General question: about alignment (stitching pictures)

[SilvioGrosso]

Hello Luca,

Just out of curiosity....

At work we often take stacks of pictures with very big magnification (zeiss luminar lenses: with 10x to 20x results).
Therefore, with shinestacker I have got many stacks, in the end, to align-stitch together.

For instance, for the head of insects, the stacks of: the right eye + the left eye + the antennas etc et
All these finals images need to be aligned together in one simple final image.

Is it possible, with shinestacker, to only use some of the options to align these stack of images?

Lately I have been experimenting with:
https://github.com/krupkat/xpano

It is an impressive piece of software. Very fast with its results.
Needless to say, though, the results are not always perfect and you need to fine-tune a bit the final image.
Perhaps you already know this software since it uses many libraries present in shinestacker: opencv etc

Thanks a lot in advance for any reply

[lucalista]

I am not 100% sure I completely understood your question:

Is it possible, with shinestacker, to only use some of the options to align these stack of images?

If the question is to run only alignment with shinestacker, the answer is yes. You need to:

1. create a new project and add a new job specifying the input folder or files
2. add a new CombinedAction to the job, call it "align" or whatever you prefer
3. add to the CombinedAction a new sub-action AlignFrame, and specify the desired options (algorithm, etc.)

If you want to run this job on many different inputs, you can clone the job and change input path and name of the module.

I am not sure I answered your question, though.

[lucalista]

Is it possible, with shinestacker, to only use some of the options to align these stack of images?

If the question is to run only alignment with shinestacker, the answer is yes. You need to: [...]

...note that, unlike pamorama stitching, Shine Stacker takes a reference frame and adapts all other frames to its dimensions. All parts of the non-reference frames are cropped in order to match the reference frame, after alignment.

Panorama stitcking requires to extend the blended frame in order to include all parts of the aligned frames, and possibly integrate the issing parts. Implementing this in Shine Stacker would require non-trivial work, and would shift the scope of the software from focus stacking to panorama stitching. Feasible, but requires time, and I would put priority on more fundamental issues that are still present.

Also note that panorama stitcking works better with homography transformation than with rigid transformation. Shine Stacker default is rigid, which usually works better with images taken for focus stacking, but homography can be selected as well.

[SilvioGrosso]

Hello Luca,

I would put priority on more fundamental issues that are still present.

Yes. I totally agree :-)
Speed, for instance, is the most important feature right now.
For instace, the start-up time of shinestacker might be improved, a bit, in future versions.
Both Zerene and Helicon start immediately as soon as one click on their .exe icon (Windows 11 and 10).

At present, for "panorma stitching" of my stacks (10x magnification and more) I use the open software xpano.
Usually I only need to stitch together 2 images (e.g. right eye + left eye)
On the whole, xpano works well even though, once in while, I need to adjust a bit its results.
I suppose it has been coded for true panoramas stitching and not for the results of focus stackings :-)

Since you are a super expert on this matter...
Do you think is it fine to apply the "spherical" transformation for this specific task or do you suggest something else?
I have tried its different options (perspective, cylindrical, sphaerical) but they often yield similar results on my stitching?

[lucalista]

Since you are a super expert on this matter...
Do you think is it fine to apply the "spherical" transformation for this specific task or do you suggest something else?
I have tried its different options (perspective, cylindrical, sphaerical) but they often yield similar results on my stitching?

I admint I can't give you a strong advice here. I suppose ideal optics, and in particular optics that achieve large magnification, may better work with "perspective", while fish-eye lens may work better with "spherical". I would just give a try to both and compare the results.