I've used Hugin with ImageMagick to eliminate noise (or moving objects) from a burst handheld shots when using cameras with "lesser" sensors.<p>Hugin does a great job aligning the images before stacking.<p>Source: <a href="http://petapixel.com/2013/05/29/a-look-at-reducing-noise-in-photographs-using-median-blending/" rel="nofollow">http://petapixel.com/2013/05/29/a-look-at-reducing-noise-in-...</a><p>Example: I used Hugin and Imagemagick to remove noise from this photo, which I shot handheld in burst mode with a "meh" camera. Had there been tourists walking around, they would have "vanished" using the same technique.<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/slantyyz/9041667571/" rel="nofollow">https://www.flickr.com/photos/slantyyz/9041667571/</a>
I used to use Hugin for all my stitching needs. It did a great job creating what became my Facebook cover photo, which was stitched from 80+ images.<p>However, it would crash about 50% of the time, with some sort of random error. If I slightly changed a setting, like tweaking the cropping or removing a single image, then sometimes it would work. Sometimes it would work if I ran the exact same job again -- the issue was not repeatable.<p>I eventually switched to a paid program, Autopano Pro (recommended to me by some of the Smugmug employees). It works just as well, a lot faster, and doesn't crash 1/2 the time.<p>If you're serious about making beautiful panoramics, I highly suggest you check it out.
I've been pretty happy using Hugin for making Brenizer method panoramas, e.g. <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/xach/10301052666/in/set-72157639971484114" rel="nofollow">https://www.flickr.com/photos/xach/10301052666/in/set-721576...</a><p>The UI is not great, but it's better than nothing, and the results are generally pretty good. And it's free.
If you're on windows, worth checking out <a href="https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/" rel="nofollow">https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/I...</a><p>I've found it to be easier to use.
The last time I used Hugin was about 5 years ago, but at the time it was my go-to software for panoramas. To get the best results you want to have a good amount of overlap between the images, and make sure everything is very level. Here's one that will give you an idea: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshbg2k/3382847846/sizes/o/" rel="nofollow">https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshbg2k/3382847846/sizes/o/</a><p>You can't see too much detail there, but I have a 6' long print of that image and it's perfect.
This was pain to use. Far from automated, crashed all the time, horrible UI and UX (pretty common in OSS). I'm sure the results might have been better compared to regular "click next" panoramic software.. but it was simply not worth it for my (personal) use-case.<p>Then I used some proprietary program for windows (arcsoft maybe? not sure now), which a had limited free version, and it was a breeze to use. Selecting images was intuitive, reordering was easy, configuration was simple and stitching was automatic.
I had a frustrating moment while using my video camera in Sicily where I couldn't back up any further, didn't have my wide-angle lens, and decided to just shoot & stitch later. Hugin did a great job turning the slices into an acceptable (even if imperfect) shot later. <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/porkfriedrice/4076794508/" rel="nofollow">https://www.flickr.com/photos/porkfriedrice/4076794508/</a>
was just using it to stitch some costa rica photos yesterday :)<p><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/cwqj70kl0ln8g1l/DSC_8270%20-%20DSC_8275.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/s/cwqj70kl0ln8g1l/DSC_8270%20-%20DSC...</a><p><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/ujiovwhg79o33ky/DSC_8252%20-%20DSC_8254.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/s/ujiovwhg79o33ky/DSC_8252%20-%20DSC...</a>
Great set of tools. I used the gui to do some initial work and then automated the rest with the command-line tools in the creation of <a href="http://robotrising.org/StratoSphere/collection.html" rel="nofollow">http://robotrising.org/StratoSphere/collection.html</a>
Another approach, for the lazy, is to just push the photos to Google auto backup. If you do that it'll automatically figure out that they can be stitched together and will provide you with the image. Works very well in my experience and requires no effort at all.
I made this panorama of Ascot Racecourse with Hugin.<p><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ascot_Racecourse_panorama_2.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ascot_Racecourse_pan...</a><p>The image appears on the Wikipedia article about the racecourse.
All my panoramas are made with Hugin:<p><a href="http://www.panoramio.com/user/1428211/tags/PANORAMA?photo_page=22" rel="nofollow">http://www.panoramio.com/user/1428211/tags/PANORAMA?photo_pa...</a>