Stitching aerial photos (not a panorama)

[evan.ramos]

I have a series of drone images that I would like to stitch together. All photos are of the land's surface and they were taken at the same elevation, so the stitched picture I envision is a broad-scale bird's eye view of a landscape.

The stitch panorama tool ends up generating a distorted image (given issues in assumed perspective), but I cannot locate another useful tool for stitching photos without warping the images.

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

[stuck]

Have you investigated Hugin:

https://hugin.sourceforge.io/

[evan.ramos]

@stuck thanks for sharing. It seems like this software functions similarly in that it assumes that the ultimate form is a panorama, which is not what I am looking for here.

[lphilpot]

Just be aware that Hugin (using PanoTools on the back end) can generate output in a wide variety of projections. It can generate output in multiple connected rows of multiple connected images. It's quite flexible, although I'm no expert. I believe it's even used in the process of generating lens distortion correction tables by the lensfun project.

It might be worth floating your question on the Hugin Google group: https://groups.google.com/g/hugin-ptx?pli=1

[DWright]

Hi @evan.ramos,

Is it possible for you to post a screen shot of the rendered panorama of your drone images.

[stuck]

13 hours ago, evan.ramos said:

@stuck thanks for sharing. It seems like this software functions similarly in that it assumes that the ultimate form is a panorama, which is not what I am looking for here.

No, Hugin can do what you want:

https://hugin.sourceforge.io/tutorials/scans/en.shtml

[stuck]

A less intimidating option to stitch 'planar motion' is to use MS Image Composite Editor (MS ICE).  This is a completely free utility created by MS Research.  Sadly MS pulled the plug on it and it is no longer available direct from the MS website.  You can search for it and find lots of third party download sites offering it but you need to exercise care, lest you get more than MS ICE in the download.

The safest such third party download site that I know of is the 'Wayback Machine'.  If you read this thread on DPreview:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4574261

you will find links to both the 64 and 32 bit MS ICE installers held on the 'Wayback Machine' severs.

NOTE the links in the DPreview thread are direct to the .msi installers so when you click on them although the page that loads will have a 'Wayback Machine' header the main body will be empty, because your browser will be automatically downloading the installer in the background.

Once the download completes, run the installer.  I can't remember if it creates a desktop shortcut but it will add a 'Stitch using Image Composite Editor' option to the right-click context menu in Windows File Explorer when you have selected 2 or more image files.  If you choose that option MS ICE will open and it's fairly obvious how to proceed.