Automatic panoramas with hugin and autopano

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I’ve only been using hugin for an hour now, and I’m really impressed.

The mac binary doesn’t include the ability to automatically determine how images overlap, but it’s pretty easy to make that work, too.

First download the hugin binary. The Mac OS X port is here.

Then install the autopano binary.

First install MacPorts.

Then run:

sudo port selfupdate
sudo port install autopano-sift-c

I had a problem with cmake hanging during install. If port stalls for you, ctrl-c, then sudo port clean cmake ; sudo port install cmake ; sudo port install autopano-sift-c again.

Then tell Hugin where the binary is. Go to Hugin > Preferences… and click the “Autopano” tab, and make it look like this:

Close the preferences window, and the next time you use the “Assistant” tab and load images, you’ll see that the alignment is done for you automatically.

Here’s an example taken from Bryce Point in Bryce Canyon: (it’s also one of the banners).

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  • gt

    I tried sudo port install autopano-sift-c. Response: sudo: port: command not found

    Ideas?

  • http://matthew.mceachen.us matthew

    You need to install MacPorts. See http://www.macports.org/install.php

  • http://www.di-bella.de Ingo

    hm… same for me. installed macports, but still command not found. don’t even know if macports installed successfully… or how i could check that… why so difficult?

  • http://matthew.mceachen.us matthew

    The problem is that most MacPort apps are command-line-only — there are a couple of exceptions, but for the most part, you’re playing with it in the shell.

    If you haven’t lived in the terminal much, it’s deep water to be tossed into. I respect your grumping.

    Check out http://guide.macports.org/#installing.shell — you’ll want to edit your “.bashrc” in your user’s home directory, and make sure these lines got added:

    export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
export MANPATH=/opt/local/share/man:$MANPATH
export DISPLAY=:0.0

    Save the file, start a new terminal, and when you type:

    which port

    you should see

    /opt/local/bin/port
  • http://www.martin-thoburn.com Martin

    I tired to install this using the terminal. I get the following:

    Warning: Can’t open index file for source: rsync://rsync.macports.org/release/ports/
    Error: search for portname autopano-sift-c failed: No index(es) found! Have you synced your source indexes?
    Martins-Laptop:~ gradek$

    I have MacPort installed. Running OSX 10.5

    May, just boot to windows to use hugin if I can’t get this working without loosing another 4 hours of my life.

  • http://matthew.mceachen.us matthew

    Did you run “selfupdate”? I went on to a different Mac (running 10.5.6) and it seems like things are currently OK:

    $ sudo port selfupdate

MacPorts base version 1.700 installed
Downloaded MacPorts base version 1.700

The MacPorts installation is not outdated so it was not updated

$ sudo port install autopano-sift-c
--->  Fetching cmake
--->  Attempting to fetch cmake-2.6.2.tar.gz from http://distfiles.macports.org/cmake
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for cmake
--->  Extracting cmake
--->  Configuring cmake
--->  Building cmake
--->  Staging cmake into destroot
--->  Installing cmake @2.6.2_0
--->  Activating cmake @2.6.2_0
--->  Cleaning cmake
--->  Fetching libpano13
--->  Attempting to fetch libpano13-2.9.12.tar.gz from http://distfiles.macports.org/libpano13
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for libpano13
--->  Extracting libpano13
--->  Configuring libpano13
--->  Building libpano13
--->  Staging libpano13 into destroot
--->  Installing libpano13 @2.9.12_0
--->  Activating libpano13 @2.9.12_0
--->  Cleaning libpano13
--->  Fetching autopano-sift-c
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for autopano-sift-c
--->  Extracting autopano-sift-c
--->  Configuring autopano-sift-c
--->  Building autopano-sift-c
--->  Staging autopano-sift-c into destroot
--->  Installing autopano-sift-c @2.4-2903_0
--->  Activating autopano-sift-c @2.4-2903_0
--->  Cleaning autopano-sift-c
  • Charaka

    Please help me on this error. Macport is installed. But cannot install cmake. Following error appears. Thank you.

    Error: Target org.macports.configure returned: configure failure: shell command ” cd “/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_devel_cmake/work/cmake-2.6.4″ && ./configure –prefix=/opt/local –mandir=/share/man –docdir=/share/doc/cmake ” returned error 6
    Command output: ———————————————
    CMake 2.6-4, Copyright (c) 2007 Kitware, Inc., Insight Consortium
    ———————————————
    Error when bootstrapping CMake:
    Cannot find appropriate C compiler on this system.
    Please specify one using environment variable CC.
    See cmake_bootstrap.log for compilers attempted.

    ———————————————
    Log of errors: /opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_devel_cmake/work/cmake-2.6.4/Bootstrap.cmk/cmake_bootstrap.log
    ———————————————

    Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.

  • matthew

    @Charaka: You need to follow step 1 — install Xcode.

  • charaka

    Thank you, Matthew. It worked

  • Hannah

    Hi Matthew,
    You’ll have to forgive me if I ask stupid questions, but I’m a bit of a computer novice, who is very keen to make some nice panoramic photos without spending hours picking control points. I’ve downloaded Hugin and MacPorts from your links, but am not sure where to go from here. Your instructions are a bit too technical for me. Could you provide me with a more step-by-step dummies guide to installing this?
    Cheers.

  • http://matthew.mceachen.us matthew

    Since I wrote this post I purchased a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet that came with Photoshop LE, and that does excellent panorama stitching. If you can get a copy of that, it may be an easier route for you.

  • Hannah

    Wow. I’m so silly. I have Photoshop CS3 for work and didn’t even think to use it! Duh. Thanks for pointing out the obvious!

  • Tom

    Hi,

    I’ve got the contents of this post more or less figured out, but I was wondering about automating the next step. Once I have the control points found if I can automate (using automator or applescripts or something in windows even) the process to create the final panorama. I’d like to do this because I have a pile of folders waiting to be made, so I can leave it running while I am away to compile and continue to the next file after completing. That and/ or any tips on how to keep the compilation time down would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

  • http://matthew.mceachen.us matthew

    Sorry, man, I nuked and paved my computer a couple months ago, and I haven’t had time to play with panoramas since. Perhaps the project website has an IRC channel or email group?