User:Klaus/Hugin 0.8.0 comment - Revision history

Klaus: typo

2009-07-21T16:20:18Z

typo

Klaus: /* Hugin 0.8.0 is out */ a few corrections

2009-07-21T16:17:50Z

‎Hugin 0.8.0 is out: a few corrections

Klaus: commenting on Hugin as useful software

2009-07-21T15:35:14Z

commenting on Hugin as useful software

New page

== Hugin 0.8.0 is out ==

The panoramic stitching software Hugin 0.8.0 version has been released,
and once again creating panoramic images has become smoother. Being
a faithful user since years, convinced by the virtues and merits
of this programme suite, and one should know about the panotools
and enblend engines under the hood as well, I am happy to see the
improvements from the last months put together into the current release.

Sometime in 2005 my new camera came with a piece of stitching software,
and although I shall not mention the name, that piece was crap.
So I was looking around, and rather sooner than later came across what
was then hugin 0.5beta. It was already doing a reasonable job then.
One can learn quite a lot how software and commerce do work, quite often
not to the benefit of the user, but instructive as it is, let's leave
this aspect alone for now and look at hugin's achievements.

Remember the days when you could still see the seam lines in a
panoramic image? Even hugin did produce such images,
although not as badly as others, and at least the alignment was about right.
But already then there was this extra piece of software called enblend
which could do away with seam lines most of the time. And with the
quailty bar rising, I discovered that panoramic images did benefit
if one corrected the vignetting before feeding images into hugin,
although these external programmes could cause banding in the image
in exchange for removing the vignetting.

Then came the introduction of vignetting correction within hugin.
First it was a simple add-on window, and one had to provide either
parameters or a flatfield by oneself. But no longer had on to
pre-process the images, but on top of the original images the pto
file was all that was needed to revisit a stitch I one wished to
do so at a later stage. And the next step was that hugin was
empowered to compute the vignetting correction out of the image
material itself. It already did so for the lense parameters,
and this self-contained parameter determination is pretty damn useful.

Enblend was there as well. It has picked up speed since then,
beyond the CPU speeds getting faster. And it has become smarter.
There always is a seam line between images, although with enblend
you usually do not see it. In the minority cases where one did,
one could resort to editing the alpha channels of the intermediate
image files. Still manual intervention. But then enblend got that
extra bit smarter with the capability, not to determine the seam
from geometry only, but to look at the image content to find a
good placement, a line along areas where the images to be stitched
differ as little as possible.

A few technical improvements have happened as well. Remember the times
when the output was TIFF, large TIFF files into and out of enblend?
Some changes had to wait for their time, for instance the LZW algorithm
lost its shackles when finally the patent expired, and one could think
about compressed TIFFs. There are now compressed cropped TIFFs saving
on memory and hard drive space, and JPEG is now possible as well
hence one saves evoking a converter program after the hugin run.

Improvements on the GUI side? Yes indeed! Most recently the introduction
of a fast interactive preview. And fast really means in real time.
On top of it this new preview has some added features, and personally
I do like the cropping tool which allows me to select the rectangular
frame I want to have in the output JPEG image. It means hugin is a
one stop shop for panoramic images creation in most cases.

Of course there are still some small quirks. I am confident the triving
hugin community will iron them out in due course. And surely there are
features I have not mentioned. Enfusing opening the door into HDR,
perspective correction of single photos, proper interpolating algorithms,
a wide choice of output perspectives to choose from. And certainly there
are several aspects which deserve my constructive criticism, and I plan to
write these down in due course. But I have forgotten the most important thing.

Hugin is free. It is not a piece that sellers try to strip of features
and then endeavour to sell at a premium. Being free software means that
most probably hugin is here to stay. You may even compile and modify
your own copy if you find it necessary. And the aspect I want to look
at last: I have hugin 0.8.0 (well, the release candidate) running both
on Windows XP and Mac OSX Tiger, with hugin looking pretty much the same
an these different platforms, and I am looking forward to seeing it
installed on my debian Linux box. Whatever the platform, hugin is there.

2009-07-20 Klaus Föhl

@@ Line 48: / Line 48: @@
 differ as little as possible.
-A fair number of technical improvements have happened as well.
+A fair number of technical improvements has happened as well.
 Remember the times when the output was TIFF, large TIFF files
 into and out of Enblend? Some changes had to wait for their time,

@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 and once again creating panoramic images has become smoother. Being
 a faithful user since years, convinced by the virtues and merits
-of this programme suite, and one should know about the panotools
+of this programme suite - and one should know about the Panotools
-and enblend engines under the hood as well, I am happy to see the
+and Enblend engines under the hood as well - I am happy to see the
 improvements from the last months put together into the current release.
 Sometime in 2005 my new camera came with a piece of stitching software,
-and although I shall not mention the name, that piece was crap.
+and although I shall not mention any names, that piece was crap. Really.
 So I was looking around, and rather sooner than later came across what
-was then hugin 0.5beta. It was already doing a reasonable job then.
+was then Hugin 0.5beta. It was already doing a reasonable job then.
 One can learn quite a lot how software and commerce do work, quite often
-not to the benefit of the user, but instructive as it is, let's leave
+not to the benefit of the user, but instructive as this may be,
-this aspect alone for now and look at hugin's achievements.
+let's leave these aspects alone for now and look at much more
 Remember the days when you could still see the seam lines in a
-panoramic image? Even hugin did produce such images,
+panoramic image? Even Hugin's output did show such seams,
 although not as badly as others, and at least the alignment was about right.
-But already then there was this extra piece of software called enblend
+But already then there was this extra piece of software called Enblend
 which could do away with seam lines most of the time. And with the
 quailty bar rising, I discovered that panoramic images did benefit
-if one corrected the vignetting before feeding images into hugin,
+if one corrected the vignetting before feeding images into Hugin,
 although these external programmes could cause banding in the image
 in exchange for removing the vignetting.
-Then came the introduction of vignetting correction within hugin.
+Then came the introduction of vignetting correction within Hugin.
 First it was a simple add-on window, and one had to provide either
-parameters or a flatfield by oneself. But no longer had on to
+the parameters or a flatfield by oneself. But no longer had one to
-pre-process the images, but on top of the original images the pto
+pre-process the images, so on top of the original images the pto
-file was all that was needed to revisit a stitch I one wished to
+file was all that was needed to revisit a stitch if one wished to
-do so at a later stage. And the next step was that hugin was
+do so at a later time. And the next step was that Hugin was
 empowered to compute the vignetting correction out of the image
 material itself. It already did so for the lense parameters,
 and this self-contained parameter determination is pretty damn useful.
-Enblend was there as well. It has picked up speed since then,
+Enblend was there as well. It has picked up processing speed since then,
 beyond the CPU speeds getting faster. And it has become smarter.
-There always is a seam line between images, although with enblend
+There always is a seam line between images, although with Enblend
-you usually do not see it. In the minority cases where one did,
+you usually do not see it. In the few cases where one did,
 one could resort to editing the alpha channels of the intermediate
-image files. Still manual intervention. But then enblend got that
+image files. Still manual intervention. But then Enblend got that
-extra bit smarter with the capability, not to determine the seam
+extra bit smarter with the capability not to determine the seam
 from geometry only, but to look at the image content to find a
-good placement, a line along areas where the images to be stitched
+good placement, a seam line across areas where the images to be stitched
 differ as little as possible.
-A few technical improvements have happened as well. Remember the times
+A fair number of technical improvements have happened as well.
-when the output was TIFF, large TIFF files into and out of enblend?
+Remember the times when the output was TIFF, large TIFF files
-Some changes had to wait for their time, for instance the LZW algorithm
+into and out of Enblend? Some changes had to wait for their time,
-lost its shackles when finally the patent expired, and one could think
+for instance the LZW algorithm lost its shackles when finally
-about compressed TIFFs. There are now compressed cropped TIFFs saving
+the patent expired, and one could think about using compressed TIFFs
 on memory and hard drive space, and JPEG is now possible as well
-hence one saves evoking a converter program after the hugin run.
+hence one saves evoking a converter program after the Hugin run.
 Improvements on the GUI side? Yes indeed! Most recently the introduction
 of a fast interactive preview. And fast really means in real time.
-On top of it this new preview has some added features, and personally
+Even better, this new preview has some added features, and personally
 I do like the cropping tool which allows me to select the rectangular
-frame I want to have in the output JPEG image. It means hugin is a
+frame I want to have for the output JPEG image. It means Hugin is a
-one stop shop for panoramic images creation in most cases.
+one stop shop for panoramic image creation in most cases.
-Of course there are still some small quirks. I am confident the triving
+Of course there are still some small quirks. I am confident the thriving
-hugin community will iron them out in due course. And surely there are
+Hugin community will iron them out in due course. And surely there are
-features I have not mentioned. Enfusing opening the door into HDR,
+features I have not mentioned. Enfuse opening the door into HDR,
 perspective correction of single photos, proper interpolating algorithms,
-a wide choice of output perspectives to choose from. And certainly there
+a wide choice of output perspectives to choose from, and more.
-are several aspects which deserve my constructive criticism, and I plan to
+And certainly there are several aspects which deserve
-write these down in due course. But I have forgotten the most important thing.
+my constructive criticism, and I plan to write these down in due course.
 Hugin is free. It is not a piece that sellers try to strip of features
-and then endeavour to sell at a premium. Being free software means that
+and then endeavour to sell to you at a premium. Being free software means
-most probably hugin is here to stay. You may even compile and modify
+that most probably Hugin is here to stay. You may even compile and modify
-your own copy if you find it necessary. And the aspect I want to look
+your own copy if you deam it necessary. And the aspect I want to look
-at last: I have hugin 0.8.0 (well, the release candidate) running both
+at last: I have Hugin 0.8.0 (well, the release candidate) running on
-on Windows XP and Mac OSX Tiger, with hugin looking pretty much the same
+both Windows XP and Mac OSX Tiger, with Hugin looking pretty much the same
-an these different platforms, and I am looking forward to seeing it
+on these different platforms, and I am looking forward to seeing
-installed on my debian Linux box. Whatever the platform, hugin is there.
+the 0.7.0 to 0.8.0 upgrade on my debian Linux box.
 -07-20   Klaus Föhl