Automatic and manual stitching of panoramas

ImageAssembler supports both automatic and manual stitching of panoramas. A panorama is a series of images taken by revolving around the nodal point of a camera. Single row and single column panoramas are supported. In automatic mode, ImageAssembler finds the image positions automatically before stitching them. The automatic mode is suitable for all but the most difficult cases. In manual mode, flags are placed on the images to represent common stitching points. In manual mode, the image positions are entirely determined using the flags.  The manual mode can be used after running the automatic mode. In that case all flags will be positioned according to the image positions found by the automatic mode. You may then change a few flags before stitching in manual mode.

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Automatic and manual stitching of mosaic

ImageAssembler supports both automatic and manual stitching of mosaics. A mosaic is a series of images taken on a single plane. Multi-row and column mosaics are supported. In automatic mode, ImageAssembler finds the image positions automatically before stitching them. The automatic mode is suitable for all but the most difficult cases. In manual mode, flags are placed on the images to represent common stitching points. In manual mode, the image positions are entirely determined using the flags. The manual mode could be used after running the automatic mode. In that case all flags will be positioned according to the image positions found by the automatic mode. You could then change a few flags before stitching in manual mode.

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Support virtually all camera and lens

ImageAssembler will adapt to any camera (e.g., digital cameras, large or medium format film cameras, 35mm film cameras, Kodak APS system cameras) and almost any lens. Any rectilinear lens with a focal length above 10.4 mm (for a 35mm camera) or, equivalently, a maximal field of view MFOV of 120°, and any full-frame fisheye lens with focal length above 12.7 mm (for a 35mm camera) or, equivalently, a MFOV of 180° is supported. It also adapts to rectilinear lenses with strong radial distortion. Circular fisheyes are not supported.

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Works with a tilted and rolled camera

As in the previous version, ImageAssembler 3 can assemble a panorama from images taken with a tilted camera. Moreover, in version 3, it is now possible to assemble a panorama from images taken with a fixed roll. Since most panoramic adaptor heads induce a small amount of roll, this feature improves the quality of the result.

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Supports full-frame fisheye lenses

Any full-frame fisheye lens with focal length above 12.7 mm (for a 35mm camera) or, equivalently, a MFOV of 180° is supported. Circular fisheyes are not supported.

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Correct lens distortion and lens misalignment

ImageAssembler finds and corrects both lens radial distortion (pin-cushion and barrel) and lens misalignment.

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Advanced color matching

PanaVue ImageAssembler could match the colors of images taken in different conditions and produce resulting images with a smooth color transitions.

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Intelligent image blending

PanaVue ImageAssembler's intelligent blending has been designed to reduce ghost images by as much as possible. If ImageAssembler detects the presence of an object on one image but not in the corresponding overlapping part of the next image, it will either totally include or totally exclude the object if this is possible.

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Outputs panoramas in QuickTime VR movie format

PanaVue ImageAssembler can save panoramas in a cylindrical QuickTime VR movie files (.mov).  An html page containing a QuickTime movie image can also be generated by ImageAssembler.

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Outputs panoramas for PTViewer

PanaVue ImageAssembler can output panoramas as html files using PTViewer (a free Java-based VR viewer).  This is an easy way to publish panoramas for the web.

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Automatic camera position finder

PanaVue ImageAssembler 3 can now automatically find the common roll and the common tilt of the images in a panorama.  This allows reusing lens definitions even if it differs in roll and tilt.

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Visual lens distortion finder

You can now change the distortion factors and see its effect on an image in real time.

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Automatic cropping

PanaVue ImageAssembler can optionally perform an automatic cropping of the resulting image.

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TWAIN compatible

Allows the acquisition of images from a scanner supporting a TWAIN interface.

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Single step 360° wrapping

PanaVue ImageAssembler 3 can stitch a panorama and perform a 360° wrapping in a single step.

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EXIF and IPTC

Image files may contain data other that the image itself.  This supplemental data is called metadata.  Metadata are used to store information such as date, information of the camera, ... or any thing you could imagine.  ImageAssembler supports Exif and IPTC metadata.  ImageAssembler reads Exif and IPTC metadata from the first image of a panorama and writes it to the panorama file. It does not allow for edition and modification of metadata.

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Limited to images of 200 mega pixels

PanaVue ImageAssembler Standard Edition can handle images with side length up to 50 000 pixels. The sum of the number of pixels of all source images is limited to 200 000 000. The number of pixels of any source image and of the resulting image is also limited to 200 000 000.  Note: not all file formats supports large images.

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Large images support up to 100 000 x 100 000 pixels

ImageAssembler Professional Edition and Enterprise Edition support source images and resulting images with a maximum side length of 100 000 pixels (for each image!). Note: not all file formats supports large images.  For example TIFF files are limited to 4GB.

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3-flag and 5-flag manual stitching for hand-held photos

PanaVue ImageAssembler Professional Edition and Enterprise Edition support 3 and 5 flag manual stitching.  These modes are dedicated to hand-held photo shooting. These hand-held modes have the particularity of computing a different set of camera position parameters for each image.  This allows handling cases where the roll and tilt values change from photos to photos, which often occurs during hand-held photo shooting.

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Multi-layer PSD and PSB

The Professional Edition and Enterprise Edition of ImageAssembler allow you to save your resulting images as multi-layer PSD and PSB files.  This allows you to do post-production retouching in Photoshop. When you open a multi-layer PSD or PSB resulting image in Photoshop, you see each source image as a separate layer. In each of these layers, the blending is saved as a mask. You may use all of the Photoshop tools to modify the colors of any of the images, to move one image with respect to another, or to change the stitch line or blending width. Probably the most useful feature is the ability to modify the stitch lines or the blending widths by working on the masks. You may make a mask visible, then add to it with the pencil or the brush tool, or remove from it with the eraser tool. Photoshop's rich set of features allows for unlimited control of the blending.

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HTML templates

Support for HTML templates. HTML templates are a flexible tool that lets you customize the way ImageAssembler generates HTML pages. These pages show flat images or panoramas with a VR-viewer. The template itself is simply a text file with ordinary HTML text combined with special instructions. The special instructions are interpreted by ImageAssembler to generate the non-static part of your pages. New templates can be created to support virtually any viewers and/or special page formats.

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ICC color profiles

Some images contains embedded ICC color profiles. The color profiles are used to make sure that color rendering on a computer screen, or a printer, will be as close as possible to the original colors. PanaVue ImageAssembler Professional Edition and Enterprise Edition fully support ICC color profiles for TIFF, JPEG, and multi-layer PSD file formats. ImageAssembler uses the embedded color profile for displaying and printing the images.  ImageAssembler also embeds color profiles in the resulting image when one is found in the source images.

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16-bit per channel

Tiff files with a color dept of 16-bit per channel are supported in PanaVue ImageAssembler Professional Edition and Enterprise Edition.  This allows you to produce images with a larger range of colors.

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Command line call and OLE-Automation

You can automate the stitching process by calling PanaVue ImageAssembler Enterprise Edition from almost any other application. An application can repeatedly call ImageAssembler to assemble many sets of images in batches or can use ImageAssembler to do the stitching job while showing its own interface to the user.  To automate the execution of ImageAssembler projects, you could either call the ImageAssembler program by passing it arguments on the command line, or you could call ImageAssembler from any application that support OLE automation.

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XML project files

ImageAssembler Enterprise Edition can read XML project files. This allows you to create your own projects without using the user interface of ImageAssembler. This feature is useful for automating execution of ImageAssembler projects.

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