New Stitch feedback

Currently only Paste to Alls asks if you want to override temperature, brightness, levels and gamma. We will try to support it for regular Paste in the next release.

How is auto verticals/temperature/brightness working for you?

I think the temp and brightness are noticeable improvements. I wasn’t having much of an issue with verticals before aside from the occasional stitch alignment error, but I can see a difference in some panos now.

@adriel Can we have a quick discussion about the auto brightness method you are using? I find that I usually have to “undo” the auto setting in spaces that are naturally dark, or spaces that have naturally dark fixtures. Examples: kitchens with darker (wood) cabinets, basement spaces with unfinished ceilings, hallways with wood doors, bedrooms with dark carpets, etc.
I assume you’re trying to centre the histogram, which would be an incorrect result for spaces that are actually darker spaces in reality/in person.
For other “normal” spaces that are photographed with a correct exposure for the scene the auto brightness only makes very small changes anyway so no real benefit, in my opinion.

Hi Doug,
Yes, it tries to centre the histogram and may not work properly if the room has dark objects (especially in the first fisheye image since it has an increased weight).
The purpose of this option is to reduce the work of adjusting the panos, not eliminate. If you think that overall it is giving you more work, it is a valid feedback and a sign for us to keeping improving it. If you have any suggestion, We also would be happy to hear, just give me a call or send me an email.

Meanwhile, all the auto adjustments are optional and can be disabled individually in the Settings dialog.

I didn’t know I could turn that off. Good feedback, thanks!

4 posts were split to a new topic: Improve iGuide search function on portal

Planitar’s development team is pleased to announce Stitch 6.2.0, containing exciting new features and improvements. Click the links below to learn more.

Changes:

  • Add fisheye equalization (automatically match the color when shooting on auto color temperature);
  • Add support for user panos (e.g. from drones);
  • Add support for 1-shot pano (e.g. for closets);
  • Add option to fix wrong camera rotation;
  • Add multiple pano selection in project explorer (use shift or ctrl/command);
  • Show initial direction for each pano;
  • Show exterior wall thickness summary when exporting;
  • Vastly improved verticals detection;
  • Improve general image quality and processing performance;
  • Improve quality of blues, yellows and saturation adjustments (luminance is preserved);
  • Improve quality of color temperature adjustment (preserve highlights, reducing the need to fix blues after);
  • Make project tree view panel resizeable (usefull for some 4k users);
  • Fix a bug when processing corrupted JPEGs;

Stitch should auto-update the next time you open it. It is also available for download on the iGuide portal.

I used the new firmware this morning and I will make some general comments:
Auto white balance is great and works very well. Nice update, thank you.
In practice I don’t think auto exposure works for me. I find that pointing the camera at the main feature of the room is not necessarily the best direction to point the camera to get a good exposure reading. In two cases this morning auto exposure resulted in images that were very underexposed, which is just a case of the lighting in that room. I think due to the unpredictable nature of where the camera is going to be placed on a home by home, pano by pano basis, that it has the potential to result in more time per pano, sometimes. Sometimes it works as intended. I like that you are pushing to develop this and I encourage continued work! Thanks for everything you are doing for us! :slight_smile:

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The auto exposure default target brightness (30%, changeable in Manage tab) is designed to underexpose the 0EV shot for better HDR results.

It is recommended to use AE with first shot pointing at brightest window. Then AE will help avoiding grey splotches that result when mixing overexposed white regions in 0EV shot with black regions in -5EV shot.

I like to make the first shot pointing at the most interesting feature of the room, to make the iGuide most interesting for users when they select a pano position from the floor plan.

We will be adding ability to set initial pano angle for each pano in Stitch and portal, so with it AE can be used more effectively.

I’ve done two homes with the new firmware, and another 10k sqft space. It was fantastic for me. Very fast and I got great results leaving it on auto exposure and auto white balance. I understand that the new firmware and Stitch work together to get the best results. I updated both at the same time and it seems to be the best results I’ve had. On two separate occasions with different buildings the auto exposure got confused with an outside shot that was WAY brighter than the previous pano. Since we get to see the image its easy to tell and I just did that shot manually, but on other outside panos the result was excellent.

Thanks, I am pleased at the constant improvements coming out.

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A quick question regarding the presets when editing the pano images.

Is it possible to create a preset or use copy/paste to affect just contrast and saturation only. What I would like is to have the image processed automatically by stitch, and then be able to add in a preset that tweaks contrast, etc. with just one mouse click, but doesn’t change the auto adjustments that stitch has already made to WB and brightness.

Just downloaded the new version of Stitch. Haven’t gotten into it yet but the zoom is still very erratic. I have no idea how it’s supposed to work–like before. If I try to zoom with the cursor over the middle of the floor plan sometimes it’ll zoom and keep it centered, most of the time, it’ll zoom and zoom right off the screen. I have to play with it zooming out and zooming back in a few times to get it to where I want it.

It should zoom on wherever the cursor is. It doesn’t do this.

Hi Richard,

We are sorry that you are having this issue, we will definitely take a look into it. Meanwhile, could you open a support ticket and provide a video since we were unable to reproduce it here?
Did you try in another computer?

Regards,
Adriel

I don’t have another computer to try it on. I’d have to figure out how to do a video of it. This has been happening since one or two versions back.

I’ve been struggling to perfectly line up the panos - has there been any thought given to a function which allows you to adjust the pitch, roll and yaw of Pano 1?

Sorry, just to clarify - Control over Pano 1, just as you have over 2 & 3

This will be extremely helpful feature to have

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Hello Joshua,

There is no need to align exclusively pano 1 since it is a sphere and would be equivalent to align pano 2 and 3.

From our experience, auto-align works well, except for the cases where there was an issue with the capture of the fisheye images (e.g. tripod moved). Even in this case it is usually quite difficult to do a better job manually aligning than by using align by features/color.

Did you try Stitch 6.3? It improves “align by features” for difficult cases (like plain walls).