Stitching panoramas with Hugin under Linux

If you are one of the panorama folks trying to move off to Linux, you'll surely like to try out Hugin panorama stitcher (it does work on other platforms too, so Win and Mac users could make use of it just as well!).

As you know I have migrated to Linux some weeks ago therefore I will only talk about Hugin on Fedora 13 and no other platform (all flavors of Linux act in a similar fashion). The only thing to get done before starting with Hugin is to install autopano-sift-C package. The trick to it is that it is not available in the standard repository of Fedora. So, first install RPM Fusion from here. After that is done you should be able to go to System->Administration->Add/Remove software and search for 'autopano'. Select the package, install. Now search for Hugin, select it, install. And now you are all set and ready to go! You can find Hugin under Applications->Graphics menu.

After starting up, you land in Assistant tab. This is all I used to create the above image out of 4 tiff files. So you click '1. Load images...' select all the files that should be included and click Open. For verification it should display how many images you have selected, what focal length was used and the crop factor.

Also button '2. Align...' becomes active. Click it and Hugin will pick up all the control points that will be used to stitch the pictures together. A new window opens up. Here the only thing needed for a quick startup is the Crop tab. Choose that and click Autocrop button. Worked great for me! If it fails for you just readjust manually.

Close the Align window and click button '3. Create panorama...'. Specify the output file name and click Save.

Congrats, you have just finished your very first Hugin panorama.

There are tons of more advanced options and possibilities in Hugin but more on those some other time!

A geek note- all 4 pictures taken hand-held with D70s and Nikkor 70-300 lens on an amazing evening in Swedish west coast.

Keep shooting!
//M.