1. GOAL

Toolchain to create panoramic images for every occasion,
from quick holiday snaps to images with hundreds of megapixels.


2. CONTENT

This package contains the following programs:

 - hugin, the main program, a GUI for the panorama tools suite
   and some programs included here.

 - nona, a simple stitcher that does geometrical and photometric
   distortions to photos and writes the output to image files.
   It is a replacement for PTStitcher (doesn't support most
   features of PTStitcher, but is faster, opensource and
   will be extended in the future).  The parameters, mostly
   backward-compatible to PTStitcher, are specified in a .pto 
   project such as those generated by hugin, i.e. nona doesn't
   decide what the distortions are going to be, it just does 
   what it is told to do.

 - fulla correction of barrel distortion, chromatic aberration 
   and vignetting.

 - autooptimiser, optimise a panorama pairwise, starting from an
   anchor image. cmd line version of the pairwise mode in hugin
 
 - align_image_stack a tool to automate the process to align
   a stack of photos.

 - tca_correct a tool to automatically generate chromatic 
   aberration correction parameters for use with fulla.
   
 - hugin_executor for command-line stitching or running assistant.
 
 - pto_gen command line tool to generate project file from images.
 
 - cpfind command line tool to find control points.
 
 - linefind command line tool to find vertical features for leveling.
 
 - geocpset command line tool to connect featureless images by 
   "geometric" control points.
   
 - icpfind command line tool for using heuristic control point 
   matching like inside Hugin GUI
   
 - cpclean command line tool to remove control points with improbable 
   error distances
   
 - checkpto command line tool to examine project file and reports back 
   the number of image chains present
   
 - pto_var command line tool to manipulate image variables
 
 - pto_lensstack command line tool to manipulate lens and stacks
 
 - pto_mask command line tool to add mask to project file
 
 - pto_template command line tool to apply template to project file
 
 - calibrate_lens_gui automatic lens calibration using straight-line 
   detection
 
 - vig_optimize command line tool to estimate photometric parameters.
 
 - hugin_hdrmerge merges multiple exposures to HDR using Khan 
   anti-ghosting algorithm
 
 - hugin_stitch_project a GUI tool to stitch a single Hugin .pto project.
 
 - celeste_standalone removes cloud-like control points from project files.
 
 - PTBatcherGUI a GUI queue manager for stitching multiple Hugin projects.
 
 - deghosting_mask Creates mask for removing ghosting in bracketed images
 
 - pano_modify Change output parameters of project file
 
 - pano_trafo Transform image coordinates
 
 - pto_merge Merges two or more Hugin project files
 
 - pto_move Moves Hugin project files with associated images
 
 - hugin_lensdb Maintenance tool for Hugins camera and lens database 

 - verdandi Merges images using watershed algorithm

 - hugin_stacker Merges overlapping images with different statistics 
   (e.g. mean, mininmum, maximum)

 - hugin_toolbox GUI for several small utilies, contains
   - a GUI for enfuse
   - a GUI for perspective correction
 
These programs are built on top of the pano13 library,
http://panotools.sourceforge.net/


3. USE
    
hugin can be used to stitch multiple images together. The resulting image can
span 360 degrees. Another common use is the creation of very high resolution
pictures by combining multiple images.

See http://hugin.sourceforge.net/ for more information and tutorials.

See http://wiki.panotools.org/Development_of_Open_Source_tools#Supported_Platforms
for some information on releases for different platforms.


4. TYPICAL WORKFLOW

  1. load images
  2. specify initial parameters (lens etc)
  3. select control points points.
  4. run optimizer to estimate image positions
  5. set output parameters and stitch images together.


5. KNOWN ISSUES / INCOMPATIBILITIES / LIMITATIONS

Check the Hugin FAQ and bug tracker

http://wiki.panotools.org/Hugin_FAQ#Known_Limitations

An updated list of issues deemed to be critical,
including discussions and workarounds, is in the issue tracker

https://bugs.launchpad.net/hugin/+bugs?search=Search&field.importance=Critical


Linux: Compiz interferes with the fast preview window.
If you're affected, the workaround is to not use Compiz.

Some components of Hugin have been reported not to deal well with image files
that have the same name in different folders. The workaround is to rename 
your images files so that all image files in a project are unique.


7. SUPPORT / COMMUNITY

Please use the hugin-ptx mailing list if you have questions or suggestions:
http://groups.google.com/group/hugin-ptx
