Gap in 360° Panorama

[Tobi A.]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently stuck with the following problem. I created a 360° panorama in Affinity Photo using File > New Panorama. When I view the image using Layer > Live Projection > Equirectangular Projection, there is a gap. I thought that maybe a part of my individual images was missing, but everything is there. Also, the same section appears on both sides of the gap. When I only stitch a part of the images into a panorama, there is no gap. What do I need to do to make the gap disappear?

Thank you very much,

Tobi

[David in Яuislip]

That's not a gap it's a chasm
Hard to comment unless you can zip up the images and post them. I can run them through PhotoV1 and Hugin, I expect that Serif would be quite interested too

[NotMyFault]

I recommend to use merge visible to ensure that you start with single fully opaque layer and there is no transparency left.

[Tobi A.]

Sorry for missing to post the images. Please find them attached now.

I tried to merge visible by using "Layer > Merge Visible", but it does not close the gap.

AF_Forum_33.zip

[NotMyFault]

Thanks for sharing.

you need to use the crop tool to cut off any transparent areas and cut the pixel layer on both sides (left and right) at a location which shows a fixed point. I used a building with steep roof.

then rasterize and trim again.

after this steps, the panorama is perfect, except an unavailable seam which you can correct later. 

[Tobi A.]

Thank you very much for the support! It works very well!

 

I experimented with the position where I crop the image and got very different transitions. Most of the time, the seam is much worse than in your example. Can you give me a tip on how to find the right position? I would also appreciate further tips on how to best correct the seam.

[NotMyFault]

to find the best transition for 360 panoramas, I copy the pixel layer and shift them by half the document width to left / right, to get both facing edges, but in the center of the canvas.

Add a rectangle to mask one copy. Adjusting the size of the rectangle allows to find the position where both copies match best.

I then add a gradient to the rectangle, and set the node at the edge to zero opacity, and move the other node (with full opacity) roughly at the oder edge of the area where both layers overlap. This will give you a smooth transition of brightness.

Unfortunately Affinity does not deliver perfect panorama stitching.I found at least one area where vertical lines from roads did not match correctly. It is very tedious trying to manually adjust the matching of layers (in Panorama). Instead, I add a mesh warp live filter and manually match the lines. You will loose a bit sharpness, but this is less distracting the roads who are not continuous.

 

Panorma stiching for 360 degree requires a lot of try and error to find out which workflows and tools work best for you.

[Tobi A.]

Thank you very much for your instruction. I will try it. If you have further tips and tricks on how to edit a 360° panorama, I would be happy to hear them.

[David in Яuislip]

AF_Forum_21.jpg is identical to AF_Forum_22.jpg so 22 was deleted
Below is an image showing both rows stacked, it's a mystery to me how anything could make a pano from that so Photo has done pretty well to produce what it did
Hugin took ages but produced a perfect crop. I don't have the patience to use Photo for 360°'s and muck around with manual cropping although I do use it for say a 180° sweep where it usually works well, is quick and avoids the rather gruelling experience of the Hugin interface
Zip contains a jxl file to save space, don't know if Photo V2 can open it but Irfanview can

ps Sorry I'm late but I've been cooking

hugin.zip

[NotMyFault]

fun fact: one angle is covered fully by 2 fotos. On one a small grey limb has fallen onto the green which is not present in the earlier foto.

Foto always create sum bad stitches where clearly visible mud roads don't match. It is almost impossible to correct this manually in the pre-sticking view before clicking "render", as you need to deeply zoom in to manually match these areas, but then the control nodes are outside the zoom range. When zooming out, it becomes impossible to visually manage the match which happens in a different area far away from the nodes.

 

[Tobi A.]

No worries, I was also quite busy... Thanks for your help.

You are right, photo 22 and 23 are equal. I tried to tell Photo what should be the "edges" of the panorama... I will try to do the stitching with Hugin and use Photo for editing.

Maybe one of the versions of Photo will have some improvements for stitching 360° panoramas.