Software for a simple 2D panorama stitch from 3 PI-XAS scans

Radost · Jul 28, 2022

Hi,
I am looking for a simple way to stitch panoramic scans from my Pacific Image Xas 135 scanner.
Lightroom kind of works but still tries to make some geometric adjustments.
Hugin is just imposible to use and maybe I am not understanding how to switch off all the geometric corrections.
I just need a simple align with minimal change to the original images.
Does Adobe Photoshop Layer align keep the original layers without making any changes?

Les Sarile · Jul 28, 2022

This page takes you to links for Microsoft Image Composite Editor 2.0 - about halfway down the page are links to two versions ICE-2.0.3-for-64-bit-Windows.msi and ICE-2.0.3-for-32-bit-Windows.msi.

I've done many scans including the one below of Kodak Ektar 100

Four frame stitch of Kodak Ektar 100 scans by Les DMess, on Flickr

RalphLambrecht · Jul 28, 2022

Adobe Photohop woked fine for my panoramas. Find some who has it and let her/him do it for you!

Radost · Jul 28, 2022

Just realized I have photoshop with my photo subscription.
The merge panorama is the same as lightroom. It changes and distorts the image.
Have not tried the layer align yet.

Kodachromeguy · Jul 28, 2022

I have been using the Photomerge tool in Photoshop CS5 and CS6 for Hasselblad XPan frames:

https://worldofdecay.blogspot.com/2022/07/hasselblad-xpan-panoramic-camera-how-to.html

For two frames, I do not see any obvious distortion. It is impressive what it does! For more frames, you may need to experiment with automatic, cylindrical, or one of the other options.

Here are some examples of about 180 degrees of coverage requiring many frames. There is distortion compared to panning your head in a circle because the merge is incorporating multiple flat flames into the final panorama:

https://worldofdecay.blogspot.com/2021/09/20-year-memorial-destruction-of-world.html

I love Les' scan above. Nice scene.

Kodachromeguy · Jul 29, 2022

Here is another panorama taken from Logan Airport in Boston. This one clearly has geometric issues because I took the individual frames with a Rollei 35S and its 40mm lens. I have found that longer lenses, such as 85mm or 105mm, were always more successful. But Photoshop did a reasonable job merging the 40mm frames.

https://worldofdecay.blogspot.com/2022/01/afternoon-at-logan-boston-massachusetts.html

grat · Jul 30, 2022

I typically use Affinity Photo for my pano stitching, but that's assuming all the images are undistorted, and parallel to each other (ie, I didn't change the angle of my camera, only the position).

If your images are distorted, Hugin should be quite capable of fixing them.

How much overlap do you have between the images?

Radost · Jul 31, 2022

grat said:
I typically use Affinity Photo for my pano stitching, but that's assuming all the images are undistorted, and parallel to each other (ie, I didn't change the angle of my camera, only the position).

If your images are distorted, Hugin should be quite capable of fixing them.

How much overlap do you have between the images?

It is a 6x9 camera so I take 3 equal 35 scans. Almost 1/3rd overlap.

reddesert · Aug 1, 2022

If you take 3 images with a regular rectilinear lens by pivoting the camera, with some overlap between images, then there are going to be changes in the perspective between images, which have to be undone to overlap them. This occurs even if you rotate about the ideal point of the lens (nodal point, entrance pupil, whatever). You see this as distortion by the merging program, but it is due to the rectilinear perspective of the lenses.

When we try to merge them into a panorama, we're mapping a series of rectilinear images onto a cylindrical perspective. The effect can be made less by taking more exposures and rotating by less in between each one (using a longer focal length lens will enforce this). It is similar to the way that a 12-gon is a better approximation of a circle than a hexagon, which is better than a square.

Radost · Aug 2, 2022

reddesert said:
If you take 3 images with a regular rectilinear lens by pivoting the camera, with some overlap between images, then there are going to be changes in the perspective between images, which have to be undone to overlap them. This occurs even if you rotate about the ideal point of the lens (nodal point, entrance pupil, whatever). You see this as distortion by the merging program, but it is due to the rectilinear perspective of the lenses.

When we try to merge them into a panorama, we're mapping a series of rectilinear images onto a cylindrical perspective. The effect can be made less by taking more exposures and rotating by less in between each one (using a longer focal length lens will enforce this). It is similar to the way that a 12-gon is a better approximation of a circle than a hexagon, which is better than a square.

it’s not pictures. Its 35mm scans with pacific image XAS.

reddesert · Aug 2, 2022

I think I see. Most of the people in this thread are talking about taking individual 35mm photos pivoting the camera and merging the scans (which requires undoing the rectilinear perspective), but you're talking about scanning a single large negative using a scanner that can only cover a 35mm-size strip at a time. Calling it a "panorama" is why people are confused about your intention, since that usually means pivoting viewpoint and perspective changes. I think if you searched for how to stitch images without using the word "panorama" you might get more useful results.

Long ago, I merged two 24x36 scans of a 24x58mm negative by hand - IIRC, the way to do this is to convert one to semi-transparent and then drag that layer with translation and rotation until it matches the features in the overlap region. It would be nice to have it aligned automatically, although small changes in scale between the scans may mean that the program will always be applying some corrections.

grat · Aug 2, 2022

reddesert said:
Most of the people in this thread are talking about taking individual 35mm photos pivoting the camera

Personally, I shift the position of the negative relative to the camera. No pivoting involved. Stitching is also simple, although I use Affinity's auto-stitch utility.

Why the OP is getting distortion out of an image scanner, which by default, should be producing flat images, I don't know.

Radost · Aug 3, 2022

grat said:
Personally, I shift the position of the negative relative to the camera. No pivoting involved. Stitching is also simple, although I use Affinity's auto-stitch utility.

Why the OP is getting distortion out of an image scanner, which by default, should be producing flat images, I don't know.

I am not getting distortion from scanning. I am getting distortion stitching with different softwares.
This is why I need a simple 2d stitching. Nothing that changes the geometry of the pictures.

bernard_L · Aug 3, 2022

Many (most) responders provide inappropriate solutions because they confuse the OP's problem --multi-frame scanning of a single "panoramic" photo-- with the completely different problem of generating a single image from multiple frames taken by panning the camera. In the OP's problem, we have several partial, overlapping, scans of the same planar object, and we need to shift/rotate them so their overlapping parts coincide. The other problem, to generate a planar image from multiple panned shots, is mathematically more complex and has several equally valid solutions, depending on compromises between various types of perceived distortions.

This is a proper solution for the OP's query.

Kodachromeguy said:
I have been using the Photomerge tool in Photoshop CS5 and CS6 for Hasselblad XPan frames:

Les Sarile · Aug 3, 2022

I would be surprised if this is still unresolved. Is it?

brbo · Aug 3, 2022

I've used PS's Photomerge for years to merge XPan scans from scanners that can only scan 36x24mm frames. I've never noticed distorsion.

It would be very odd if 'reposition' layout option would change the geometry of the resulting picture, since 'reposition' (by Adobe's words) "does not transform (stretch or skew) any of the source layers".

I just tried it again and can't see any distortion...

Radost · Aug 3, 2022

I will try Photo merge.
The Lightroom panorama tool is what distorts.

Kodachromeguy · Aug 3, 2022

Here is another example, possibly more easy to understand. This is a big black and white print of a house taken sometime in the 1930s. A friend whose grandfather built the house in 1925 gave me a big framed print. I had to scan it in two sections and use the Photomerge function in Photoshop CS6 to combine them. To my eye, it looks like the original.

By the way, this is in Mississippi, and it does sometimes snow here. Interesting note 2: There is a rumor (not researched yet) that Ike Eisenhower visited the house in 1947 when he was considering his run for president on the invitation of the editor of the local newspaper.

grat · Aug 3, 2022

Radost said:
I am not getting distortion from scanning. I am getting distortion stitching with different softwares.
This is why I need a simple 2d stitching. Nothing that changes the geometry of the pictures.

I'm not familiar with Lightroom's tool, but I am familiar with Hugin, ptgui, Affinity, and even Microsoft's ICE. They all work fairly similarly.

Unless it's configured to add some form of correction, most stitching software should not produce distortion if the originals have no distortion. I would guess you should be using "Perspective" projection in Lightroom.

Can you provide some examples?

Radost · Aug 4, 2022

They all do. Will provide examples.

brbo · Aug 4, 2022

I can't see a way to use 'reposition' mode for stitching in Lightroom. 'Perspective' is not a stitching mode to use when you want to just align multiple parts of the same frame. It will be close, but not perfect. 'Cylindrical', I suspect, would be better, but still probably not pixel perfect. In 'reposition' mode every single pixel remains in place, only the blending masks are employed at the overlap areas.

You can check this is true with pasting partial scans as separate layers into the stitched panorama and carefully manually adjust their position over the stitched layer. Turning the partial scan layers on/off should be unnoticeable (in the regions that were part of the stitching overlap) if there was no distortion employed during stitching.

Full resolution psd file for demonstration....

Radost · Aug 4, 2022

brbo said:
I can't see a way to use 'reposition' mode for stitching in Lightroom. 'Perspective' is not a stitching mode to use when you want to just align multiple parts of the same frame. It will be close, but not perfect. 'Cylindrical', I suspect, would be better, but still probably not pixel perfect. In 'reposition' mode every single pixel remains in place, only the blending masks are employed at the overlap areas.

You can check this is true with pasting partial scans as separate layers into the stitched panorama and carefully manually adjust their position over the stitched layer. Turning the partial scan layers on/off should be unnoticeable (in the regions that were part of the stitching overlap) if there was no distortion employed during stitching.

Full resolution psd file for demonstration....

So the example you provided above is adobe photomerge???
this is how it looks now:

Radost · Aug 4, 2022

Collage seam to be close.

brbo · Aug 4, 2022

With 'reposition' the overlapping area will "suffer" if your partial scans are not uniform. For example left hand scan is slightly tilted in one direction and the right hand scan tilted in another direction (maybe because your scanner's film feed/transport is not 100% stable). 'Collage' is the opposite.

If you have a decent scanner and you are not sloppy with film loading, 'reposition' is the mode to use. I'd rather have imperfections (potentially slight decrease in sharpness) in the overlap area than skewed everything else because that makes overlap area to fit together better.

Radost · Aug 4, 2022

brbo said:
With 'reposition' the overlapping area will "suffer" if your partial scans are not uniform. For example left hand scan is slightly tilted in one direction and the right hand scan tilted in another direction (maybe because your scanner's film feed/transport is not 100% stable). 'Collage' is the opposite.

If you have a decent scanner and you are not sloppy with film loading, 'reposition' is the mode to use. I'd rather have imperfections (potentially slight decrease in sharpness) in the overlap area than skewed everything else because that makes overlap area to fit together better.

My scanner is solid. The XAS keeps the film flat and distortion none existing.

Software for a simple 2D panorama stitch from 3 PI-XAS scans

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