Creating good quality seamless panoramic images can be a difficult task to achieve. With many different options available to create panoramic images these days it is sometimes difficult to choose the most appropriate software application for the task.

One such application that I have been using for the past few years is Hugin. Hugin, is essentially cross-platform, multi-language, open-source (Windows, Linux and OS X), front-end GUI (Graphical User Interface) for Panoramic Tools. It provides a point and click interface to numerous command line tools, greatly simplifying the overall process of creating panoramas.

If you are looking for an application that allows you to specify the images, press a button and have the processed image pop out the other end. Then this is not the application for you.

Although not difficult to use, to achieve the best results from Hugin you will need to spend some time setting up your images and optimizing them before creating your panorama. You will also need to know the focal length the images were shot at.

When taking photo’s with the intention of creating a panoramic image there are a few things that you need to consider:

• You don’t need a special panoramic head on your tripod, sometimes you don’t even need a tripod at all to create images suitable for stitching.
• There should be a 20-30% overlap of the images.
• You should use manual mode on your camera and lock the exposure - this will help with the blending process.
• Set the White Balance the same on all the images rather than using auto white balance. Or, if shooting in RAW this can be done by your RAW conversion software. This will help to stop colour variations between the images in the sequence.
• All the images in the sequence should be shot at the same focal length.

• Visit: Hugin