Comparing Panorama stitching

[Henry Stahle]

I used 4 JPG files for stitching panorama in Affinity Photo (Windows beta) and this is the result.

 

This is the result of the same process in Photoshop CC 2017

 

The Photoshop panorama file is bigger horizontally because Affinity Photo dropped one file. Photoshop straightened the panorama and also made a lens correction automatically. One big advantage using PS is the "Content Aware" setting to fill in the transparent borders around the panorama with a very good result. I could not get Affinity to do this by using the "Inpaint Missing Areas" as described.

 

The Photoshop results are better and is a challenge to Affinity Photo. The automated functions in Photoshop would be nice to see in Affinity Photo.

 

I hope this is a correct comparison between those two programs, or am I misunderstanding something?

[kirk23]

I never use the feature for stitching actual panoramas so perhaps it works better in PS for the subject.  

 

 But I very often have to stitch several macro pictures  of certain object  into a bigger one and have to say AP is less demanding to having enough overlap and similar camera angle.  So often when  PS fails , AP does just ok.     Also AP works better with some complicated subjects where PS just can't figure out the right order and AP can.    Beyond that PS's adaptive wide angle is just a useless thing mostly  and AP mesh deform allows to fix any distortion very precisely and surprisingly takes less efforts.     Too bad they haven't developed  that mesh deform feature into something a bit more advanced.

 

I wouldn't say AP does it worse, just a bit differently.  Same with "inpainting"    I'd prefer they keep it as it is   

[Henry Stahle]

Here is some more pictures to show what I am asking Affinity Photo Panorama to do to be as good as Photoshop. Have a look at this Photoshop "stitching" made out of 4 handheld 12 megapixel shots. It was rendered very near correctly without any corrections setting in the initial dialogue of the Photomerge, just a light distortion of the horizon. I corrected that with a filter in Photoshop after rendering the panorama without affecting the edges of the photo.

 

Here is the same picture without autofill Content Aware in Photoshop. It looked about the same in Affinity Photo, except the much more curved horizon.

 

 

Here is the result f the Affinity Photo panorama stitching experiment. The first picture is showing parts of the picture where repeating patterns are clearly visible and very disturbing. It also shows sharp edges where the stitching did not work seamless. It also shows the distorted horizon.

 

Last picture is from Affinity Photo showing what happens in the Develop Persona Lens Correction. This does not happen in Photoshop, the lens correction does not affect the edges like this.

 

 

I really like to see Affinity Photo take a look at the photo stitching.. It is not bad, no, but it can really get much better, and it has to. In order to catch up wit Photoshop.

[MEB]

Hi Henry Stahle,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

The Inpainting issue is a bug in the Beta that should be fixed soon. Regarding the panorama stitching i believe it will become better as Andy improves the code/algorithms.