Gimp Plug-in for "Image Registration"
http://gimp-image-reg.sourceforge.net/
Version 0.5.5
2011-02-20
This is an implementation of the inverse compositional image
registration algorithm for Gimp. Image registration, also known as
image alignment, is the process of transforming a given image to
achieve a best match with another image. The need for such a tool is
given in situations where you want to combine two or more images which
are similar, but geometrically do not have a perfect match.
A typical use is the combination of 2 or 3 photos in HDR methods.
Unless you use a stable tripod, the source images will always be
slightly out of alignment, so the very first step will be to re-align
the images. The alignment step is normally built into dedicated HDR
software, but for doing simple HDR (using for example Gimp's layer
masks), you'll need to align the source images yourself, and this is
where this plug-in can be helpful.
Using the plug-in
-----------------
After you have built and installed the plug-in (see below), it will
appear as "Image Registration..." in the "Tools" menu. For using the
tool, load your images into Gimp (preferably as layers, see "Open as
Layers..."), select the layer you would like to transform, and launch
the tool. Refer to "Help" in tool's dialog for more information about
the parameters.
Installation
------------
As of version 0.5.5, the "Image Registration" plug-in has been built
and tested for Linux (Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10), Win32, and Mac OS X
10.5 (Leopard) and 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Thanks to auto-tools, the
chances are the software can be easily built also for other posix
systems like FreeBSD and other UNIXes, but I have not tried that yet.
Installation on Windows and Mac OS X
------------------------------------
For Win32 and Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6 (Lisanet port of Gimp) there are
pre-built binary distributions of the plug-in which you simply install
by unpacking the corresponding zip archives into your *personal* Gimp
directory, which is named:
Windows:
c:\Documents and Settings\{user}\.gimp-2.6 (Windows 2000/XP)
c:\Users\{user}\.gimp-2.6 (Windows 7, Windows Vista)
Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6 (Lisanet port of Gimp):
~/Library/Application Support/Gimp
Installation on Linux
---------------------
Currently there is no binary distribution for Linux and therefore the
plug-in must be built from source.
For building the plug-in for Linux, you will need the development
package 'libgimp2.0-dev', which you easily get and install by your
package manager (apt, Synaptic Package Manager, etc.).
The plug-in can be built either for a single user, or for a
system-wide installation.
Single-User Installation on Linux
---------------------------------
Unless many users on your system will use this plug-in, I recommend a
"single-user" installation, in which the plug-in goes into your
personal ~/.gimp-2.6 directory, and the gimp installation directories
remain untouched.
The steps for a user installation of the plug-in are the following:
(0) [Download 'gimp-image-reg-0.5.5.tar.gz' into some directory,
change to that directory,
and issue the following commands.]
(1) tar xvfz gimp-image-reg-0.5.5.tar.gz
(2) mkdir build
(3) cd build
(4) ../gimp-image-reg-0.5.5/configure --enable-user-install
(5) make
(6) make install
If everything goes right, the image registration plug-in and the
accompanying files will be installed in your personal ~/.gimp-2.6
directory, namely:
~/.gimp-2.6/plug-ins/gimp-image-reg (executable)
~/.gimp-2.6/share/gimp-image-reg/* (help files)
~/.gimp-2.6/share/locale/* (localization files)
For uninstalling the plug-in, simply run 'make uninstall'.
System-Wide Installation on Linux
---------------------------------
A system-wide installation is much like the user installation, except:
(a) the configuration step, in which you explicitly provide a prefix,
and omit the option --enable-user-install [default: no], and
(b) administrative rights (sudo) for installing the software.
Passing the right prefix to the configure script is for making sure
that Gimp will find the plug-in after installation. This prefix can be
obtained from 'gimptool-2.0' (part of 'libgimp2.0-dev') by the
following command:
$ gimptool-2.0 --prefix
The steps for a system-wide installation of the plug-in are the
following:
(1) tar xvfz gimp-image-reg-0.5.5.tar.gz
(2) mkdir build
(3) cd build
(4) ../gimp-image-reg-0.5.5/configure --prefix=`gimptool-2.0 --prefix`
(5) make
(6) sudo make install
Upon successful completion, the plug-in and the accompanying files
will go into:
${prefix}/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins/gimp-image-reg (executable)
${prefix}/share/gimp-image-reg/* (help files)
${prefix}/share/locale/* (localization files)
For uninstalling the plug-in, simply run 'sudo make uninstall'.
