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Posted by: DonPMitchell Aug 17 2006, 09:20 PM

I noticed the thread on Photosynth and thought I would add a little more about that research group. I know Rick Szeliski and Matt Uyttendaele, very smart people.

I've tried pretty much all of the panorama stitchers out there. Adobe's is by far the worst, and Microsoft's is by far the best. Szeliski's algorithms are currently found in Microsoft Image Suite 2006. Unlike most stitchers, it is based on a robust treatment of the general camera projective transformations, so it can handle rotations, panning, zooming and even limited camera-position changes (modulo big visiblity changes of course).

[attachment=7042:attachment]

Here's an example that first impressed me. In a Soviet documentary film I own, they discuss this diagram of the Venera soil-drilling apparatus, but they never show the whole diagram. They pan around and zoom in and out, and I didn't expect to be able to resolve all that into one image. I was quite surprised when Rick's program did it.

An updated version of the stitcher is in a new product, Microsoft Graphic Designer, which will give users more control over a big class of transformations (affine, homography, 3D rotation, etc). It handles lens distortion and a variety of projection surfaces. I haven't tried it myself yet. http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/graphic_designer/default.mspx

I have Panorama Factory and Autostitcher of course, but I never use them now, they are nowhere near as powerful as DIS2006.

Uyttendaele also recommended a program to me called ptlens for some non-projective transformations like vignetting.

Posted by: Malmer Sep 17 2006, 10:36 PM

Thats very cool.

I have used ptGui and it works very well. Will look at MDIS as well. Im thinking about using stitching software to create panoramas from the Apollo television broadcasts from the moon. (would be interesting to use stacking and superresolution on it as well.)

(I just bought the spacecraft films big DVD box with all the material from the moon. i think its about 80Hrs of film. Fantastic!)

Its also useful to use 3d tracking software and depth from stereo to generate dense Z information. then its possible to create VR worlds from panoramas that where shot with a moving camera. (takes a bit of work..)

/Mattias

Posted by: mars loon Sep 18 2006, 12:14 AM

Mattias,

very nice job on your immense saturn portrait published on APOD at christmastime a few years ago

ken

Posted by: Malmer Sep 25 2006, 06:27 PM

Thanx!

I actuall did not stitch that one using any automatic software. i did it by hand. I made that picture the same day it came down from cassini and had it on my machine for a month of so. Then scince Nasa did not seem to ever release it i thought that I would. I emailed it to the apod people and they had it shown on cristmas eve.

Then I got an email from Carolyn Porco...

...and Im not going to publish anything i have done from any ongoing missions anymore.


/M

Posted by: Stu Sep 26 2006, 10:08 AM

That's a crying shame, I know many of us will miss your stunning images... if you really mean it...

Posted by: ugordan Sep 26 2006, 10:48 AM

That bad? I can understand them wanting to make official releases, but as you say, sometimes there are months that pass and images don't get released. For instance, a Hyperion true color image was released only very recently in the form of a smallish image, the previous releases were all toned down and then enhanced. The public never saw a more natural appearance of the moon and frankly, I think a fair amount would like to see the "real" appearance, not those toned-down versions. Do cases like this prevent us from releasing our own images?

For RAW data composites -- arguably so. Even then, APOD is not an official channel for image releases and the raws ARE publicly released. We're supposed to just look at them, but not touch them?

For PDS releases? Obviously, once the data hits PDS and they still haven't made a PR release, tough luck for them. Period.

I might be out-of-line here, but I think these instrument PIs sometimes seem to forget that while they built the instrument, it's the taxpayers' money that enabled them to do it in the first place.

Posted by: djellison Sep 26 2006, 11:10 AM

Not the first time CP has responded negatively to people using the raw images that get put online.

Compare to Nov. last year when JB was on Planetary Radio - commenting on how he though it was great that people were making their own colour images and mosaics from MER.

It's a pity that CP doesn't see the benefit and seems to think the world is hell bent on trying to trump her scientifically. We're not - we just want to have the best view of things we can, as soon as we can, as often as we can. If that means that someone ends up producing a beautiful mosaic or colour composite before the Ciclops team does....then I'm sorry - that's just the way it is.

Doug

Posted by: edstrick Sep 26 2006, 11:28 AM

The very simple fact is that the Cassini Imaging team is NOT doing it's job getting the public what it's paying for. We are not getting good periapsis-pass previews (That's the Project's PIO fault, mostly), we're getting dribs-and-drabs of 1 megapixel small press release images.

Then we get the dog-in-a-manger growls from Carolin being porky about us raiding her (I've more then once gotten the impression that it's grudgingly) posted "raw" data. The latest annoyance is the block on ftp style batch downloads from the cassini raw pages that started last summer. They may carp all they want about mass downloaders hogging the bandwidth, but we don't hear that whining from the MER people or the Exploratorium. I'm afraid it's simply an attempt to make it much more work for amateurs to do something substantially better than the team is doing but with substantially worse starting data.

What the stupididity is, is that this hampers all of the many un-paid promoters of planetary exploration out here, giving talks or one-on-one pushing space at public events like last months World Science Fiction Convention in LA (I was on 7 panels, and though none were slide-show or video presentations, I came loaded with piles of pictures, including Enceladus mosaics better than anything the team has doled out to the underserving public.

I'd better stop ranting before I start calling people things.....

Posted by: ljk4-1 Sep 26 2006, 12:47 PM

This might also explain what went on with the Cassini CD as described
in David Brin's book Deep Time. What could have been a thing of both
art and information was turned into a bunch of signatures as supposed
professionals battled over credit, etc.

Maybe that says more about current humanity than anything else.

Posted by: DonPMitchell Sep 26 2006, 02:26 PM

That makes me angry. As an official American taxpayer, it is OK with me for you to do whatever you want with Cassini images. Porco owns a company (Diamond Sky Productions) that makes space image products. She is telling you, "Don't compete with my company!". Do you think she has the right to tell you that?

Posted by: remcook Sep 26 2006, 03:09 PM

Actually....not many PIs actually make their hands dirty in the building of the instrument. Or even designing it!

Posted by: djellison Sep 26 2006, 03:30 PM

Now that I didn't know - and ineed it puts something of a a new spin on the multiple occasions when she has objected in one way or another to the use of the JPG's that go online.

I don't think anyone has tried to do anything more than go "oh - look at that" and "oh - isn't that pretty" with Ciclops imagery - and as a result I just can not understand the root cause of her objection. There's no attempts to trump people scientifically ( because we all know the limitations of the JPG's )

Everything done with the JPGs (and the PDS releases that follow) serves to acknowledge and promote the instrument and it's results.

And when one constrasts this attitude to the one we see from the MER team, you have to wonder why the two teams ( which have overlap ) are so contrasting in their attitudes toward the amateur enthusiast.

Doug

Posted by: ugordan Sep 26 2006, 03:44 PM

One has to also wonder if people would be making composites like that if the team did those "ooh" releases more often. Seriously, we see color composites every leap year and they expect us NOT to take a whack at the data when it's just sitting there! That's downright unfair.


I think that largely depends upon the mindset of the PI and the rest of the team. Jim Bell said it himself he hated the way Voyager Neptune imagery was being proprietarized back then and he knew what that must have felt like to an outside observer. CP obviuosly didn't have that kind of experience.
In a way, the two live in different times. JB acknowledges this is a time of information sharing (and actually thinks that's great!), while CP probably wants things to stay at the level it was back when Voyagers were making the Saturn flybys and the imaging team got the exclusive to see and analyze the images. Just as JB at Neptune (IIRC), she was a grad student back then.

Posted by: Ian R Sep 26 2006, 05:58 PM

Mattias,

Could you elaborate a little on the content of the email you received from Ms. Porco? What exactly was the nature of her objection to your wonderful Saturn mosaic (which sat proudly on my desktop for many weeks, I might add)?

I'm disgusted and appalled that a senior member of the Cassini imaging team could react this way to members of the general public working with the raw imagery. The way I see it, if you're going to make the raw pictures available for people to access, don't moan and whinge if they actually decide to do something constructive with them.

I'm quite angry about this, and I was formerly a big admirer of Ms. Porco's work on Voyager!

Ian.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Sep 26 2006, 06:03 PM

My understanding was that the public release of daily raw images was forced on the imaging team by JPL against their wishes.

Phil

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Sep 26 2006, 06:07 PM

Be that as it may, this doesn't give Porco the right to harass private, taxpaying citizens who take advantage of the public releases. I wonder if she sends similar emails to Elachi or Griffin.

Posted by: Toma B Sep 26 2006, 06:41 PM

WoW!!!
So that is the untold story about that image...
I have just GOOGLED UP this

She is angry becase you are doing her job...
Surprise!!!

Posted by: Toma B Sep 26 2006, 06:46 PM

...and some more bad news...

So guys no stitching of that Jupiter/Pluto/KBO/etc objects...
Maybe that is the reason why we still haven't seen first Jupiter photos from NH...
There ain't no NH Raw Images site???
.
..
...weeel we could buy a poster from Diamond Sky Productions for some $$$...

Posted by: djellison Sep 26 2006, 06:58 PM

We HAVE seen the first Jupiter image - and we are a LONG way from worrying about the NH Pluto encounter - and being an encounter over a period of a few weeks, it's not analogous to MER or Cassini.

There are reasons to be upset over some things, but NH imagery is not one.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 26 2006, 07:07 PM

Mattias, can you send me via private messaging a copy of this email? I'm not going to get in a political discussion here, but I have the ability investigate NASA/JPL policy and how it came to be and where it's going -- from the top down. One thing is certain, the MER model has been a tremendouos success and a positive PR triumph for NASA specifically and space sciences in general. I will leave your name out of it.

Posted by: Malmer Sep 27 2006, 08:59 AM

Easy now!

Dont you all go on a rampage over this. I will still do work for every other mission i can lay my hands on. (I might even do some cassini stuff when no one is watching)

Personally i think that all space data should be "For All Mankind". I think that we as a species need to look outward to solve our local problems. We need to drop our egos. Thats why i had my pictures in full resolution in my little webfolder. (currently offline due to server reconfiguration) I want anyone to be able to print them and put them on ther wall or in their classrooms or whatever so that everyone could see the immense beauty.

I do however take a small fee if its supposed to go into a publication because I need to make sure that my wife thinks its worthwile having me infront of my computer all the time.

Im sorry for hijacking this thread. Can we return to the issue off which panorama stitcher is the most useful?

/Mattias

Posted by: edstrick Sep 27 2006, 09:53 AM

Actually, the most useful panorama stitcher is a good straight-edge and non-yellowing tape....

If I cut up a rover panorama into printout sized segments with a few pixels overlap.. I can get nearly seamless looking strip mosaics from my $300 color laser printer.

Posted by: djellison Sep 27 2006, 09:59 AM

When the shed-office is finished, I have two plans for 'decorating'. One is the victoria pan on the wall behind the desk - and the other is to print all the individual pathfinder colour frames, trim them out and stick it all on the wall frame by frame

Doug

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Sep 27 2006, 06:56 PM

Be careful, Doug. You shed could end up looking like the shed in the movie A Beautiful Mind. You know, the scene where Alicia Nash (Jennifer Connelly) goes to the woods behind the house, walks in to the old abandoned storage shed, and discovers what John Nash (Russell Crowe) has really been doing during his "recovery."

See http://www.freehomepages.com/iam27paul/beautiful_mind_room.jpeg.

Posted by: djellison Sep 27 2006, 07:00 PM

Oops - cunning remote image link blocking...but I know the scene you mean.....yes, a little bit like that

Doug

Posted by: Bjorn Jonsson Sep 27 2006, 09:27 PM

There is one thing that needs to be taken into account when comparing the apparent 'attitude' of the Cassini imaging team (or at least its PI) to that of the MER team:

Public realtime (or near-realtime) release of the MER imagery was the plan right from the start. Also of significance is that the MER project was started years after the WWW started.

Cassini is a totally different beast. It was started as a project before the WWW even existed. The realtime release of Cassini images was applied 'retroactively', it was never planned. I'm not trying to justify anything some of the Cassini people may have said or done but I still think this is a significant factor.

That said I think Cassini may be the last mission where this is a problem. The last US mission that is - ESA still has a lot to learn. Because of this, Malmer's decision to not publish anything from ongoing missions sounds drastic if I'm correct - this is not a problem with MER images and apparently not MRO either (hopefully we'll soon know).