My Autopano Pro forum

In the future, you should spend a few bucks and do this http://en.wiki.autopano.net/What_to_do_ … a_panohead

For now, you must use the vertical lines tool.

1. there is a good tip here http://en.wiki.autopano.net/Straighten_ … _Photoshop
2. if you have a rectangular pano, you can use a horizontal line tool.
3. If you don't have the horizontal line tool available, use the yellow horizontal line halfway down the vertical line tool, and set it on the horizon.

Your best bet may be to do (3) at several places in the pano.  Look for the most extreeme slopes, and put the line there.

1. Sorry, the tip applies to APP also.  just put a vertical line from an object and its reflection.  One line will change the roll (tilt) of a pano, two or more lines will straiten a wavy horizon.  The key is to find vertical lines.  Some landscapes don't have good verticals, but if there's water, you can use a reflection.

2. The horizontal line too is only available in rectangular projection, not spherical or cylindrical.

3. Try again, it takes practice.  Try putting lines where the horizon is correct, then putting them where the horizon is most incorrect.  Again, use the yellow line to match the horixon.  If you use enough vertical lines, you can approximate the bezier line you mention in the OP.   But if you use too many lines, APP may not put them all strait.  Sometimes you have to straiten in several passes.

The Set verticals tool (and its horizontal line variant) only works for "well glued source images"...

This tool, like Auto level, Center point and Modify yaw, pitch, roll don't change the way the sources images are "glued together". They can't compensate for those misplacement errors, they only change the way the result is seen (projected.)

If, while shooting handheld, you moved the camera, this can result in the source images being "glued" at an angle because the nearest objects displacement was higher than the distant objects displacement (the official name for that is parallax error.)

For handheld shots, the best solution is often to keep and/or add control points on distant objects and to remove any control point from nearby objects. For example, before I used a panohead, I always avoided having any CP on the ground at a low distance from the camera and on any other nearby object.

That the different sources of errors (namely bad CPs, parallax errors and misplaced horizon) are difficult to identify is a good reason to use a panohead (which helps a lot in avoiding parallax errors and a misplaced horizon) though in most occasions it would be possible to shoot handheld and to get an acceptable stitch using well located CPs.

Bmachine wrote:

Thank you very much all and sorry for the delay in replying.  I am finishing a very large movie here at work (called Beowulf) and it has been hard to spend much time with APP.

The suggestion about using Control Points is very intriguing but it reveals one of the aspects of APP which I think are really not well developped.  And that is the documentation!  I have tried to understand how control points work but I have found the docs and tutorials to be quasi non existant on the subject.  There is a link for a video tutorial in the French section but the resulting page says:

"Utiliser l'éditeur de point de controle   Un article de Autopano Wiki.
    * reprendre la vidéo produite précédemment et ajouter quelques remarques sur les outils complementaires"
Not very helpful.  There are also bits of info about them on the wiki but they always seem to start at an advanced stage.  I need something that starts from square 1, such as :

Intro to Control Points
What do CP do?
How to generate an initial set of CPs
Examples of what various actions do
etc...

Does this exist someplace?  I have searched and I have seen many post that discuss CPs (such as your suggestions above) but no docs as to how to get there from scratch.

Thank you for your help.

Bo

Did you read http://en.wiki.autopano.net/Main_Page , especially http://en.wiki.autopano.net/Control_Points_Editor ?

Bmachine wrote:

I am finishing a very large movie here at work (called Beowulf)

Whooa, horsey! You're working on THE Beowulf movie? Huge respect, man!