Photo Stitching Program

[gazza63]

Hello everyone

Loving this weather we are having at the moment.

I took loads of moon shots last night. As my scope is a long focal length, and using my webcam at prime focus, I was unable to get the whole moon in view (even my 0.5 focal reducer didn't help much).

I'd like to join them together to make one picture.

Can anyone tell me.... what is the best photo stitching program to use? (free and downloadable of course).

Any advice, well appreciated

Thanks.

Gary

[cgarry]

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/

Chris

[gazza63]

Thanks a lot Chris

Gary

[DrRobin]

Hi Gary,

I am currently testing MS ICE, Autostitch and Hugin, but haven't decided which is best. MS ICE, when it works produces a really detailed picture, Autostitch seems to work better than MS ICE and Hugin has by far the most amount of controls to fiddle with.

I think Hugin could be really good, just need some new source data to try it out correctly. There is also one called iMerge, again I have had mixed results.

Robin

[Knight of Clear Skies]

I can second the recommendation for Microsoft ICE.

[Bizibilder]

All the above and Photostitch. Horses for courses with this sort of software - it all seems to depend on exactly what you are trying to make a mosaic from! (Imerge has a trick up its sleeve - you can use it when capturing your mosaic panes as, if you click on a newly captured .avi, it opens the first frame for you as a "still" - very useful to build up a rough picture of your target and a great way of not becoming a member of the "missed a bit" club!!)

[AstroTux]

I find Hugin rather good, although it takes some getting used to. It's free and cross-platform so you can use it on anything. More info here http://hugin.sourceforge.net/ .

hope this helps,

Alan

[gazza63]

Hi all.... that responded to my question

As Chris and others, recommended Microsoft ICE. I since downloaded it and tried several attempts to get it working fairly right.

It stitched 65 of 66 frames.

To be honest... I'm very pleased with the outcome, seeing, I still have to play around with certain settings to see what it does, and does not do.

Anyhow,...... here is the attachment

Once again....Thanks guys

Gary

[Bizibilder]

Another fully paid up member of the missed a bit club :p !!

(Mosaics are fun to do and you have enough there to crop to a good image).

[gazza63]

Thanks Roger

Here's a better one. After finally stitching the missed bits, used GIMP to darken the black bits. I'm Getting there

Gary

[Ant]

Another vote for imerge - works a treat on the moon... not so good on solar though.

Ant

[gazza63]

Hi Ant

I will give Imerge a go sometime, and compare the difference.

Cheers

Gary

[Ant]

From memory the only annoying thing is that with imerge the images have to be bmp files when you import then.

Ant