36 votes
Accepted

How can I get the horizon and the lighthouse both level in my photo?

Because you are shooting with the camera pointing down, you have convergent verticals. This can be fixed with the perspective tool in your image editor: In theory, you should fix the perspective ...
xenoid's user avatar
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15 votes
Accepted

Cannot align images with align_image_stack

Increase the number of control points. The standard is eight (-c 8). Raise this number to 20, 50, 100 or even 500. You will not get a worse result because of that - ...
user258532's user avatar
15 votes

How can I get the horizon and the lighthouse both level in my photo?

Ever notice when you try to take a photo of a building from the ground, when you aim up to get the entire building into frame, the building appears to taper towards the top? That happens because the ...
scottbb's user avatar
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9 votes

Why won't "align_image_stack" produce some useful result?

When stacking (and stitching)... Decide what you want to achieve. Increase depth of field? Remove unwanted people or objects? Reduce noise? HDR? Increase resolution? (This doesn't really work ...
xiota's user avatar
  • 26.9k
7 votes

GIMP Image Auto-Align Plug-In: I. just. do. not. get. it. Sorry!

A better way to align images is by using the align_image_stack program, which is part of the free of charge Hugin panorama stitcher program. To align images, you ...
Count Iblis's user avatar
  • 3,596
7 votes
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How to take pixel-for-pixel aligned pictures with a DSLR and iPhone 7?

Garbage-In, Garbage-Out A big problem with using DSLR photos as "ground truth" for the improvement of cell-phone photos is the assumption that DSLR photos are necessarily better than cell phone ...
xiota's user avatar
  • 26.9k
6 votes

How can I get the horizon and the lighthouse both level in my photo?

As others have noted, lines will converge or diverge depending on the angle at which you hold your camera. To fix this in images that have already been captured: Use a perspective correction tool, as ...
xiota's user avatar
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4 votes
Accepted

How to take 2 photos of the same scene and keep them registered

The greatest single improvement you can do is to stabilize your camera mount. That's were the highest amount of variability is likely occurring. You need a solid floor that doesn't shift. You need a ...
Michael C's user avatar
  • 175k
3 votes

How can I get the horizon and the lighthouse both level in my photo?

I don't know what the horizon looks like to the naked eye but what's the intent of the photo? As a pleasant landscape, to my eyes, the original looks best. The lighthouse appears vertical with its ...
Pix's user avatar
  • 31
3 votes

Why won't "align_image_stack" produce some useful result?

As U. Windl stated, the background and subject are moving relative to another which may confuse align_image_stack. Try doing the alignment in Hugin where you have control of the control points. Auto-...
qrk's user avatar
  • 2,831
3 votes

How can I get the horizon and the lighthouse both level in my photo?

In Lightroom you can use the Transform tool to correct horizontal and vertical lines. https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/guided-upright-perspective-correction.html
Marcus Talcott's user avatar
3 votes

How to take pixel-for-pixel aligned pictures with a DSLR and iPhone 7?

You can not. You could overcome the displacement of the two lenses using either a prism or a mirror so you have the same position and split the beam of light. You now then need to decide how to crop ...
Rafael's user avatar
  • 24.1k
3 votes

Is it possible to add manual control before auto-aligning layers in Photoshop?

I've never had a reason to do this but to my knowledge there's no automatic way within Photoshop. You would need to just manually refine them as required. However, if you have the entire Adobe ...
RyanFromGDSE's user avatar
  • 2,447
3 votes
Accepted

How can I align two panoramic images?

I have developed my own solution which worked quite well. The main idea is to use linear regression to find out a 2d transform function. I used 4th order polynomial. I.e: $x' = a_1 + a_2 * x + a_3 * y ...
Wu Yongzheng's user avatar
3 votes

How can I overlay two images exactly by scaling one of them in gimp?

I just did this in Gimp with no additional software. This method will easily and precisely produce the "3 point scale, rotate, translate" that you asked about. If there's other perspective issues ...
CoolHandLouis's user avatar
2 votes

How can I overlay two images exactly by scaling one of them in gimp?

You can use Filter|G'MIC|Layers|Align Layers. You must select Input Layers: All before executing. Take into account that this is a time consuming operation.
Freeman's user avatar
  • 121
2 votes

Software to Auto Align and Blend HDR

The open source package, Hugin, can both align images (its primary purpose is to do panorama stitching), and combine stacked images to HDR. It uses the command line utility: align_image_stack (see ...
inkista's user avatar
  • 51.4k
2 votes

How do I fix the align_image_stack error: "No valid distortion data found in lens database"?

Hugin used to use the lensfun database. But the 2015 version of Hugin's release notes state: Lens database Hugin now has its own camera and lens database, and hugin_lensdb is the maintenance tool. ...
inkista's user avatar
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2 votes
Accepted

How to place photos in a grid

This is a built-in feature of Photoshop, and has been for quite some time: say FileAutomate → ...
Warren Young's user avatar
  • 5,224
2 votes
Accepted

What's an easy way to de-rotate astronomical images taken without an equatorial mount?

The Hugin panorama stitcher can be used to align pictures. The align_image_stack executable is part of Hugin and can be run as a standalone command line program. To align pictures im1.tif im2.tif, im3....
Count Iblis's user avatar
  • 3,596
2 votes

Getting perfect parallel alignment between subject and sensor

I am a simple man and I like to have simple solutions. I would not find parallelism. I would find the center. You need a nonelastic thread (cotton for example), one tip pen and one assistant or two. ...
Rafael's user avatar
  • 24.1k
2 votes

Getting perfect parallel alignment between subject and sensor

A tube placed on the surface of the artwork can provide alignment. If the far end of the tube (smaller) is perfectly centered within the opening of the tube (larger); then the camera must be perfectly ...
Steven Kersting's user avatar
2 votes
Accepted

Should rotated photos align with the outer edge of an album or the right edge of the page?

From a reader's point of view, I would appreciate having to turn the album only once per double page. So I would vote for the right edge alignment.
mouviciel's user avatar
  • 882
1 vote

Getting perfect parallel alignment between subject and sensor

Maybe the most reliable way would be to shoot the artwork on the floor anyway. I mentioned in the question that it wouldn't work for larger artworks. However, thinking about it, mounting the camera ...
Skippy le Grand Gourou's user avatar
1 vote

Getting perfect parallel alignment between subject and sensor

A quick and easy method is to put a mirror where the target will be (you can also possibly cover the target with aluminum foil), and scribble a cross at its center. You then look into you viewfinder,...
xenoid's user avatar
  • 20.6k
1 vote

"No Feature Points" and "Bad Params" and no luck with align_image_stack

Do not use an image stack (this is meant for images with the same content but different exposures). Instead just do a regular alignment, I just tried with your 3 example images (on a Mac), this works ...
vaifrax's user avatar
  • 66
1 vote

How can I get the horizon and the lighthouse both level in my photo?

Sometimes it's easier to do in post with "PhotoShop" or other similar software. At the location, I use the camera viewfinder frame edge itself as a reference edge by tilting down (or up) until the ...
Stan's user avatar
  • 5,511
1 vote

Align bracketed exposure panoramas in photoshop – Repeat script...?

I have no idea if Photoshop can do what you're asking, but if your actual problem is that you're trying to create an HDR panorama from a set of bracketed sets of images, I'd recommend using a ...
inkista's user avatar
  • 51.4k
1 vote

Why does DeepSkyStacker brighten the stars too much compared to Photoshop?

Change the star detection in DSS stacking parameter/settings. Change the number of stars by percent.
Lavaboy's user avatar
  • 11
1 vote
Accepted

Software to Auto Align and Blend HDR

There are tons of software that do exactly that. A number also bypass the HDR image by producing an image using Exposure Fusion so that you do not have to do tone-mapping. You lose flexibility but it ...
Itai's user avatar
  • 103k

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