Image stitching software

[augustinetez]

I have some scanning to do to archive various old kit manuals etc and of course, some of the schematics are A3 sized and my scanner doesn't do A3.

Any suggestions/recommendations for image stitching software that falls squarely in the free category.

I've got Paint Shop Pro 10, which I have used in the past, but it complains of being "out of memory" (on a PC with 16Gb memory??) when trying to stitch 2 A4 ish sized 600DPI scans.

Went to install Hugin, but the minute it wanted to shutdown my VPN and start reporting home, it got the boot quick smart.

 

[ZipZapOuch]

I have some scanning to do to archive various old kit manuals etc and of course, some of the schematics are A3 sized and my scanner doesn't do A3.

Any suggestions/recommendations for image stitching software that falls squarely in the free category.

I've got Paint Shop Pro 10, which I have used in the past, but it complains of being "out of memory" (on a PC with 16Gb memory??) when trying to stitch 2 A4 ish sized 600DPI scans.

Went to install Hugin, but the minute it wanted to shutdown my VPN and start reporting home, it got the boot quick smart.

I would buy a cell phone holder (arm) and set the manual in the bench top and take a photo. Use a piece of glass from a good picture (with Antireflection coating) on top of the manual if the manual isn't laying flat. The newer iPhone and Android phone (Samsung or Google Pixel) have incredible camera that can even convert your image to text if you want. Scanner beds are so old fashioned.

 

[augustinetez]

Good idea, I've got a new-ish Samsung.

Luckily, all the schematics are on seperate unbound sheets, well the ones I currently want to do anyway.

 

[augustinetez]

I've ordered a long arm phone holder and a bluetooth trigger fob, we'll see how it works once they get here.

 

[augustinetez]

Holder & remote arrived.

Not happy with the results - typical phone camera with the crappy jpeg artefacts, even at the 50meg camera setting.

 

[rjenkinsgb]

Set the camera to use HEIF or RAW format rather than JPG?
Also, copy them from the camera with a cable, rather than sending them from a program.

 

[augustinetez]

Have to work out how to do that (different format), something for tomorrow as it it's supposed to hit 40C, so not sticking my nose out the front door

Have always used a cable to transfer stuff in or out of the phone.

 

[schmitt trigger]

Search for the “Autostitch” software.
Simply amazing.
I have used it to stitch together several individual microscope images.

 

[ClydeCrashKop]

Old Paint shop pro 6.0, by JASC works great. Before Corel bought it and screwed it up.

 

[vidalv]

Do not use JPEG (low quality) try with other format on your smartphone then use a free software like Autostich, Hugin or better search on the web with "Photo panoramic online" you could have some good surprise but look at the max size of the files.

 

[ClydeCrashKop]

 

[augustinetez]

I tried Autostitch.

It either wouldn't install or run, forget which.

I've tried a couple of online 'stitchers' but they wouldn't stitch anything thing bigger than postcard size unless you paid extortionate amounts of currency - not going to happen.

Only 8:30am and already streaking past 30C here.

 

[augustinetez]

OK, tried the HEIC mode on the phone, think I'm just going to wait until I do the next 300km round trip to the local library - they have a scanning service there apparently that will do A3 size.

Results of the pic, by the time it was converted to PNG, the 50meg cam setting gave me a 146Mb file and the 12meg cam setting was 36Mb. Then by the time it was cleaned up (brightness/contrast), it was starting to look worse for wear and really not what I would call suitable - yes, I am extremely picky when it comes to scanning stuff.

 

[ZipZapOuch]

Can you convert it to a vector image (SVG) or similar. If you have a raspberry pi, or Linux box, you can convert each jpg to SvG with ImageMagick. There are settings to automatically eliminate small anomalies - you'll have to play with the sensitivity.

 

[augustinetez]

I don't have any software that can do the conversion to SVG from HEIC and looking at some of the online conversion sites, I'm not sure I trust them to be legit.

 

[ZipZapOuch]

I don't have any software that can do the conversion to SVG from HEIC and looking at some of the online conversion sites, I'm not sure I trust them to be legit.

ImageMagick isa freely available to Linux users if you have a Linus box. It installed through standard Linus installation and has been around forever.

 

[augustinetez]

Yep.
Got a laptop with Linux on, will give that a try later.

 

[vidalv]

I try this online : https://pinetools.com/merge-images
This is a scan of old revue from 70', 2 pages A4.
First page:

Second page :

The final result :

Ok, both original files are not good enough for reading and final are the best result with this!

 

[augustinetez]

ImageMagick isa freely available to Linux users if you have a Linus box. It installed through standard Linus installation and has been around forever.

Hrmmm - wouldn't save to SVG, bought up error message not able to save but that could be any one of 100 things I did/didn't do properly. I did have to convert to PNG first as it doesn't support HEIC.

I try this online : https://pinetools.com/merge-images
This is a scan of old revue from 70', 2 pages A4.

While that did the merge, I couldn't find the tools to do the fine manipulation to make them align properly, ie the schematic traces that crossed the page boundary had a step/offset in them, other that worked fine. Still need to fiddle a bit more with that one.

 

[vidalv]

In fact it depends on how the shooting has been done, some software needs 30% overlapping, this one I don't know? An example would be welcome to understand. Image centring is important if the two pages are not well aligned not easy to merge.