What's new in Portable Hugin - Panorama Stitcher 2015.0.0
Aug 11, 2015
- Changes Since 2014.0.0:
- Hugin 2015.0 has a number of new features. Most of the changes are under the hood to improve stability, allow easier maintenance and easier addition of new features
- The makefile based stitching engine has been replaced with direct calls to the underlying programs. This should reduce the overhead of calling the same program too often and so speed up the whole process. Hopefully this also allows the usage of more unusual characters in the filename. Instead of pto2mk and make we now have hugin_executor which can also be used for running the assistant from the command line
- Hugin now has it's own blender, verdandi, based on a watershed algorithm, which has been included in 'nona'. verdandi can be chosen as the blender by choosing "builtin" in the stitcher tab, and can also be set in the Preferences. verdandi can also be called as a command line tool
- The lensfun library has been removed as it did not fulfill our expectations. It has been replaced with our own camera and lens database which uses a data mining approach and operates automatically without user intervention. Geometric distortion and vignetting data have to be loaded manually
- The fast preview window has a new tool to add or remove control points to selected areas in the output projection
- Automatic exposure stack detection is now applied when loading images, and an option has been added to unlink image position when adding stacks
- The fine-tune and auto-estimate functions in the control point tab have been made projection aware. It should now work also with images with different fov or different projections. The fine-tune feature has had a significant speed up when Hugin is compiled with the libfftw3 library (optional)
- PTBatcherGUI has more choice for the end of the process: depending on the operating system the PTBatcherGUI can be closed, the computer can be shut down or send to the hibernate mode
- PTBatcherGUI now shows the thumbnails when searching for images in directories
- Many of the underlying tools in hugin are now able to use available cpu cores
- New command line tools for CLI processing:
- verdandi: tool for image blending
- hugin_executor: stitching and run assistant from command line
- hugin_lensdb: tools for lens database maintenance
- Other Improvements:
- Many more improvements and bug fixes.
New in Portable Hugin - Panorama Stitcher 2014.0.0 (Dec 30, 2014)
- inherit many of the libpano improvements (of version 2.9.19)
- the translation plane variables Tpy and Tpp have been added to the GUI (better support for translation parameters, e.g. for nadir images. A pano with translation parameters can now be rotated)
- improvement of the GPU remapping code (bug fixes in the glue code, added some missing GPU transformations. Now fisheye lenses are supported by GPU code as well)
- better support for line control point in Control points tab (it still requires that the same image is displayed left and right for full features, but also better support for line control points above several images)
- obsolete programs matchpoint, nona_gui and PTBatcher have been removed
- outdated translations have been removed from the default install
- initialize the colour balance values during loading with EXIF values (this information is only stored and decoded by some cameras (mainly models by Panasonic, Pentax, Olympus, Nikon))
- improved the assistant
- allow customization of exiftool command used to copy metadata to output images
- New command line tools for CLI processing:
- pto_mask: manipulate mask in project file
- pto_template: apply template to project file
- pto_move: move or copy project files with all associated images
- Other Improvements:
- Many more improvements and bug fixes.
- Languages:
- Most of the translations have been updated for this release.
New in Portable Hugin - Panorama Stitcher 2014 RC 3 (Jun 19, 2014)
- Fixed typo in last commit (grafted from
- More fixes for crash when loading multiple images in assistant
New in Portable Hugin - Panorama Stitcher 2014 RC 2 (Jun 19, 2014)
- Fix for wxCode::wxTreeListCtrl to compile with wx 2.8 again
- Updated wxCode::wxTreeListCtrl
- Fixes crash when loading multiple images in assistant [1316702]
New in Portable Hugin - Panorama Stitcher 2014 RC 1 (Jun 19, 2014)
- Fixes for Exiftool argfiles
- Fixes for mask display
- Update api-min for woa.py (grafted from
New in Portable Hugin - Panorama Stitcher 2014 Beta 1 (Jun 19, 2014)
- python plugins functional again
- Appdata added (to be used in GNOME Software Center)
- Many translations updated
- Minor bugs fixed
New in Portable Hugin - Panorama Stitcher 2013.0.0 (Nov 4, 2013)
- The greatest change is the redesign of the (Graphical) User Interface (GUI).
- The user interface now consists of three modes: Simple, Advanced and Expert.
- The Simple interface is for the beginning panorama photographer and offers all tools to create your panorama. You can also use this mode if you have a simple, straightforward panorama. The Simple interface mode uses the "Fast Preview" window as its main workflow window.
- The Advanced interface mode offers you more options to improve your panorama. It uses the Panorama Editor as its main window.
- The Expert mode gives you access to all options and functions that Hugin has to offer. This is where you can optimize your complicated, multilayer, mosaic, multi-stack, you name it, panorama. It also uses the Panorama Editor as its main window.
- New tools added:
- pto_var ( change image variables inside pto files)
- pto_lensstack (modify assigned lenses and stack in pto files)
- geocpset (set/add geometric constraints for multirow panorama with featureless images)
New in Portable Hugin - Panorama Stitcher 2012.0.0 (Nov 6, 2012)
- The lensfun library for reading and writing lens parameters from/to database has now been integrated into Hugin.
- Users can now search the lensfun library and load lens parameters.
- Added new tool pto_gen for generation of pto file from image files.
- Other Improvements:
- Various improvements to cpfind including a prealign matching strategy and pair-wise matching for multirow heuristic
- Added option to keep exposure fused stacks
- pano_modify: Added HDR autocrop option
- Many more improvements and bug fixes.
- Languages:
- Most of the translations have been updated for this release.
New in Portable Hugin - Panorama Stitcher 2011.4.0 (Dec 17, 2011)
- Hugin now has a vertical feature detection tool for automatic levelling of panoramas. Besides, also many bugs have been fixed and many general improvements have been made.
- Vertical feature detection tool
- Often a panorama, created from several single photos, is not level. In this case the experienced user adds vertical and horizontal control points to level the panorama.
- With this release Hugin introduces a tool named linefind which automatically detects vertical features in the photos such as the edges of buildings and windows, and assigns vertical control points to them. This makes it easier than before to level a panorama, in most cases it works without any intervention.
- Other Improvements:
- The Fast Preview window can now show composition guides such as Rule of Thirds and Golden ratio to support an easier composition of the final panorama.
- The output of High Dynamic Range (HDR) images has been modified to prevent clipping of the exposure in EXR format images. The previous versions of Hugin outputted HDR images with absolute exposure values, now with this 2011.4.0 release, Hugin uses relative exposure values. This means that the output Exposure Value (EV) of the panorama, which can be set in the preview window, has an influence on the HDR output (as already for normal LDR images) and should be set to the medium exposure value of the images. If you set the output exposure value to zero, the old behavior is restored.
- The batch processor PTBatcherGUI has been extended:
- It is now possible to directly add unaligned projects to the assistant queue for aligning and control point generation.
- Successfully stitched projects can be automatically removed from the queue, this makes the queue management easier.
- If a project was successfully finished by the assistant, it can be automatically added to the stitching queue. This now allows for a fully automatic panorama creation workflow.
- Many more improvements and bug fixes.
New in Portable Hugin - Panorama Stitcher 2011.2.0 (Nov 7, 2011)
- Lens Calibration Tool:
- Lenses are designed to follow a perfect geometric model. For rectilinear lenses, a straight line in the depicted scene should be straight in the picture. This is not always the case: most lenses have an inherent deviation from the perfect model, resulting in imperfections such as pincushion or barrel distortion in rectilinear lenses.
- Adherence to the perfect geometric model is desirable for aesthetic purposes and indispensable to achieve proper alignment when stitching images. Hugin can calculate lens distortion parameters on the fly when optimizing a project, however this requires more control points and more computational effort than a project starting with a calibrated lens, and is prone to more errors.
- The new lens calibration tool calculates the distortion parameters of a lens based on an input image. The input image must contain straight lines, ideally many of them at different distances from the center of the lens, covering at least one quadrant of the image. The calculated parameters are valid for a given combination of focal distance, aperture (F-stop), and sensor.
- The values, saved into a lens profile, can be used in Hugin to achieve a better stitch, or on single images taken with this lens / settings combination to achieve a more aesthetically pleasing outcome.
- Python Scripting Interface:
- Hugin now exposes some of its data structure and functionalities through a Python module. To get started with scripting, start your Python interpreter and type:
- >>> import hsi
- >>> help (hsi)
- Standalone Python programs can access a panorama object with Hugin's functionality. It is possible to develop complete command line and even GUI tools based on this module.
- The Python Scripting Interface does not work on Mac OSX yet.
- Python Plugin Interface:
- Hugin can now run Python scripts inside the application. In an enabled Hugin binary, a new "Actions" menu gives access to system-wide plugins distributed with Hugin. Moreover, plugins can be written, modified, customized in the user's own directory.
- Currently there are only a few plugins available, but we expect the body of available plugins and functionality to grow organically as the interface is being made available to the general public.
- The Python Plugin Interface does not work on Mac OSX yet.
- Other Improvements:
- PTBatcherGUI has matured to become the default processor for stitching projects.
- ICC profiles saved in output.
- Support for newer Olympus camera.
- Improved auto cropping.
- New mask type: exclude region from all images shot with the same lens.
- Copy&paste of masks in Mask Tab.
- Show extent of active masks and crop in Mask Editor.
- Fix for critical issue affecting stitching on Mac OS X Leopard.
- Many more improvements and bug fixes.