I've been using the PTGui software ($121) for years to stitch together aerial shots into composite mosaics, but noticed in Krzysztof Bosak's post that Microsoft Research had something called ICE that could be an alternative. I checked it out and it's fanstastic!
Micosoft ICE is free, fast, easy to use and in my experience much more accurate than PTGui. Highly recommended.
Comments
Just try the "ICE". But I still prefer the "PTGui."
When the images are not perfect, are not entirely clear or the flight did not go as you planned it always leaves you save the situation somehow.
The "ICE" works fine, but only when the side overlap is large, but this significantly increases the number of lines of flight and how long it should stay in air.
Maybe in the future and with several improvements I can switch to ICE, but at the moment. the speed and service that gives PTGui is the most profitable.
Hmmm. well YMMV but IMHO its worth checking out the tutorials here:
http://hugin.sourceforge.net/tutorials/index.shtml These tuts are based on the early 0.7 release (2008).
It is much improved from 0.7 version and has several new robust, high quality, algorithms.
A new version 2011.0 is due in next few weeks (a Release Candidate is available now). 32 and 64 bit builds available.
Anyway check it out - maybe its not suitable for your purpose. Cheers...
Unfortunately for larger datasets it is less stable and less precise than ptgui, on average.
also both are semi-manual when stitching maps what limits output.
You might want to also look at Hugin. It does a great job of fixing the vignetting issues between adjacent images - its also free and open source.
http://hugin.sourceforge.net/