PTStitcher

Preface

PTStitcher is one of the core applications of Panorama tools, together with PTOptimizer and the Panorama Tools Plugins.

For stitching panoramas you most probably won't get in contact with PTStitcher frequently, since the scripting is more or less completely done by the various GUI front-ends and some tools like PanoCube.

However, there are several occasions where you might need to write or at least understand the scripts or call PTStitcher directly (for some batch tasks f.e.).

Updates

The PTStitcher source code was never published, hence there are no changes possible to certain functions. But since a considerable part of it's functionality is in pano12 library, PTStitcher benefits from every update of this core library.

You can take PTStitcher from any of the panotools distribution on one of the Mirrors. In order to use new functionality you need a recent copy of pano12 library. Note that only win32, i386 Linux and mac classic binary versions were ever made available, so you are out of luck if you use OS X or a 64bit operating system.

There is an open source replacement for PTStitcher called nona in the hugin project which has much (but not all) of the PTStitcher features. Another open source replacement is PTmender, part of the pano12 project at sourceforge.

Intro

PTStitcher is script driven. The scripts are in pure text format and can be edited with any text or programming editor (on windows notepad will do).

They are processed on a line by line basis. Each line starts with a special character (case sensitive) that indicates the meaning of the rest of the line. All other first in line characters are ignored and considered comments.

Features

Most features of PTStitcher are conveniently accessible by the usual GUIs (see top), but some are not.

Accessible by GUI

PTStitcher can stitch

• spherical (equirectangular), cylindrical, rectilinear and fisheyed (or mirror ball) panoramas
• multi row panoramas
• panoramas from images that where shot tilted up or down.
• images from any lens (including spherical mirrors)
• images with different Focal Length into one panorama
• flat images like scanned maps.

The capabilities of PTStitcher go far beyond panorama stitching: It can be used

• to remap images between different Projections
• to extract and insert rectilinear images from a spherical or cylindrical panorama.
• to remap a spherical panorama such that Nadir and Zenith are editable.
• to down- or upsample images with high quality interpolators.
• to correct perspective distortion.

Acessible by Script or other Tool

PTStitcher can be used stand alone or with some other (non-GUI) Tool:

• together with some tool that separate color channels (ImageMagick) to correct Chromatic aberration
• assembling 6 cube faces to an equirectangular panorama can be done by GUI but is more conveniently done by script, batch file or PanoCube Plus.

Tutorials

Information on how to create and use PTStitcher scripts can be found on the web and on the wiki:

• The original PTStitcher Readme file contains basic information.
• The updated original example script with lots of comments is found at Jim Watter's page
• Ben Kreunen has an excellent list about the parameters of the p- o- and m-line and some example scripts.
• Frequently asked questions about PTStitcher including solutions to common problems are found at the unofficial Panorama Tools FAQ.
• On the wiki there are some techniques described that use PTStitcher:
  • Upsampling a single image with ptstitcher
  • Extracting and inserting rectilinear Views

Calling from the command line

PTStitcher can be called from the command line (this is what all GUIs do, too). More information in the PTStitcher Readme

Erik Krause 12:35, 29 Apr 2005 (EDT)