Billylh.com

Stitching the shot!

Today I will discuss a program I’ve been using for ages(not really but probably since about 2004).  It’s called AutoStitch, the homepage link is provided here.  This program can create panoramas and 360 views from sequences of pictures as long as each photo shares a common overlap with the next photo.  It is a very small program with big capabilities. 

It was created by Matthew Brown in 2003 under the supervision of professor David Lowe, a leading researcher computer vision, object recognition, and computational models of human vision.  It does not require file names to be in sequential order or anything like that, it just needs overlaps.  The quality of the pictures don’t seem to matter too much other than final render quality.  It can handle quite a number of files and work through them without error, granted the more and larger the files, the longer it can take, some times it will just not complete the task because the pictures don’t match up, but don’t worry, it lets you know.  

The only photo created with this program(demo version) that I actually have handy is of the Texas Motor Speedway in 2006 taken with a FujiFilm A340 taking about 5 minutes to render.

You can also find Flickr.com photos tagged by AutoStitch here.

Here is the Forbes.com article from 2003 about Matthew Brown and AutoStitch.

AutoStitch demo license:

The version of AutoStitch on this website is a demo only. Individuals or companies are free to use images that they generate using the demo version of AutoStitch without restriction or royalties so long as they acknowledge the use of AutoStitch in such works. A commercial license to AutoStitch provides access to the patent, source code, technical support and updates.

Now since it’s been a couple of years I can see that he has finally gotten those outside companies to finanace and help with development and it’s good to see that all the work and I’m sure endless nights were not wasted in the end.  All I can say is it’s an awesome piece of software and I will continue to use it and help spread the word and contribute where I can.