-30:30,r=0 project.pto
        cpfind --prealigned -o project.pto project.pto
        geocpset -o project.pto project.pto
        linefind -o project.pto project.pto
        autooptimiser -a -m -l -s -o project.pto project.pto
        pano_modify --canvas=AUTO --crop=AUTO -o project.pto project.pto

## Stitching

All stitching engines use the same code base. So there is no preference for one or the other. It is a matter of taste, which one you use.

### PTBatcherGUI

The default stitching engine is PTBatcherGUI[*]. You can add different projects to a queue and process the queue later without control. But it can also be configured to start immediately.

You can also stitch all project files in a given directory: After select the directory in File>Search directory for...>Project all project files in the given folder will be added to the queue.

### Hugin_stitch_project

Hugin_stitch_project can only stitch a single project. The processing starts immediately.

### Scripting

The stitching can also be started from the command line:

        hugin_executor --stitching --prefix=prefix project.pto

Or you can send the project to the batch queue:

        PTBatcherGUI --batch project.pto

The switch `--batch` starts the processing immediately.

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