Project Assistant
The Project Assistant guides you through the process of creating a panorama in three easy steps. For an overview of the process, see the Video Tutorial.The Project Assistant contains a button to switch PTGui from Simple to Advanced mode.
Step 1: Load images...
Press this button to select the source images. You can open multiple files at once, by holding down the Ctrl button (Windows) or Command button (Mac) while selecting files. Alternatively, files can be dragged and dropped into the PTGui window from (e.g.) Windows Explorer or Mac Finder.The order of the images is not important at all: in the next step, PTGui will determine how the images overlap.
To remove images from the project, go to the Source Images tab.
Images can be rotated using the two arrow buttons at the right. This will rotate the entire panorama. The rotation of the thumbnails always matches the rotation of the images in the panorama.
Before proceding to the next step, PTGui needs to intialize the camera / lens parameters. Almost every digital cameras stores the focal length of the lens in the so called 'EXIF' header of the image file. If this data is available, PTGui will use it. If the images don't contain EXIF data, or if a non-rectilinear lens is used, the lens parameters should be manually initialized. Only a rough guess for the field of view or focal length is needed, the optimizer will determine the exact value later.
If the images don't contain EXIF information, and you have no idea about the lens parameters, just enter the following parameters:
Lens type: Rectilinear (normal lens)
Focal length: 35mm
Focal length multiplier: 1x
After completing the next step, you can read out the actual values of your lens here.Focal length: 35mm
Focal length multiplier: 1x
Step 2: Align images...
PTGui will analyze the images and look for matching features in overlapping images. At such matching features, 'control points' are added. The control points will be used by the Optimizer to align the images.After the control points have been generated, PTGui aligns the images, optimizes and straightens the panorama. The Panorama editor then shows a preview of the panorama.
Other things you can optionally do at this stage:
- Control point assistant: this brings up the Control point assistant window, which helps to determine whether the project has enough control points.
- Align panorama: shows the Panorama Editor window, where the projection and orientation of the panorama can be modified.
- Optimize: runs the Optimizer, which aligns the images such that the control points match as closely as possible. This button is disabled if the project does not need optimization.