Hugin

Hugin is an Open Source panorama stitcher and graphical user interface (GUI) for Panorama tools. It also provides a number of additional components and command line tools.

About Hugin

Although Hugin is essentially a panorama stitcher, like other GUI front-ends it has a range of advanced features:

Among the Hugin workflow options, it is possible to correct exposure, Vignetting and White balance between photos; generate HDR, exposure fused or focus stacked output from bracketed photos; or use 16bit and HDR input data natively.

Photos can be digital or scanned, and taken with any kind of camera. A full range of lenses are supported, from simple cameraphones to obscure fisheye lenses. Hugin supports various output projections including a range of spherical, cartographic, and camera projections.

Hugin supports panoramas taken with multiple rows of photos, with or without bracketing. Bracketed photos can be handheld, taken using a DSLR bracketing function, or as consecutive panoramas shot at different EV exposure levels. Hugin can produce successful panoramas shot with cameras that always shoot using auto-exposure and auto-whitebalance.

hugin also supports the use of masks which means that you can exclude parts of images you don't want to appear in your panoramas, or include parts of image you specifically want to appear in your panoramas.

Hugin also uses a separate (background) panorama stitcher. This means that you can render a panorama in the PTBatcherGUI stich window, while working on the next panorama in hugin.

Starting with version 2011.2.0, Hugin is scriptable in Python. The scripting functionality is still in its infancy and requires more development and testing. For now it is available only in Linux and Windows, and currently there is no feedback from the plugin apart from it's success or failure, which is communicated in a dialog. If you're on Linux, you can start hugin from the command line and switch to the window you started it from while the plugin is running - then you'll see any console output it may produce.

• Hugin homepage on SourceForge. Screenshots, Tutorials, Documentation and Links.
• Hugin project summary page on SourceForge. Downloads.
• Hugin on Launchpad. Bug database and Feature requests.
• Hugin FAQ Frequently asked questions about Hugin.

User interface

The Hugin version as of version 2013.0.0 (to be released early 2013) consists of three User interfaces: Simple, Advanced and Expert.

• Simple: This user interface consists of all basic functionality to create a panorama and will suffice in 90% of all cases.
• Advanced: This user interface will start Hugin in the Panorama Editor screen; the simple interface is available in the background.
• Expert: This user interface also starts Hugin in the Panorama Editor screen and will unleash all the power and options of Hugin.

(Go to Version 2012 and older Gui to read about the "old" gui which is being used in the current stable release. Note that all Hugin 2012 and older versions come with the help screens installed. You can read the same texts as in this wiki by simply opening Hugin and clicking the "Help" option from the "Help" menu)

Simple User Interface

• Simple User Interface Main window
• Hugin Assistant tab
• Hugin Preview tab
• Hugin Layout tab
• Hugin Projection tab
• Hugin Move/Drag tab
• Hugin Crop tab

Advanced User Interface

• Panorama Editor window
  • Photos tab
  • Masks tab
  • Control Points tab
  • Optimiser tab (only available when selecting Geometric Custom parameters on the Photos tab)
  • Exposure tab (only available when selecting Photometric Custom parameters on the Photos tab)
  • Stitcher tab

The Panorama Editor window "takes" the foreground, but you can still switch to the Simple User interface which is started as a "background" screen of the Panorama Editor.

Expert User Interface

This one is identical to the Advanced User interface, including the Simple User interface screen in the background. It will give you even more options in the form of context-menus (right-click menus) in some parts of the screens.

Hugin components

The following tools are part of the Hugin suite:

• hugin the gui front end.
• nona a command-line replacement for PTStitcher.
• fulla correction of barrel distortion, chromatic aberration and vignetting.
• autooptimiser a tool with the same interface as PTOptimizer except using pairwise optimization which doesn't require any manual pre-placement.
• align_image_stack a tool to automate the process to align a stack of photos.
• tca_correct a tool to automatically generate chromatic aberration correction parameters for use with fulla.
• pto2mk generation of Makefiles for command-line stitching.
• pto_gen command line tool to generate project file from images
• cpfind command line tool to find control points
• linefind command line tool to find vertical features for leveling
• geocpset command line tool to connect featureless images by "geometric" control points
• icpfind command line tool for using heuristic control point matching like inside [[hugin]Hugin GUI]
• cpclean command line tool to remove control points with improbable error distances
• checkpto command line tool to examine project file and reports back the number of image chains present
• pto_var command line tool to manipulate image variables
• pto_lensstack command line tool to manipulate lens and stacks
• pto_mask command line tool to add mask to project file
• pto_template command line tool to apply template to project file
• calibrate_lens_gui automatic lens calibration using straight-line detection
• vig_optimize command line tool to estimate photometric parameters.
• hugin_hdrmerge merges multiple exposures to HDR using Khan anti-ghosting algorithm
• hugin_stitch_project a GUI tool to stitch a single Hugin .pto project.
• celeste_standalone removes cloud-like control points from project files.
• PTBatcherGUI a GUI queue manager for stitching multiple Hugin projects.
• deghosting_mask Creates mask for removing ghosting in bracketed images
• pano_modify Change output parameters of project file
• pano_trafo Transform image coordinates
• pto_merge Merges two or more Hugin project files
• pto_move Moves Hugin project files with associated images
• lensdb Maintenance of Hugins camera and lens databasae
• panoglview OpenGL panorama viewer stored in sourceforge SVN alongside hugin which must be built separately.
• autopano-sift-C version of autopano-sift written in C, also needs to be built separately.

More information, documentation and tutorials are available on the project website.

Like other GUI front-ends, Hugin provides an easy-to-use unified point-and-click interface to a whole range of other command-line tools including:

• autopano-sift, autopano-sift-C, panomatic or autopano for automatic creation of control points (note that an external control-point generator is no longer required by Hugin).
• enblend and enfuse for seamless blending of output images.

The Hugin project also provides open source replacements for the small number of closed source components of Panorama tools, especially PTStitcher. A PTStitcher replacement called nona and a PTOptimizer replacement called autooptimiser have been developed, supporting their most important features.

Development

Hugin is Open Source, and like every community-developed software very much dependent on voluntary contributions of resources. If you have coding skills, you are welcome to look at the source code and contribute to it. Even if you don't have coding skills, you most likely have some skills that the project could use and you are more than welcome to contribute your time. The tasks requiring attention change frequently and so do the required skillset and resources. Find more about the development process.

External links

• Hugin homepage for Screenshots, Tutorials, Documentation and Links.
• Hugin Sourceforge project for Downloads.
• Hugin's bug tracker for bug reports and feature requests.
• Sourceforge HG to browse the Hugin source-code in Mercurial.
• hugin-ptx GoogleGroup to contribute to development and peer support.

Supported operating systems

• Windows
• Linux and Unix
• Mac OS X