Hugin

1. GOAL

Toolchain to create panoramic images for every occasion,
from quick holiday snaps to images with hundreds of megapixels.

2. CONTENT

This package contains the following programs:

• hugin, the main program, a GUI for the panorama tools suite
  and some programs included here.

• nona, a simple stitcher that does geometrical and photometric
  distortions to photos and writes the output to image files.
  It is a replacement for PTStitcher (doesn't support most
  features of PTStitcher, but is faster, opensource and
  will be extended in the future). The parameters, mostly
  backward-compatible to PTStitcher, are specified in a .pto
  project such as those generated by hugin, i.e. nona doesn't
  decide what the distortions are going to be, it just does
  what it is told to do.

• fulla correction of barrel distortion, chromatic aberration
  and vignetting.

• autooptimiser, optimise a panorama pairwise, starting from an
  anchor image. cmd line version of the pairwise mode in hugin

• 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.

• hugin_executor for command-line stitching or running assistant.

• 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 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 tool for Hugins camera and lens database

• verdandi Merges images using watershed algorithm

These programs are built on top of the pano13 library,
http://panotools.sourceforge.net/

3. DEPENDENCIES

Hugin is work in progress and dependencies can be added any time.

Hugin depends on the following packages. The list may be
incomplete, and there may be some platform-specific dependencies.

For the latest updates, check
http://wiki.panotools.org/Development_of_Open_Source_tools#Dependencies

3.1. Build-Time Dependencies

Users compiling Hugin from source will need:

A C++compiler which supports OpenMP and C++11.
    * OpenMP support is not required. But when compiling
      without OpenMP nona and cpfind (and some other
      algorithm) are running only with one thread, 
      which is slower.

The wxWidgets GUI toolkit version >=2.7.0. 2.9/3.0 is supported.
C++17 TS <filesystem> or boost::filesystem (boost >=1.47)
libtiff the TIFF library with LZW support.
libpano13 version >=2.9.19
libjpg the JPEG library
libpng the PNG library
libopenexr the OpenEXR library
libvigra the VIGRA libray, header files and impex library (>=1.9)
Exiv2 Image metadata library
GLEW the OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library
gettext
sqlite3, the SQL database backend for the lens database
littlecms2, little cms color engine
optionally, lapack
optionally, libfftw3
on Unix you need also
    libGLU the OpenGL utility library
    libxi
    libxmu
on Windows you need
    HTML Help Workshop for generating compiled HTML help file
on Mac OS you need
    freeglut or glut, the OpenGL utility toolkit
for the optional Python Scripting Interface (currently functional and tested only on Linux and Windows)
    Python version >=2.6
    SWIG >=2.0 - If Python >=3.2, SWIG must be >=2.0.4
Hugin can be compiled with gcc, as well as with MSVC.
The build process requires CMake version >=3.1

3.2. At runtime

enblend >= 3.2 is required.
Exiftool, version >=9.09 is required to support GPano tags. Otherwise they are ignored.

Starting with Hugin 2010.3 and newer, Hugin ships with its own control points generator cpfind. Prior to 2010.3 another optional but recommended runtime dependency was a control points generator.
Optionally Python argparse command-line parsing library for the Python scripts. 

4. USE

hugin can be used to stitch multiple images together. The resulting image can
span 360 degrees. Another common use is the creation of very high resolution
pictures by combining multiple images.

See http://hugin.sourceforge.net/ for more information and tutorials.

See http://wiki.panotools.org/Development_of_Open_Source_tools#Supported_Platforms
for some information on releases for different platforms.

5. TYPICAL WORKFLOW

6. load images

7. specify initial parameters (lens etc)

8. select control points points.

9. run optimizer to estimate image positions

10. set output parameters and stitch images together.

11. KNOWN ISSUES / INCOMPATIBILITIES / LIMITATIONS

Check the Hugin FAQ and bug tracker

http://wiki.panotools.org/Hugin_FAQ#Known_Limitations

An updated list of issues deemed to be critical,
including discussions and workarounds, is in the issue tracker

https://bugs.launchpad.net/hugin/+bugs?search=Search&field.importance=Critical

Linux: Compiz interferes with the fast preview window.
If you're affected, the workaround is to not use Compiz.

Some components of Hugin have been reported not to deal well with image files
that have the same name in different folders. The workaround is to rename
your images files so that all image files in a project are unique.

7. SUPPORT / COMMUNITY

Please use the hugin-ptx mailing list if you have questions or suggestions:
http://groups.google.com/group/hugin-ptx