Updated March 8th 2005

Equipment: Computer, 3D-Vista Stitcher. (3D-Vista stitcher can be purchased either alone or as part of the studio package.)

Before starting this project, you need to have photographed a panorama using a spherical fisheye lens. it should be either 2 or 3 images to the panorama
If you do already have two images ready, you can click here to download a set of sample images for this tutorial.

* Bo's note - I prefer using 3 images for print, however for web only applications 2 images is less work.

The first step really to succed with panoramas is to be strict with your directory system. After all, when photographing panoramas you end up with lots and lots of pictures, not all of them are actually going to be used for the final panorama. So let me describe how I like to organize my images.
My main directory is inspired Mirosoft including a directory named "My Pictures" so that is where I start. For each day of photography I create a directory in "My Pictures" named todays date along with a short description, to facilitate easy sorting of these folders I use a date format like this "2005-03-28 French restaurant Pano" the year comes first, then the month expressed with two digits and finally the day, after the day a brief description so I can remember what is in the folder. (I need the description more often than I care to admit.)
Inside the folder I create a folder for each panorama photographed on that date, each of these folders is named with a word or two to describe the panorama inside the folder. Such as "Lobby" "Kitchen" and so on.
Finally inside the panorama folder I have a folder named "RAW" this is where I putt all the pictures related to a particular panorama, the pictures in the RAW folder have not been exposed to any modifications, this way I can always go back and try again if I make a mistake in photoshop.

Start by opening 3D-Vista, (if you have not registred your copy yet, it will still work as expected, howver, it will place a water-mark in the finished image.) Once 3-Vista have loaded, you should see the "Select Stitch Mode" menu, tjhis is the first step in creating a new panorama. Select "Fisheye Image", in the next menu select "Hemisphere Fisheye" This is the option used for panoramas captured with 2 or 3 images around, which is what we are going to step through in this tutorial.
(The option for using the Sigma fisheye, will bring you into regular stitching with a preset focal lenght for this particular lens.)
On the next menu you will 4 options, in this case we want to select the option for stitching with either 2 or 3 fisheye images. Clicking on one of these options will open a dialog box for selecting your pictures. Browse to the folder where your fisheye images are located, I like to name them A, B & C to make it easier for me to know which ones to load.

Bo's Note - REMEMBER, the pictures must be organized alphabetically so that they come after each other in a order turning to the right, so the second picture will attach to the right side of the first picture, the third picture will then attach to the right side of the second picture.

The software will start by asking you if you want to resize the pictures, I almost always resize the pictures to 800x600 pixels for a quick test to see if this panorama will stitch automatically. 3D-Vista will automatically stitch most of my panoramas. However ocationally I have to do things manually, if so I typically do not resize the image but prefer to keep them at the best resolution, because if I am going to spend time doing this manually I want the best possible quality picture right away.

Once the pictures have been loaded, the software will continue to search for and detect the edge of the fisheye image, if by any chance the resulting edge detection is not accurate you can do this manually also. RIght click inside the circle to set the right size, then use the arrow-keys to carefully position the crop-circle, having the crop circle accurately positioned to the edge of the fisheye images is very important, because this crop line is what the software use to determine the amount of distortion to apply across the image, if the edge-crop is cricket you can be 100% sure it will be impossible to get the stitch to work. Soo, take a moment to check this and carefully make corrections if required.

Once the crop circle is detected a floating menu-bar will apear on the right side of the screen, this is the main tools required to finish this project, we are going to step through them together one at a time so you know how to use them.

If the picture is not right side up, start by clicking on the "Rotate" option until it is right. Otherwise you can happily pass over this option.

Once the crop-circle is in place, you can click on the "Addjust" option, while I prefer to do any image manipulation using Adobe Photoshop, this option is great if two images do not have the same contrast or color balance, this can happen if a the one shot were looking into a stronger light source than the other shots. Use the gamma and contrast options to addjust the contrast/brightness. if required, use the red, green and blue channel to addjust the color balance.
NOTE. Your addjustment does only apply to the image you are looking at. so. I am still waiting for the programmers at 3D-Vista to give me a preview window where I can see each image next to each other while I make this addjustment. Use this feature only to addjust so the images match each ohter, Be very carefull not to add too much contrast because that can lead to loss of information in your images.
Once finished, click on the "Addjust" option again to close the addjust menu.

This is where I tend to jump straight to the STITCH option to see if things will stitch automatically, most of the time they do. However for the purpose of learning about this software, lets instead click on the "MANUAL" option, that is the one with the 3 little flags. (I am not sure what the P stands for in Spanish, but I have a lot of fun wondering about that.)

Once you click on the MANUAL option, 3D-Vista will bring up a window showing two fisheye images in a "syncronized" view, meaning that as you move the scroll bar, the pictures will move together so you can see the matching points on both pictures. You are looking for clear features. I prefer corners of room, edges of pictures, roofs, any kind of thing which can not possible have moved between the pictures were captured. Things such as waves, moving branches, children and animals do not make great flag points. Look for lanscape or achitecture points. something with lots of contrast so you are not in doubt about where a point is, this is critical beacuse the accuracy of your points determines the quality of the stitch.

The number of flags required varies, I asked the programmers, and they say that the best stitch is 6-8 points, I routinely aim for 7-8 points in each seam. Howver it is worth knowing a little about the logic behind the position and numbers of the points. The MINIMUM number of flags is 3, and you should aim for a point as close to the top of the image as possible, and a second all the way towards the buttom of the image, finally there should be one on the right edge of the picture. ILLUSTRATION HERE Any fisheye pictures can be defined by 3 flags, so I start with those, then I try to add 2 points above the middle flag and two below, that makes 7 evenly spaced flags. Once the flags have been placed on the seam, click NEXT which will proceed to the next seam, proceed and place 7-8 flags on each seam. Once you have finshed all the seams, the seam window will dissapear.... You are done.

It is time to press the STITCH option.

The default option is to render at the resolution matching the image size you are using. You might as well. so click "OK" and kick back while 3D-Vista renders your panorama.

First the software creates a preview panorama, you can use this to catch serious errors, if things look entirely wrong, click cancle and go back to addjust your flags. Most likely things look pretty, so sit back, and enjoy your coffee while 3D-Vista finishes stitching.

Once finished stitching, 3D-Vista will launch a preview window with the panorama, the preview window will have all the functionality of the final panorama. You can look around by dragging the mouse, zoom in by pressing A and zoom out by pressing Z.

Saving the panorama is next. There are several options to consider, JPEG, BMP, Photoshop file, or Cubic BMP files. For this project we will use JPEG, 3D-Vista will bring up a compression window, select 100, while it is possible to apply more compression, there is no reason to apply compression to a source image, (You could save the image as a BMP, but the file become so much larger that I typically save my source images as 100% JPEG images.

FInish saving your image and congratulate your self, you have stitched and saved a spherical fisheye panorama.

Using Photoshop files and Cubic is the next step up the ultra advanced latter. However that is the topic for another tutorial.

Click here to return to the Panorama photography page

Resources:

PTgui - Probably the very best stitcher on the market. Highly Recomended

3D Vista Studio Stitcher and tour maker, this sticher is was my favorite
but the latest version 3.0 have some serious unsolved issues.
PhotoVista Panorama easy inexpensive sticher

PanoGuide.com The source for anything Panoramic
Pano Tools very advanced freeware sticher by Helmut Dersch
VRi oneshot panorama lens

Non Panoramic Multible exposure Resources
RoundShot the original no stiching pano camera
PanoScan, the digital pano camera
Orthographic Photography
Multible exposure highrez images