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Hugin

By Ippei UKAI Free Editors' Rating

Editors' Review

Download.com Staff Mar 19, 2011

Hugin is a panoramic photo tool from Ippei UKAI. It's a large, flexible, and capable application that is based on the same open-source code as many expensive pro-level tools, but Hugin is freeware. It takes your digital snapshots or other series of similar images and stitches them together to form a single, seamless panoramic image. Unlike many other tools, it can consider your camera model and the shape of its lens in creating panoramas, which helps reduce image distortion. Despite its size and capability, Hugin is also portable.

If you don't have a series of images suitable for creating a panorama, get out your camera and shoot four images all around you; Hugin will make good use of them. The program's tabbed interface starts with the wizard-like Assistant and progresses through Images, Camera and Lens, Crop, Mask, Control Points, Optimizer, Exposure, and Stitcher. We added some images from our library, a process that lets you load saved data on your camera's lens and helps Hugin automatically configure its panoramic effects. With our images loaded into the assistant queue, we began walking through the various steps involved in selecting, aligning, and stitching together images and rendering them as a single exposure. Make no mistake: Hugin is an extremely capable tool, with commensurate complexities, but never did we feel overwhelmed by its options or processes. We created a small but satisfactory panoramic image that opened in Windows Photo Viewer when we clicked it. It's easy to see how, with more input, it's possible to create large, detailed panoramic images that look like they were shot with special lenses and equipment instead of a pocket-size digital camera or even a cellphone.

As we noted, Hugin is a large package for freeware, and it seems more than capable of handling professional demands as well as putting a top-quality photographic tool in the average user's hands. We especially like the way you can load and save data on multiple lenses and apply them to a single project. Before you start, gather data on your lenses from manuals or online; Hugin can use it to improve its results.

Full Specifications

What's new in version 2012.0

General

Release November 6, 2012
Date Added November 7, 2012
Version 2012.0

Operating Systems

Operating Systems Windows 2003, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows, Windows NT, Windows 7, Windows XP
Additional Requirements None

Popularity

Total Downloads 10,800
Downloads Last Week 2
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User Reviews

3.7/5
3 User Votes
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Developer's Description

Hugin is an open-source panorama photo creation tool. It can put multiple photos together very easily and the end result is smooth and stunning. Hugin uses the same open source library used by many other software including shareware like PTMac from Kekus Digital. Hugin is, however, free and you can start making panoramic photos without buying any expensive software or equipment. Unlike many similar software, Hugin considers the shapes of the lens and can adapt to the particular distortion profile of your camera.
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