Combining Multiple Images

with
Enblend 4.2

Andrew Mihal∗) Christoph Spiel

2016-03-29†)

∗
) Original author
†
) Date reliably determined via source-code management system.
 i

Abstract

This manual is for Enblend version h4.2i, a tool for compositing images in such a
way that the seam between the images is invisible, or at least very difficult to
see.

Copyright
c 2004–2009 Andrew Mihal.
Copyright
c 2009–2016 Christoph Spiel.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document

under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with
no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free
Documentation License”.
Short Contents

1 Overview 1

2 Known Limitations 3

3 Workflowc 5

4 Invocation 17

5 Seam Generators 47

6 Visualization Image 49

7 Color Spacesc 52

8 Understanding Masksc 59

A Helpful Programsc 63

B Bug Reportsc 66

C Authorsc 70

D GNU FDLc 71

Indices 79

ii
Contents

List of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
List of Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

1 Overview 1

2 Known Limitations 3

3 Workflowc 5
3.1 Standard Workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2 External Masks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3 Interacting with Enblendc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3.1 Finding Out Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3.2 Console Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.3.3 Environment Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4 Invocation 17
4.1 Image Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.2 Command-Line Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.2.1 Common Optionsc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.2.2 Advanced Optionsc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.2.3 Mask Generation Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.2.4 Expert Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.2.5 Expert Mask Generation Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.2.6 Information Optionsc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.2.7 Program Flow Charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.3 Option Delimitersc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.3.1 Numeric Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.3.2 Filename Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.4 Response Filesc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.4.1 Response File Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.4.2 Syntactic Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.4.3 Globbing Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.4.4 Default Layer Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.5 Layer Selectionc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

iii
 iv

4.5.1 Layer Selection Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

4.5.2 Tools for Multi-Page Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

5 Seam Generators 47

6 Visualization Image 49

7 Color Spacesc 52
7.1 Mathematical Preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
7.2 Floating-Point Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
7.3 Color Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
7.4 Blending Color Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
7.5 Practical Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

8 Understanding Masksc 59
8.1 Masks In Input Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
8.2 Weight Mask Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

A Helpful Programsc 63
A.1 Raw Image Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
A.2 Image Alignment and Rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
A.3 Image Manipulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
A.4 High Dynamic Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
A.5 Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
A.6 Meta-Data Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
A.7 Camera Firmware Extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

B Bug Reportsc 66
B.1 Found a Bug? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
B.2 How to Report Bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
B.3 Sending Patches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

C Authorsc 70

D GNU FDLc 71

Indices 79
Syntactic Comment Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Program/Application Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Option Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
General Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Chapters or sections marked with a “c ”-sign appear in both manuals,

i.e. the Enblend manual and the Enfuse manual. The commonality
extends to all sub-sections of the marked one.
List of Tables

3.1 Image formats and bit-depths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

4.1 Verbosity levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

4.2 Mask generation options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.3 Optimizer strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.4 Mask template characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.5 Grammar of response files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.6 Grammar of syntactic comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.7 Globbing algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.8 Grammar of layer specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

6.1 Visualization colors an symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

v
List of Figures

3.1 Photographic workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3.2 External mask workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

4.1 Internal work flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4.2 Optimizer chain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

6.1 Seam-line visualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

7.1 Log-transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

vi
List of Examples

3.1 Output of ‘enblend --version’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

3.2 Output of ‘enblend --version --verbose’ . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.3 Output of ‘enblend --show-software-components’ . . . . . . . 14
4.1 Complete response file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.2 Filename-globbing syntactic comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
8.1 Using identify. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
8.2 Using tiff info. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

vii
 viii

Notation
This manual uses some typographic conventions to clarify the subject. The
markup of the ready-to-print version differs from the web markup.

Category Description Examples

Acronym Common acronym sRGB, OpenMP
Application GUI or CLI application Hugin, Enblend
Command Name of a binary in the running convert, enblend
text
Common part Chapter, section, or any other Response Filesc
part that appears in both man-
uals
Default Value as compiled into the en- h1i, ha.tif i
blend binary that belongs to
this documentation
Environment Variable passed to enblend by PATH, TMPDIR
variable the operating system
Filename Name of a file in the filesystem a.tif
Filename ex- Name of a filename extension .png, tiff
tension with or without dots
Fix me! Section that needs extending or FIX Explain ME
at least some improvement
Literal text Text that (only) makes sense uint16
when typed in exactly as shown
Option Command-line option given to --verbose
enblend
Optional part Optional part of a syntax de- --verbose [=LEVEL]
scription in square brackets
Placehoder Meta-syntactic variable that ICC-PROFILE
stands in for the actual text
Proper name Name of a person or algorithm Dijkstra
Restricted Annotation that applies only to Enblend.
note a particular program, configu-
ration, or operating system
Sample Literal text in quotes ‘%’ or ‘--help’
Side note Non-essential or “geeky” mate- Gory details
rial
White space Indispensable white space r g b

If we must break an identifier like for example --show-software-compo=

nents or ENBLEND OPENCL PATH at the end of a line, we indicate the additional
character which does not occur when the identifier is written as one word with a
‘=’-character.
Chapter 1

Overview

Enblend overlays multiple images using the Burt-Adelson multi-resolution

spline multi-resolution spline algorithm.) This technique tries to make the
seams between the input images invisible. The basic idea is that image features
should be blended across a transition zone proportional in size to the spatial
frequency of the features. For example, objects like trees and windowpanes have
rapid changes in color. By blending these features in a narrow zone, you will
not be able to see the seam because the eye already expects to see color changes
at the edge of these features. Clouds and sky are the opposite. These features
have to be blended across a wide transition zone because any sudden change in
color will be immediately noticeable.
Enblend expects each input file to have an alpha channel. The alpha channel
should indicate the region of the file that has valid image data. Enblend compares
the alpha regions in the input files to find the areas where images overlap. Alpha
channels can be used to indicate to Enblend that certain portions of an input
image should not contribute to the final image.
Enblend does not align images. Use a tool such as Hugin or PanoTools to do
this. The TIFF files produced by these programs are exactly what Enblend is
designed to work with. Sometimes these GUIs allow to select feathering for the
edges the images. This treatment is detrimental to Enblend. Turn off feathering
by deselecting it or setting the “feather width” to zero.
Enblend blends the images in the order they are specified on the command
line. You should order your images according to the way that they overlap, for
example from left-to-right across the panorama. If you are making a multi-row
panorama, we recommend blending each horizontal row individually, and then
running Enblend a last time to blend all of the rows together vertically. The input
images are processed in the order they appear on the command line. Multi-layer
images are processed from the first layer to the last before Enblend considers the
next image on the command line. Consult Section 4.5 on how to change the
) Peter J. Burt and Edward H. Adelson, “A Multiresolution Spline With Application

to Image Mosaics”, ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 2, No. 4, October 1983, pages 217–
236.

1
 2

images’ order within multi-layer image files.

Find out more about Enblend on its SourceForge) web page).

) http://sourceforge.net/
) http://enblend.sourceforge.net/
Chapter 2

Known Limitations

Enblend has its limitations. Some of them are inherent to the programs proper
others are “imported” by using libraries as for example VIGRA). Here are
some of the known ones.

• The BigTIFF image format is not supported.

• Total size of any – even intermediate – image is limited to 231 pixels, this
is two giga-pixels.
• Each “next” image must overlap with the result of the blending of all previ-
ous images. In special occasions option ‘--pre-assemble’ can circumvent
this sequential-blending restriction.
• No pair of images must overlap too much. In particular, no two images
must be identical.

The overlap is exclusively defined by the masks of the overlap-

ping images. This is exactly what the input masks are built for.
Let A be the number of pixels that overlap in both masks. We
use A as a measure of the overlap area – something 2-dimensional;
technically it is a pixel count.
Construct the smallest circumscribed, par-axial rectangle of the
overlap area. The rectangle has a circumference

U = 2(a + b),

which is of course 1-dimensional. Internally U again is a number of

pixels just as A.
The threshold when we consider a pair of images sufficiently differ-
ent is when A is larger than h2i times the number of pixels on the
circumference U
A > h2i × U.
) https://ukoethe.github.io/vigra/

3
 4

Avoiding the term “fractal dimension”, we have constructed a sim-

ple measure of how 2-dimensional the overlap area is. This way we
steer clear of feeding later processing stages with nearly 1-dimen-
sional overlap regions, something that wreaks havoc on them.

• Option ‘--wrap=both’ performs blending in E(1) × E(1), which is only

locally isomorphic to S(2). This will cause artifacts that do not appear in
S(2). Enblend cannot blend within S(2).
Chapter 3

Photographic Workflowc

Enblend and Enfuse are parts of a chain of tools to assemble images.

• Enblend combines a series of pictures taken at the same location but in

different directions.

• Enfuse merges photos of the same subject at the same location and same
direction, but taken with varying exposure parameters.

3.1 Standard, All-In-One Workflow

Figure 3.1 shows where Enblend and Enfuse sit in the tool chain of the standard
workflow.

Take Images
Take multiple images to form a panorama, an exposure series, a focus stack,
etc.. . .
There is one exception with Enfuse when a single raw image is converted
multiple times to get several – typically differently “exposed” – images.
Exemplary Benefits:

• Many pictures taken from the same vantage point but showing different
viewing directions. – Panorama
• Pictures of the same subject exposed with different shutter speeds. –
Exposure series
• Images of the same subject focused at differing distances. – Focus
stack

Remaining Problem: The “overlayed” images may not fit together, that is
the overlay regions may not match exactly.

5
3.1. STANDARD WORKFLOW 6

Take Images

[else]

[raw]

Convert Images DCRaw, UFRaw, etc.

Align Images Hugin, PanoTools

Combine Images Enblend, Enfuse

Postprocess The Gimp et al.

Figure 3.1: Photographic workflow with Enblend and Enfuse.

3.2. EXTERNAL MASKS 7

Convert Images
Convert the raw data) exploiting the full dynamic range of the camera
and capitalize on a high-quality conversion.
Align Images
Align the images so as to make them match as well as possible.
Again there is one exception and this is when images naturally align. For
example, a series of images taken from a rock solid tripod with a cable
release without touching the camera, or images taken with a shift lens, can
align without further user intervention.
This step submits the images to affine transformations.
If necessary, it rectifies the lens’ distortions (e.g. barrel or pincushion), too.
Sometimes even luminance or color differences between pairs of overlaying
images are corrected (“photometric alignment”).
Benefit: The overlay areas of images match as closely as possible given the
quality if the input images and the lens model used in the transformation.
Remaining Problem: The images may still not align perfectly, for example,
because of parallax) errors, or blur produced by camera shake.
Combine Images
Enblend and Enfuse combine the aligned images into one.
Benefit: The overlay areas become imperceptible for all but the most
misaligned images.
Remaining Problem: Enblend and Enfuse write images with an alpha
channel; for more information on alpha channels see Chapter 8 on page 59.
Furthermore, the final image rarely is rectangular.
Post-process
Post-process the combined image with your favorite tool. Often the user
will want to crop the image and simultaneously throw away the alpha
channel.
View

Print
Enjoy

3.2 External Masks

In the usual workflow Enblend and Enfuse generate the blending and fusing
masks according to the command-line options and the input images including
) https://luminous-landscape.com/understanding-raw-files-explained/
) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax
3.3. INTERACTING WITH ENBLENDC 8

their associated alpha-channels, and then they immediately use these masks for
multi-resolution blending or multi-resolution fusing the output image.
Sometimes more control over the masks is wanted. To this end, both applica-
tions provide the option pair --load-masks and --save-masks. See Chapter 4
on page 17, for detailed explanations of both options. With the help of these
options the processing can be broken up into two phases:

1. Save masks with --save-masks. Generate masks and save them into image
files.
Avoid option --output here unless the blended or fused image at this
point is wanted.
2. Load possibly modified masks with --load-masks from files and then
blend or fuse the final image with the help of the loaded masks only.
Neither application (re-)generates any mask in this phase. The loaded
masks completely control the multi-resolution blending or multi-resolution
fusing the output image.

In between these two steps the user may apply whatever transformation to
the mask files, as long as their geometries and offsets remain the same. Thus
the “Combine Images” box of Figure 3.1 becomes three activities as is depicted
in Figure 3.2.
To further optimize this kind of workflow, both Enblend and Enfuse stop after
mask generation if option --save-masks is given, but no output file is specified
with the --output option. This way the time for pyramid generation, blending,
fusing, and writing the final image to disk is saved, as well as no output image
gets generated.
Note that options --save-masks and --load-masks cannot be used simul-
taneously.

3.3 Interacting with Enblendc

This section explains how to find out about the inner workings of your version
of Enblend without looking at the source code. And it states how to interact
with Enblend besides passing command-line options and image filenames.

3.3.1 Finding Out Details About enblend

An enblend binary can come in several configurations. The exact name of the
binary may vary and it may or may not reflect the “kind of enblend”. Therefore,
enblend offers several options that allow the user to query exactly. . .

− what its exact version number is (see Sec. 3.3.1 on page 10 and op-
tion --version, page 35),
− what features it does support (see Sec. 3.3.1 on page 11 and options --ver=
sion, page 35 and --verbose, page 20),
3.3. INTERACTING WITH ENBLENDC 9

Generate Masks Enblend, Enfuse --save-masks

Modify Masks Any image editor

Blend or Fuse
Enblend, Enfuse --load-masks
Using Masks

Figure 3.2: Workflow for externally modified masks. The “Blend or Fuse Using
Masks” step utilizes the multi-resolution algorithm just as for internal workflow
without mask files.
3.3. INTERACTING WITH ENBLENDC 10

$ enblend --version
enblend 4.2-02c1f45857b4

Copyright (C) 2004-2009 Andrew Mihal.

Copyright (C) 2009-2015 Christoph Spiel.

License GPLv2+: GNU GPL version 2 or later

<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute
it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Andrew Mihal, Christoph Spiel and others.

Example 3.1: Example output of enblend when called with option --version.

− which image formats it can read and write without the need of conversion
(see Sec. 3.3.1 on page 12 and option --show-image-formats, page 34),
− who built it, (see Sec. 3.3.1 on page 13 and option --show-signature,
page 35), and finally
− what compiler and libraries were used to do so (see Sec. 3.3.1 on page 13
and option --show-software-components, page 35).

The information are explained in detail in the following sections.

Exact Version Number

Example 3.1 shows a possible output of ‘enblend --version’. The version
number at the beginning of the text tells about the exact version of the binary. It
is the number that can be compared with the version number of this document,
which by the way is h4.2i. Our slightly cranky markup (see also Notation,
page viii) dispels copy-paste errors.
The version indicator consist of a two (major and minor version) or three
(major and minor version plus patch-level) numbers separated by dots and an
optional hexadecimal identifier. Binaries from the “Development Branch” are
assigned two-part version numbers, whereas a three-part version number is
reserved for the “Stable Branch” of development. Officially released versions
lack the hexadecimal identifier.
Examples:

4.1.3-0a816672d475
Some unreleased version from the “Stable Branch”, which finally will lead
to version 4.1.3.
3.3. INTERACTING WITH ENBLENDC 11

4.1.3
Officially released version 4.1.3 in the “Stable Branch”.
4.2-1e4d237daabf
Some unreleased version from the “Development Branch”, which finally
will lead to version 4.2.
4.2
Officially released version 4.2 in the “Development Branch”.

Matching the version codes is the only reliably way to pair a given binary
with its manual page (“manual page for enblend 4.2-1e4d237daabf”) and its
documentation. This document mentions the version code for example on its
Title Page and the Abstract, page i.
The twelve-digit hexadecimal ID-CODE is automatically generated by our
source-code versioning system, Mercurial). Use the ID-CODE to look up the
version on the web in our public source code repository) or, if you have cloned
the project to your own workspace, with the command
hg log --verbose --rev ID-CODE

Compiled-In Features
Adding option --verbose to --version will reproduce the information described
in the previous section plus a list of “extra features”. Any unavailable feature in
the particular binary queried returns

Extra feature: ...: no

whereas available features answer “yes” followed by a detailed report on the

feature and its connection to some library or specific hardware. Example 3.2 on
page 12 shows such a report. Remember that your binary may include more or
less of the features displayed there.
The ‘--version --verbose’ combo is one of the first things test if enblend
“suddenly” behaves strangely.

(1.) “I’m running my enblend on a multi-core system, but it does not make use
of it.”
Check for extra feature OpenMP.
(2.) “My enblend complains when I call it with ‘--gpu’!”
Check for extra feature OpenCL.
(3.) “enblend is so slow!”
Ensure that neither feature mmap-view nor image-cache has been com-
piled in.
) https://www.mercurial-scm.org/
) http://hg.code.sf.net/p/enblend/code
 3.3. INTERACTING WITH ENBLENDC 12

$ enblend --version --verbose

enblend 4.2-95f1fed2bf2d

Extra feature: dynamic linking support: yes

Extra feature: image cache: no
Extra feature: OpenMP: no

Copyright (C) 2004-2009 Andrew Mihal.

Copyright (C) 2009-2015 Christoph Spiel.

License GPLv2+: GNU GPL version 2 or later <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Andrew Mihal, Christoph Spiel and others.

Example 3.2: Example output of enblend when called with options --version
and --verbose together.

(4.) “enblend eats away too much memory! Can I tell it to unload that onto
the disk?”
No, there is no command-line switch for that, but you can use a version
with mmap-view feature.
(5.) “My enblend has OpenMP enabled. Does it support dynamic adjustment
of the number of threads?”
Under extra feature OpenMP look for “support for dynamic adjustment
of the number of threads”.

Supported Images Formats

Enblend can read and write a fixed set of image formats if it was compiled to
support them. For example the EXR-format requires special support libraries.
Use option --show-image-formats to find out

− what image-data formats are supported,

− what filename extensions are recognized, and
− what per-channel depths have been compiled into the enblend binary.

The only three image formats always supported are

− JPEG,
3.3. INTERACTING WITH ENBLENDC 13

Channel Bit-Depth
Format Mask Profile Integral Floating-Point
uint8 uint16 uint32 float double
JPEG − • • − − − −
PNG • • • • − − −
PNM ? − • • • − −
[V]TIFF • • • • • • •

Table 3.1: Bit-depths of selected image formats. These are the maximum
capabilities of the formats themselves, not Enblend’s. The “Mask”-column
indicates whether the format supports an image mask (alpha-channel), see
also Chapter 8. Column “Profile” shows whether the image format allows for
ICC-profiles to be included; see also Chapter 7.

− PNG, and
− TIFF.
All others are optional. In particular the high-dynamic range (HDR) format
OpenEXR only gets compiled if several non-standard libraries are available.
The provided per-channel depths range from just one, namely “8 bits unsigned
integral” (uint8) up to seven:
− 8 bits unsigned integral, ‘uint8’
− 16 bits unsigned or signed integral, ‘uint16’ or ‘int16’
− 32 bits unsigned or signed integral, ‘uint32’ or ‘int32’
− 32 bits floating-point, ‘float’
− 64 bits floating-point, ‘double’
Table 3.1 summarizes the channel bit depths of some prominent image
formats.

Name Of Builder
During building each enblend is automatically signed to give the users an extra
level of confidence that it was constructed by someone that they can trust to get
it right. Access this signature with ‘--show-signature’ and enblend will print
something like
Compiled on sgctrl03 by Walter Harriman on Wed, Dec 22 2004, 16:07:22
GMT-7.
where machine name, person, and date-time depend on the build.

Compiler And Libraries Used To Build

Sometimes enblend refuses to start or runs into trouble because the libraries
supplied to it do not match the ones it was compiled with. Option --show-
software-components can be helpful to diagnose the problem in such cases,
3.3. INTERACTING WITH ENBLENDC 14

$ enblend --show-software-components
Compiler
g++ 4.9.1
implementing OpenMP standard of 2013-7
implementing Cilk version 2.0
without support of " Cilk for" keyword

Libraries
GSL: 1.15
Little CMS: 2.7.0
Vigra: 1.10.0

Example 3.3: Output of enblend when asked to reveal the compiler that was
used to build it along with the libraries it was linked against.

because it shows the version information of Enblend’s most important libraries

as they have identified themselves during compile-time.
Furthermore the report reveals the compiler used to build enblend along with
the most important compiler extensions like, for example, OpenMP. Example 3.3
shows such a report.

3.3.2 Console Messages

Enblend is meant to read multiple images, “montage” them together, and fi-
nally write a single output image. So, any console messages either serve the
entertainment desire of the user or indicate problems.
When enblend is instructed to only show information about its configuration
(see Section 4.2.6 on page 34) the text goes to Standard Output. enblend sends
error and warning messages to Standard Error. The messages follow a fixed
format.
enblend: [CATEGORY :] MESSAGE
where CATEGORY is
error: A serious problem that sooner or later will lead to a program stop. The
result will definitely not be what the user wants – including no output
image at all, as enblend deletes corrupted or incomplete output images.
Most messages drop category name ‘error’ and plainly write MESSAGE:

enblend: input image "1.tif" does not have an alpha channel

If an ‘error’ actually leads to a premature termination of enblend, it

returns code 1 to the operating system. On successful termination the
return code is 0.
3.3. INTERACTING WITH ENBLENDC 15

warning: A problem that forces enblend to take an alternate execution path or

drop some assumptions about the input.
info: No problem, just a “nice-to-know” information for the user.
note: Not a standalone CATEGORY, but an additional explanation that some-
times trails messages in one of the above categories. Errors, warnings
and infos tell the causes, notes inform about the actions taken by enblend.
Here is an example, where a warning gets augmented by a note:

enblend: warning: input images too small for coarse mask

enblend: note: switching to fine mask

timing: A measurement of the execution duration and thus a sub-category of

info.

Sadly, not all messages can be sorted in the category scheme.

Debug Messages: Though debug messages generally come devoid of a specific

form the more civilized of them start each line with a plus sign ‘+’. Example:

+ checkpoint: leaving channel width alone

Foreign Sources: enblend depends on various foreign software components that

issue their own messages. We try to catch them and press them in our
category scheme, but some of them invariably slip through. The most
prominent members of this rogue fraction are the notices of VIGRA) as
e.g.

enfuse: an exception occurred

enfuse: Precondition violation!
...

and LibTIFF):

TIFFReadDirectory: Warning, img0001.tif: wrong data type 1

for "RichTIFFIPTC"; tag ignored.

“Should-Never-Happen”: An internal consistency check fails or a cautious rou-

tine detects a problem with its parameters and racks up the digital equiv-
alent of a nervous breakdown. Sometimes these messages end in the
word ‘Aborted’.
) https://ukoethe.github.io/vigra/
) http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/
3.3. INTERACTING WITH ENBLENDC 16

terminate called after throwing an instance of ’...’

what(): ...
Aborted

If the installation of enblend is correct, this type of message may warrant

a bug report as explained in Appendix B on page 66.
In very unfortunate circumstances Enblend quits because of a problem, but
does not show any message. The output file then either does not exist or it
is broken. One known reason are out-of-memory situations, where the process
needs additional memory, but cannot allocate it and while terminating needs
even more memory so that the operating system wipes it out completely wherever
it then happens to be in its execution path.

3.3.3 Environment Variables

A small set of environment variables influences the execution of enblend. All of
them depend on enblend having been compiled with certain features. The hint
“(direct)” indicates genuine variables in enblend, whereas “(implicit)” denotes
variables that control libraries that are linked with enblend.
CILK NWORKERS (implicit) Cilk-enabled versions only.
This environment variable works for CilkPlus) as OMP NUM THREADS (see
below) does for OpenMP. It can be helpful for load balancing.

OMP DYNAMIC (implicit) OpenMP-enabled versions only.

Control whether the OpenMP) sub-system should parallelize nested
parallel regions. This environment variable will only have an effect is the
OpenMP sub-system is capable of dynamic adjustment of the number of
threads (see explanations in Section 3.3.1 on page 11).
The important hot spots in the source code override the value of
OMP DYNAMIC.

OMP NUM THREADS (implicit) OpenMP-enabled versions only.

Control – which typically means: reduce – the number of threads under
supervision of the OpenMP) sub-system. By default enblend uses as
many OpenMP-threads as there are CPUs. Use this variable for example
to free some CPUs for other processes than enblend.

TMPDIR (direct) ‘mmap view’-branch only.

TMPDIR determines the directory and thus the drive where enblend stores
all intermediate images. The best choice follows the same rules as for a
swap-drive: prefer the fastest disk with the least load.

) https://www.cilkplus.org/
) http://openmp.org/wp/
) http://openmp.org/wp/
Chapter 4

Invocation

Assemble the sequence of images INPUT. . . into a single IMAGE.

enblend [OPTIONS] [--output=IMAGE] INPUT. . .
INPUT images are either specified literally or via so-called response files (see
Section 4.4). The latter are an alternative to specifying image filenames on the
command line. If omitted, the name of the output IMAGE defaults to ha.tif i.

4.1 Input Image Requirements

All input images for Enblend must comply with the following requirements.

• Parts of the images overlap.

• Each image has an alpha channel also called “mask”.

• The images agree on their number of channels:

– one plus alpha or

– three plus alpha.

This is, either all images are black-and-white (one channel and alpha
channel) or all are RGB-color images (three channels and alpha channel).
• The images agree on their number of bits-per-channel, i.e., their “depth”:

– uint8,
– uint16,
– float,
– etc.

See option --depth, page 22 for an explanation of different output depths.

17
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 18

• Enblend understands the images’ filename extensions as well as their file

formats.
You can check the supported extensions and formats by calling Enblend
with option --show-image-formats (page 34).

Moreover, there are some good practices, which are not enforced by the
application, but almost certainly deliver superior results.

• Either all files lack an ICC profile, or all images are supplied with the
same ICC profile.
• If the images’ meta-data contains resolution information (“DPI”), it is the
same for all pictures.

4.2 Command-Line Options

In this section we group the options as the command-line help

$ enblend --help
does and sort them alphabetically within their groups. For an alphabetic list of
all options consult the Option Index, page 81.
enblend accepts arguments to any option in uppercase as well as in lower-
case letters. For example, ‘deflate’, ‘Deflate’ and ‘DEFLATE’ as arguments
to the --compression option described below all instruct enblend to use the
Deflate compression scheme. This manual denotes all arguments in lowercase
for consistency.

4.2.1 Common Optionsc

Common options control some overall features of Enblend. They are called
“common” because they are used most often. However, in fact, Enblend and
Enfuse do have these options in common.

--compression=COMPRESSION
Write a compressed output file. The default is not to compress the output
image.
Depending on the output file format, Enblend accepts different values for
COMPRESSION.

JPEG format.
The compression either is a literal integer or a keyword-option combi-
nation.
LEVEL
Set JPEG quality LEVEL, where LEVEL is an integer that
ranges from 0–100.
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 19

jpeg[:LEVEL ]
Same as above; without the optional argument just switch on
standard JPEG compression.
jpeg-arith[:LEVEL ]
Switch on arithmetic JPEG compression. With optional argu-
ment set the arithmetic compression LEVEL, where LEVEL is
an integer that ranges from 0–100.
TIF format.
Here, COMPRESSION is one of the keywords:
none
Do not compress. This is the default.
deflate
Use the Deflate compression scheme also called ZIP-in-TIFF.
Deflate is a lossless data compression algorithm that uses a
combination of the LZ77 algorithm and Huffman coding.
jpeg[:LEVEL ]
Use JPEG compression. With optional argument set the com-
pression LEVEL, where LEVEL is an integer that ranges from
0–100.
lzw
Use Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) adaptive compression scheme.
LZW compression is lossless.
packbits
Use PackBits compression scheme. PackBits is a particular
variant of run-length compression; it is lossless.
Any other format.
Other formats do not accept a COMPRESSION setting. However,
the underlying VIGRA) library automatically compresses png-files
with the Deflate method. (VIGRA is the image manipulation
library upon which Enblend is based.)

-l LEVELS
--levels=LEVELS
Use at most this many LEVELS for pyramid) blending if LEVELS is
positive, or reduce the maximum number of levels used by −LEVELS if
LEVELS is negative; ‘auto’ or ‘automatic’ restore the default, which is
to use the maximum possible number of levels for each overlapping region.
The number of levels used in a pyramid controls the balance between local
and global image features (contrast, saturation, . . . ) in the blended region.
Fewer levels emphasize local features and suppress global ones. The more
levels a pyramid has, the more global features will be taken into account.
) https://ukoethe.github.io/vigra/
) As Dr. Daniel Jackson correctly noted, actually, it is not a pyramid: “Ziggaurat, it’s
a Ziggaurat.”
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 20

As a guideline, remember that each new level works on a linear

scale twice as large as the previous one. So, the zeroth layer, the
original image, obviously defines the image at single-pixel scale,
the first level works at two-pixel scale, and generally, the nth level
contains image data at 2n -pixel scale. This is the reason why an
image of width × height pixels cannot be deconstructed into a
pyramid of more than

blog2 (min(width, height))c levels.

If too few levels are used, “halos” around regions of strong local
feature variation can show up. On the other hand, if too many
levels are used, the image might contain too much global features.
Usually, the latter is not a problem, but is highly desired. This is
the reason, why the default is to use as many levels as is possible
given the size of the overlap regions. Enblend may still use a smaller
number of levels if the geometry of the overlap region demands.

Positive values of LEVELS limit the maximum number of pyramid levels.

Depending on the size and geometry of the overlap regions this may or may
not influence any pyramid. Negative values of LEVELS reduce the number
of pyramid levels below the maximum no matter what the actual maximum
is and thus always influence all pyramids. Use ‘auto’ or ‘automatic’ as
LEVELS to restore the automatic calculation of the maximum number of
levels.
The valid range of the absolute value of LEVELS is h1i to h29i.
-o FILE
--output=FILE
Place blended output image in FILE. If ‘--output’ is omitted, Enblend
writes the resulting image to ha.tif i.
-v [LEVEL ]
--verbose[=LEVEL ]
Without an argument, increase the verbosity of progress reporting. Giving
more --verbose options will make Enblend more verbose; see Section 3.3.1
on page 8 for an exemplary output. Directly set a verbosity level with a
non-negative integral LEVEL. Table 4.1 shows the messages available at a
particular LEVEL.
The default verbosity level of Enblend is h1i.

4.2.2 Advanced Optionsc

Advanced options control e.g. the channel depth, color model, and the cropping
of the output image.
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 21

Level Messages
0 only warnings and errors
1 reading and writing of images
2 mask generation, pyramid, and blending
3 reading of response files, color conversions
4 image sizes, bounding boxes and intersection sizes
5 Enblend only. detailed information on the optimizer runs
6 estimations of required memory in selected processing steps

Table 4.1: Verbosity levels of enblend; each level includes all messages of the
lower levels.

--blend-colorspace=COLORSPACE
Force blending in selected COLORSPACE. Given well matched images
this option should not change the output image much. However, if Enblend
must blend vastly different colors (as e.g. anti-colors) the resulting image
heavily depends on the COLORSPACE.
Usually, Enblend chooses defaults depending on the input images:

• For grayscale or color input images with ICC profiles the default is
to use CIELUV colorspace.
• Images without color profiles and floating-point images are blended
in the trivial luminance interval (grayscale) or RGB-color cube by
default.

On the order of fast to slow computation, Enblend supports the following

blend colorspaces.

identity
id
unit
Compute blended colors in a naı̈ve way sidestepping any dedicated
colorspace.
• Use trivial, 1-dimensional luminance interval (see Eqn. 7.1 on
page 53) for grayscale images and
• for color images utilize 3-dimensional RGB-cube (see Eqn. 7.6
on page 54) spanned by the input ICC profile or sRGB if no
profiles are present. In the latter case, consider passing op-
tion --fallback-profile, page 28 to force a different profile
than sRGB upon all input images.
lab
cielab
lstar
l-star
Blend pixels in the CIEL*a*b* colorspace.
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 22

luv
cieluv
Blend pixels in the CIEL*u*v* colorspace.
ciecam
ciecam02
jch
Blend pixels in the CIECAM02 colorspace.

Enblend only.

Please keep in mind that by using different blend colorspaces,

blending may not only change the colors of the output image, but
Enblend may choose different seam line routes as some seam-line
optimizers are guided by image differences, which are different
when viewed in different colorspaces.

2
-c
--ciecam
Deprecated. Use ‘--blend-colorspace=ciecam’ instead. To emulate the
negated option --no-ciecam use --blend-colorspace=identity.
-d DEPTH
--depth=DEPTH
Force the number of bits per channel and the numeric format of the output
image, this is, the DEPTH. The number of bits per channel is also known
as “channel width” or “channel depth”.
Enblend always uses a smart way to change the channel depth to assure
highest image quality at the expense of memory, whether requantization is
implicit because of the output format or explicit through option --depth.

• If the output-channel depth is larger than the input-channel depth

of the input images, the input images’ channels are widened to the
output channel depth immediately after loading, that is, as soon
as possible. Enblend then performs all blending operations at the
output-channel depth, thereby preserving minute color details which
can appear in the blending areas.
• If the output-channel depth is smaller than the input-channel depth of
the input images, the output image’s channels are narrowed only right
before it is written to the output FILE, that is, as late as possible.
Thus the data benefits from the wider input channels for the longest
time.

All DEPTH specifications are valid in lowercase as well as uppercase letters.

For integer format, use
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 23

8
uint8
Unsigned 8 bit; range: 0 . . . 255
int16
Signed 16 bit; range: −32768 . . . 32767
16
uint16
Unsigned 16 bit; range: 0 . . . 65535
int32
Signed 32 bit; range: −2147483648 . . . 2147483647
32
uint32
Unsigned 32 bit; range: 0 . . . 4294967295

For floating-point format, use

r32
real32
float
IEEE754 single precision floating-point, 32 bit wide, 24 bit significant;
− Minimum normalized value: 1.2 · 10−38
− Epsilon: 1.2 · 10−7
− Maximum finite value: 3.4 · 1038
r64
real64
double
IEEE754 double precision floating-point, 64 bit wide, 53 bit signifi-
cant;
− Minimum normalized value: 2.2 · 10−308
− Epsilon: 2.2 · 10−16
− Maximum finite value: 1.8 · 10308

If the requested DEPTH is not supported by the output file format, Enblend
warns and chooses the DEPTH that matches best.
Versions with OpenEXR read/write support only.

The OpenEXR data format is treated as IEEE754 float inter-

nally. Externally, on disk, OpenEXR data is represented by
“half” precision floating-point numbers.
OpenEXR) half precision floating-point, 16 bit wide, 10 bit
significant;
− Minimum normalized value: 9.3 · 10−10
− Epsilon: 2.0 · 10−3
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 24

− Maximum finite value: 4.3 · 109

2
-f WIDTH xHEIGHT [+xXOFFSET +yYOFFSET ]
Ensure that the minimum “canvas” size of the output image is at least
WIDTH ×HEIGHT. Optionally specify the XOFFSET and YOFFSET of
the canvas, too.
This option only is useful when the input images are cropped TIFF files,
such as those produced by nona.
Note that option -f neither rescales the output image, nor shrinks the
canvas size below the minimum size occupied by the union of all input
images.
-g Save alpha channel as “associated”. See the TIFF documentation) for an
explanation.
The Gimp before version 2.0 and CinePaint (see Appendix A on page 63)
exhibit unusual behavior when loading images with unassociated alpha
channels. Use option -g to work around this problem. With this flag
Enblend will create the output image with the “associated alpha tag” set,
even though the image is really unassociated alpha.
-w [MODE ]
--wrap[=MODE ]
Blend around the boundaries of the panorama, or “wrap around”.
As this option significantly increases memory usage and computation time
only use it, if the panorama will be

− consulted for any kind measurement, this is, all boundaries must
match as accurately as possible, or
− printed out and the boundaries glued together, or
− fed into a virtual reality (VR) generator, which creates a seamless
environment.

Otherwise, always avoid this option!

With this option Enblend treats the set of input images (panorama) of
width w and height h as an infinite data structure, where each pixel P (x, y)
of the input images represents the set of pixels SP (x, y).

Solid-state physicists will be reminded of the Born-von Kármán

boundary condition).

MODE takes the following values:

) http://www.openexr.com/about.html#features
) http://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/tifftags/extrasamples.html
) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born-von_Karman_boundary_condition
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 25

none
open
This is a “no-op”; it has the same effect as not giving ‘--wrap’ at all.
The set of input images is considered open at its boundaries.
horizontal
Wrap around horizontally:

SP (x, y) = {P (x + mw, y) : m ∈ Z}.

This is useful for 360◦ horizontal panoramas as it eliminates the left

and right borders.
vertical
Wrap around vertically:

SP (x, y) = {P (x, y + nh) : n ∈ Z}.

This is useful for 360◦ vertical panoramas as it eliminates the top and
bottom borders.
both
horizontal+vertical
vertical+horizontal
Wrap around both horizontally and vertically:

SP (x, y) = {P (x + mw, y + nh) : m, n ∈ Z}.

In this mode, both left and right borders, as well as top and bottom
borders, are eliminated.

Specifying ‘--wrap’ without MODE selects horizontal wrapping.

4.2.3 Mask Generation Options

These options control the generation and the usage of masks.

--coarse-mask[=FACTOR ]
Use a scaled-down or “coarse” version of the input images to create the
seam line. This option reduces the number of computations necessary to
compute the seam line and the amount of memory necessary to do so. It
is the default.
If omitted FACTOR defaults to h8i, this means, option --coarse-mask
shrinks the overlapping areas by a factor of h8i×h8i. With FACTOR = 8
the total memory allocated during a run of Enblend shrinks approximately
by 80% and the maximum amount of memory in use at a time is decreased
to some 40% in comparison to a full-size (“fine”) mask.
Valid range: FACTOR = 1, 2, 3, . . ., where 1 reproduces --fine-mask.
Also see the negated option, ‘--fine-mask’, page 25 and Table 4.2.
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 26

Active Options --no-optimize --optimize

--fine-mask Use NFT mask. Vectorize NFT mask, op-
timize vertices with simu-
lated annealing and Dijk-
stra’s shortest path algo-
rithm, fill vector contours
to recover mask.
--coarse-mask Scale down overlap region, Scale down overlap region,
compute NFT mask and vectorize NFT mask, op-
vectorize it, fill vector con- timize vertices with simu-
tours. lated annealing and Dijk-
stra’s shortest path algo-
rithm, fill vector contours
to recover mask.

Table 4.2: Various options that control the generation of masks. All mask
computations are based on the Nearest-Feature Transformation (NFT) of the
overlap region.

--fine-mask
Instruct Enblend to employ the full-size images to create the seam line,
which can be slow. Use this option, for example, if you have very narrow
overlap regions.
Also see option --coarse-mask, page 25 and Table 4.2.
--load-masks[=IMAGE-TEMPLATE ]
Instead of generating masks, load those in IMAGE-TEMPLATE. The
default is ‘hmask-%n.tifi’. The mask images must be 8 bit grayscale
images.
See option --save-masks, page 26 below for details.
--optimize
Use a multi-strategy approach to route the seam line around mismatches in
the overlap region. This is the default. Table 4.3 explains these strategies;
also see Table 4.2.
Option --no-optimize negates --optimize and thus turns off seam line
optimization. Combined with option --fine-mask, page 25 this will
produce the same type of mask as Enblend version 2.5, namely the result
of a Nearest-Feature Transform (NFT).
--save-masks[=IMAGE-TEMPLATE ]
Save the generated masks to IMAGE-TEMPLATE, which defaults to
‘hmask-%n.tifi’. Enblend saves masks as 8 bit grayscale, i.e. single channel
images. For accuracy we recommend to choose a lossless format.
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 27

Algorithm Tuning Parameters

Simulated Annealing Tune with option --anneal = TAU :
DELTA-E-MAX : DELTA-E-MIN : K-
MAX. Simulated-Annealing). FIX Explain
Simulated-Annealing! ME
Dijkstra Shortest Path Tune with option --dijkstra = RADIUS.
Dijkstra algorithm). FIX Explain Dijk-
stra algorithm! ME

Table 4.3: Enblend’s strategies to optimize the seam lines between overlapping
images.

Use this option if you wish to edit the location of the seam line by hand.
This will give you images of the right sizes that you can edit to make your
changes. Later, use option --load-masks, page 26 to blend the project
with your custom seam lines.
Enblend will stop after saving all masks unless option --output, page 20
is given, too. With both options given, this is, ‘--save-masks’ and
‘--output’, Enblend saves all masks and then proceeds to blend the output
image.

IMAGE-TEMPLATE defines a template that is expanded for

each input file. In a template a percent sign (‘%’) introduces a vari-
able part. All other characters are copied literally. Lowercase let-
ters refer to the name of the respective input file, whereas upper-
case ones refer to the name of the output file (see Section 4.2.1 on
page 18). Table 4.4 lists all variables.
A fancy mask filename template could look like this:
%D/mask-%02n-%f.tif
It puts the mask files into the same directory as the output file ‘%D’,
generates a two-digit index ‘%02n’ to keep the mask files nicely
sorted, and decorates the mask filename with the name of the asso-
ciated input file ‘%f’ for easy recognition.

--visualize[=VISUALIZE-TEMPLATE ]
Create an image according to VISUALIZE-TEMPLATE that visualizes
the un-optimized mask and the applied optimizations (if any). The default
is ‘hvis-%n.tifi’.
This image will show Enblend’s view of the overlap region and how it decided
to route the seam line. If you are experiencing artifacts or unexpected
output, it may be useful to include this visualization image in your bug
report. For a detailed description of the image, consult Chapter 6 on
page 49.
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 28

VISUALIZE-TEMPLATE defines a template that is expanded

for each input file. In a template, a percent sign (‘%’) introduces
a variable part; all other characters are copied literally. Lowercase
letters refer to the name of the respective input file, whereas upper-
case ones refer to the name of the output file (see option --output,
page 20). Table 4.4 on page 29 lists all variables.

4.2.4 Expert Options

Control inner workings of Enblend and in particular the interpretation of images.

--fallback-profile=PROFILE-FILENAME
Use the ICC profile in PROFILE-FILENAME instead of the default
sRGB. This option only is effective if the input images come without color
profiles and blending is not performed in the trivial luminance interval or
RGB-cube.
Compare option --blend-colorspace, page 20 and Chapter 7.3 on page 56
on color profiles.

--layer-selector=ALGORITHM
Override the standard layer selector algorithm ‘hall-layersi’.
Enblend offers the following algorithms:

all-layers
Select all layers in all images.
first-layer
Select only first layer in each multi-layer image. For single-layer
images this is the same as ‘all-layers’.
last-layer
Select only last layer in each multi-layer image. For single-layer images
this is the same as ‘all-layers’.
largest-layer
Select largest layer in each multi-layer image, where the “largeness”,
this is the size is defined by the product of the layer width and its
height. The channel width of the layer is ignored. For single-layer
images this is the same as ‘all-layers’.
no-layer
Do not select any layer in any image.
This algorithm is useful to temporarily exclude some images in re-
sponse files.

--parameter=KEY [=VALUE ][:...]

Set a KEY -VALUE pair, where VALUE is optional. This option is
cumulative. Separate multiple pairs with the usual numeric delimiters.
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 29

Format Interpretation
%% Produces a literal ‘%’-sign.
%i Expands to the index of the mask file starting at zero. ‘%i’ allows
for setting a pad character or a width specification:

% PAD WIDTH i

PAD is either ‘0’ or any punctuation character; the default pad

character is ‘0’. WIDTH is an integer specifying the minimum
width of the number. The default is the smallest width given
the number of input images, this is 1 for 2–9 images, 2 for
10–99 images, 3 for 100–999 images, and so on.
Examples: ‘%i’, ‘%02i’, or ‘% 4i’.
%n Expands to the number of the mask file starting at one. Other-
wise it behaves identically to ‘%i’, including pad character and
width specification.
%p This is the full name (path, filename, and extension) of the input
file associated with the mask.
Example: If the input file is called /home/luser/snap/img.jpg,
‘%p’ expands to /home/luser/snap/img.jpg, or shorter: ‘%p’ 7→
/home/luser/snap/img.jpg.
%P This is the full name of the output file.
%d Is replaced with the directory part of the associated input file.
Example (cont.): ‘%d’ 7→ /home/luser/snap.
%D Is replaced with the directory part of the output file.
%b Is replaced with the non-directory part (often called “basename”)
of the associated input file.
Example (cont.): ‘%b’ 7→ img.jpg.
%B Is replaced with the non-directory part of the output file.
%f Is replaced with the filename without path and extension of the
associated input file.
Example (cont.): ‘%f’ 7→ img.
%F Is replaced with the filename without path and extension of the
output file.
%e Is replaced with the extension (including the leading dot) of the
associated input file.
Example (cont.): ‘%e’ 7→ .jpg.
%E Is replaced with the extension of the output file.

Table 4.4: Special format characters to control the generation of mask filenames.
Uppercase letters refer to the output filename and lowercase ones to the input
files.
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 30

This option has the negated form ‘--no-parameter’, which takes one or
more KEY s and removes them from the list of defined parameters. The
special key ‘*’ deletes all parameters at once.
Parameters allow the developers to change the internal workings of Enblend
without the need to recompile or relink.

Daniel Jackson: I just hope we won’t regret giving them those gate
addresses.
Jack O’Neill: I don’t think we will, first one being a black hole and all.
They get progressively darker after that.

-a
--pre-assemble
Pre-assemble non-overlapping images before each blending iteration.
This overrides the default behavior which is to blend the images sequentially
in the order given on the command line. Enblend will use fewer blending
iterations, but it will do more work in each iteration.
This option has the negated form ‘--no-pre-assemble’, which restores
the default.
-x Checkpoint partial results to the output file after each blending step.

4.2.5 Expert Mask Generation Options

These options allow for a detailed control of the seam-line optimizers which
govern the mask generation.

--anneal=TAU [:DELTA-E-MAX [:DELTA-E-MIN [:K-MAX ]]]

Set the parameters of the Simulated Annealing optimizer. See Table 4.3
on page 27.

TAU TAU is the temperature reduction factor in the Simulated Annealing;

it also can be thought of as “cooling factor”. The closer TAU is to
one, the more accurate the annealing run will be, and the longer it
will take.
Append a percent sign (‘%’) to specify TAU as a percentage.
Valid range: h0i < TAU < h1i.
The default is h0.75i; values around 0.95 are reasonable. Usually,
slower cooling results in more converged points.
DELTA-E-MAX, DELTA-E-MIN
DELTA-E-MAX and DELTA-E-MIN are the maximum and minimum
cost change possible by any single annealing move.
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 31

Valid range: h0i < DELTA-E-MIN < DELTA-E-MAX.

In particular they determine the initial and final annealing tempera-
tures according to:

DELTA-E-MAX
Tinitial =
log(K-MAX/(K-MAX − 2))
DELTA-E-MIN
Tfinal =
log(K-MAX2 − K-MAX − 1)

The defaults are: DELTA-E-MAX: h7000.0i and DELTA-E-MIN :

h5.0i.
K-MAX
K-MAX is the maximum number of “moves” the optimizer will make
for each line segment. Higher values more accurately sample the state
space, at the expense of a higher computation cost.
Valid range: K-MAX ≥ h3i.
The default is h32i. Values around 100 seem reasonable.

--dijkstra=RADIUS
Set the search RADIUS of the Dijkstra Shortest Path algorithm used in
Dijkstra Optimization (see Table 4.3 on page 27).
A small value prefers straight line segments and thus shorter seam lines.
Larger values instruct the optimizer to let the seam line take more detours
when searching for the best seam line.
Valid range: RADIUS ≥ h1i.
Default: h25i pixels.
--image-difference=ALGORITHM [:LUMINANCE-WEIGHT [:
CHROMINANCE-WEIGHT ]]

Enblend calculates the difference of a pair of overlapping color images

when it generates the primary seam with a Graph-Cut and also before it
optimizes the seams. It employs a user-selectable ALGORITHM that is
controlled by the

− weights for luminance differences, LUMINANCE-WEIGHT, wluma

and
− color differences, CHROMINANCE-WEIGHT, wchroma .

For black-and-white images the difference is simple the absolute difference

of each pair of pixels.
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 32

maximum-hue-luminance
maximum-hue-lum
max-hue-luminance
max-hue-lum
max
Calculate the difference d as the maximum of the differences of the
luminances l and hues h of each pair of pixels P1 and P2 :

d = max (wluma × |l(P1 ) − l(P2 )|, wchroma × |h(P1 ) − h(P2 )|) .

This algorithm was the default for Enblend up to version 4.0.

delta-e
de
Calculate the difference d as the Euclidean distance of the pixels in
L*a*b* space:

h
2
d = wluma × (L(P1 ) − L(P2 )) +
2
wchroma × (a(P1 ) − a(P2 )) +
i1/2
2
wchroma × (b(P1 ) − b(P2 ))

This is the default in Enblend version 4.1 and later.

Note that the “delta-E” mentioned here has nothing to do with
DELTA-E-MAX and DELTA-E-MIN of option --anneal, page 30.

Both LUMINANCE-WEIGHT and CHROMINANCE-WEIGHT are non-

negative. Enblend automatically normalizes the sum of LUMINANCE-
WEIGHT and CHROMINANCE-WEIGHT to one. Thus,

--image-difference=delta-e:2:1

and

--image-difference=delta-e:0.6667:0.3333

define the same weighting function.

The default LUMINANCE-WEIGHT is h1.0i and the default CHROMIN-
ANCE-WEIGHT is h1.0i.
At higher verbosity levels Enblend computes the true size of the overlap
area in pixels and it calculates the average and standard deviation of the
difference per pixel in the normalized luminance interval (0 . . . 1). These
statistical measures are based on ALGORITHM, therefore they should
only be compared for identical ALGORITHM s. The average difference is
a rough measure of quality with lower values meaning better matches.
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 33

--mask-vectorize=DISTANCE
Set the mask vectorization DISTANCE that Enblend uses to partition each
seam. Thus, break down the seam to segments of length DISTANCE each.
If Enblend uses a coarse mask (--coarse-mask, page 25) or Enblend op-
timizes (--optimize, page 26) a mask it vectorizes the initial seam line
before performing further operations. See Table 4.2 for the precise condi-
tions. DISTANCE tells Enblend how long to make each of the line segments
called vectors here.
The unit of DISTANCE is pixels unless it is a percentage as explained
in the next paragraph. In fine masks one mask pixel corresponds to one
pixel in the input image, whereas in coarse masks one pixel represents for
example h8i pixels in the input image.
Append a percentage sign (‘%’) to DISTANCE to specify the segment
length as a fraction of the diagonal of the rectangle including the overlap
region. Relative measures do not depend on coarse or fine masks, they
are recomputed for each mask. Values around 5%–10% are good starting
points.
This option strongly influences the mask generation process! Large DIS-
TANCE values lead to shorter, straighter, less wiggly, less baroque seams
that are on the other hand less optimal, because they run through regions
of larger image mismatch instead of avoiding them. Small DISTANCE
values give the optimizers more possibilities to run the seam around high
mismatch areas.
What should never happen though, are loops or cusps in the seam line.
Counter loops and cusps with higher weights of DISTANCE-WEIGHT (op-
tion --optimizer-weights, page 33), larger vectorization DISTANCEs,
and TAU s (option --anneal, page 30) that are closer to one. Use op-
tion --visualize, page 27 to check the results.
Valid range: DISTANCE ≥ h4i.
Enblend limits DISTANCE so that it never gets below h4i even if it has
been given as a percentage. The user will be warned in such cases.
Defaults: h4i pixels for coarse masks and h20i pixels for fine masks.

--optimizer-weights=DISTANCE-WEIGHT [:MISMATCH-WEIGHT ]
Set the weights of the seam-line optimizer. If omitted, MISMATCH-
WEIGHT defaults to 1.
The seam-line optimizer considers two qualities of the seam line:

• The distance of the seam line from its initial position, which has been
determined by NFT (see option --no-optimize, page 26).
• The total “mismatch” accumulated along it.
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 34

DISTANCE-WEIGHT and MISMATCH-WEIGHT define how to weight

these two criteria. Enblend up to version 3.2 used 1:1. This version of
Enblend uses h8.0i:h1.0i.
A large DISTANCE-WEIGHT pulls the optimized seam line closer to
the initial position. A large MISMATCH-WEIGHT makes the seam line
go on detours to find a path along which the mismatch between the
images is small. If the optimized seam line shows cusps or loops (see
option --visualize, page 27), reduce MISMATCH-WEIGHT or increase
DISTANCE-WEIGHT.
Both weights must be non-negative. They cannot be both zero at the
same time. Otherwise, their absolute values are not important as Enblend
normalizes their sum.
--primary-seam-generator=ALGORITHM
Select the algorithm responsible for generating the general seam route.
This is the ALGORITHM that produces an initial seam line, which serves
as the basis for later, optional optimizations. Nearest Feature Transform
(NFT) is the only algorithm up to and including Enblend version 4.0.
Version 4.1 added a Graph-Cut (GC) algorithm, which is the default for
version 4.2 and later.
Valid ALGORITHM names are:
nearest-feature-transform
nft
Nearest Feature Transform
graph-cut
gc
Graph-Cut

See Chapter 5 on page 47 for details on Enblend’s primary seam generators.

4.2.6 Information Optionsc

-h
--help
Print information on the command-line syntax and all available options,
giving a boiled-down version of this manual.
--show-globbing-algorithms
Show all globbing algorithms.
Depending on the build-time configuration and the operating system the
binary may support different globbing algorithms. See Section 4.4.3 on
page 42.
4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 35

--show-image-formats
Show all recognized image formats, their filename extensions and the
supported per-channel depths.
Depending on the build-time configuration and the operating system, the
binary supports different image formats, typically: BMP, EXR, GIF,
HDR, JPEG, PNG, PNM, SUN, TIFF, and VIFF and recognizes differ-
ent image-filename extensions, again typically: bmp, exr, gif, hdr, jpeg, jpg,
pbm, pgm, png, pnm, ppm, ras, tif, tiff, and xv.
The maximum number of different per-channel depths any enblend provides
is seven:
− 8 bits unsigned integral, ‘uint8’
− 16 bits unsigned or signed integral, ‘uint16’ or ‘int16’
− 32 bits unsigned or signed integral, ‘uint32’ or ‘int32’
− 32 bits floating-point, ‘float’
− 64 bits floating-point, ‘double’

--show-signature
Show the user name of the person who compiled the binary, when the
binary was compiled, and on which machine this was done.
This information can be helpful to ensure the binary was created by a
trustworthy builder.
--show-software-components
Show the name and version of the compiler that built Enblend followed by
the versions of all important libraries against which Enblend was compiled
and linked.
Technically, the version information is taken from header files, thus it is
independent of the dynamic-library environment the binary runs within.
The library versions printed here can help to reveal version mismatches
with respect to the actual dynamic libraries available to the binary.
-V
--version
Output information on the binary’s version.
Team this option with --verbose, page 20 to show configuration details,
like the extra features that may have been compiled in. For details consult
Section 3.3.1 on page 10.

4.2.7 Program Flow And Option Settings

Figure 4.1 depicts Enblend’s internal work flow and shows what option influences
which part. Enblend works incrementally. Thus, no matter whether starting with
the first image or the result of blending any previous images, it loads the next
image. After blending it the result again is a single image, which serves as base
for the next input image, this is the next iteration.
 4.2. COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS 36

Load next image Image includes its mask

--load-masks

[default]

--fine-mask

[default]
--coarse-mask

Read matching,
Scale down mask
external mask

--primary-seam-generator=
nearest-feature-transform

[default]
--primary-seam-generator=
graph-cut

Nearest-Feature Transform Graph Cut

Initial mask
(NFT) (GC)

--no-optimize

[default]
--optimize

Optimizer Chain...

--save-masks
[default]

Write generated,
Final mask
possibly optimized mask

--output

Blend using multi-resolution

spline algorithm;
--levels

Figure 4.1: Enblend’s internal work flow for the “next” image. The defaults are indicated like ‘[default]’.
The Optimizer Chain is complicated enough to warrant its own chart in Figure 4.2.
4.3. OPTION DELIMITERSC 37

Figure 4.1 somewhat simplifies the program flow.

• The Graph Cut algorithm needs an initial “guess” of the seam line.
It gets it by running a Nearest-Feature Transform.
• If the overlap between the previous image and the next image
is too small, the “Scale down mask” step is skipped and Enblend
works with the mask in its original size (“fine mask”) no matter
what the command-line options specify.

4.3 Option Delimitersc

Enblend and Enfuse allow the arguments supplied to the programs’ options
to be separated by different separators. The online documentation and this
manual, however, exclusively use the colon ‘:’ in every syntax definition and in
all examples.

4.3.1 Numeric Arguments

Valid delimiters are the semicolon ‘;’, the colon ‘:’, and the slash ‘/’. All
delimiters may be mixed within any option that takes numeric arguments.
Examples using some Enfuse options:

--contrast-edge-scale=0.667:6.67:3.5
Separate all arguments with colons.
--contrast-edge-scale=0.667;6.67;3.5
Use semi-colons.
--contrast-edge-scale=0.667;6.67/3.5
Mix semicolon and slash in weird ways.
--entropy-cutoff=3%/99%
All delimiters also work in conjunction with percentages.
--gray-projector=channel-mixer:3/6/1
Separate arguments with a colon and two slashes.
--gray-projector=channel-mixer/30;60:10
Go wild and Enfuse will understand.

4.3.2 Filename Arguments

Here, the accepted delimiters are comma ‘,’, semicolon ‘;’, and colon ‘:’. Again,
all delimiters may be mixed within any option that has filename arguments.
Examples:

--save-masks=soft-mask-%03i.tif:hard-mask-03%i.tif
Separate all arguments with colons.
4.3. OPTION DELIMITERSC 38

Vectorize seam-line of mask; Compute difference image;

--mask-vectorize --image-difference

Path-length/difference minimizer;
Simulated-Annealing
--optimizer-weights
minimizer
--anneal

Dijkstra minimizer; Dijkstra’s "shortest-path"

--dijkstra algorithm

Convert optimized
seam-line to mask

Figure 4.2: A closer look the Optimizer Chain of Figure 4.1.

4.4. RESPONSE FILESC 39

--save-masks=%d/soft-%n.tif,%d/hard-%n.tif
Use a comma.

4.4 Response Filesc

A response file contains names of images or other response filenames. Introduce
response file names at the command line or in a response file with an h@i character.
Enblend and Enfuse process the list INPUT strictly from left to right, ex-
panding response files in depth-first order. Multi-layer files are processed from
first layer to the last. The following examples only show Enblend, but Enfuse
works exactly the same.

Solely image filenames.

Example:

enblend image-1.tif image-2.tif image-3.tif

The ultimate order in which the images are processed is: image-1.tif,
image-2.tif, image-3.tif.
Single response file.
Example:

enblend @list

where file list contains

img1.exr
img2.exr
img3.exr
img4.exr

Ultimate order: img1.exr, img2.exr, img3.exr, img4.exr.

Mixed literal names and response files.
Example:

enblend @master.list image-09.png image-10.png

where file master.list comprises of

image-01.png
@first.list
image-04.png
@second.list
image-08.png
4.4. RESPONSE FILESC 40

response-file ::= line*

line ::= (comment | file-spec) [‘\r’] ‘\n’
comment ::= space* ‘#’ text
file-spec ::= space* ‘@’ filename space*
space ::= ‘ ’ | ‘\t’
where text is an arbitrary string and filename is any filename.

Table 4.5: EBNF definition of the grammar of response files.

first.list is

image-02.png
image-03.png

and second.list contains

image-05.png
image-06.png
image-07.png

Ultimate order: image-01.png, image-02.png, image-03.png, image-04.png,

image-05.png, image-06.png, image-07.png, image-08.png, image-09.png,
image-10.png,

4.4.1 Response File Format

Response files contain one filename per line. Blank lines or lines beginning
with a h#i sign are ignored; the latter can serve as comments. Filenames that
begin with a h@i character denote other response files. Table 4.5 states a formal
grammar of response files in EBNF).
In a response file relative filenames are used relative the response file itself,
not relative to the current-working directory of the application.
The above grammar might surprise the user in the some ways.

White-space trimmed at both line ends

For convenience, white-space at the beginning and at the end of each
line is ignored. However, this implies that response files cannot represent
filenames that start or end with white-space, as there is no quoting syntax.
Filenames with embedded white-space cause no problems, though.
Only whole-line comments
Comments in response files always occupy a complete line. There are no
“line-ending comments”. Thus, in
) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebnf
4.4. RESPONSE FILESC 41

# 4\pi panorama!

# These pictures were taken with the panorama head.

@ round-shots.list

# Freehand sky shot.

zenith.tif

# "Legs, will you go away?" images.

nadir-2.tif
nadir-5.tif
nadir.tif

Example 4.1: Example of a complete response file.

#exposure series
img-0.33ev.tif #"middle" EV
img-1.33ev.tif
img+0.67ev.tif

only the first line contains a comment, whereas the second line includes
none. Rather, it refers to a file called

img-0.33ev.tif #"middle" EV

Image filenames cannot start with h@i

A h@i sign invariably introduces a response file, even if the filename’s
extension hints towards an image.

If Enblend or Enfuse do not recognize a response file, they will skip the file
and issue a warning. To force a file being recognized as a response file add one
of the following syntactic comments to the first line of the file.

response-file: true
enblend-response-file: true
enfuse-response-file: true

Finally, Example 4.1 shows a complete response file.

4.4.2 Syntactic Comments

Comments that follow the format described in Table 4.6 are treated as instructions
how to interpret the rest of the response file. A syntactic comment is effective
4.4. RESPONSE FILESC 42

syntactic-comment ::= space* ‘#’ space* key space* ‘:’ space* value
key ::= (‘A’. . . ‘Z’ | ‘a’. . . ‘z’ | ‘-’)+
where value is an arbitrary string.

Table 4.6: EBNF definition of the grammar of syntactic comments in response

files.

# Horizontal panorama
# 15 images

# filename-globbing: wildcard

image 000[0-9].tif
image 001[0-4].tif

Example 4.2: Control filename-globbing in a response file with a syntactic

comment.

immediately and its effect persists to the end of the response file, unless another
syntactic comment undoes it.
Unknown syntactic comments are silently ignored.
A special index for syntactic comments, page 79 lists them in alphabetic
order.

4.4.3 Globbing Algorithms

The three equivalent syntactic keys
− glob,
− globbing, or
− filename-globbing
control the algorithm that Enblend or Enfuse use to glob filenames in response
files.
All versions of Enblend and Enfuse support at least two algorithms: literal,
which is the default, and wildcard. See Table 4.7 for a list of all possible
globbing algorithms. To find out about the algorithms in your version of Enblend
or Enfuse use option --show-globbing-algorithms.
Example 4.2 gives an example of how to control filename-globbing in a
response file.

4.4.4 Default Layer Selection

The key layer-selector provides the same functionality as does the command-
line option --layer-selector, but on a per response-file basis. See Section 4.2.1.
4.4. RESPONSE FILESC 43

literal
Do not glob. Interpret all filenames in response files as literals. This is the
default.
Please remember that white-space at both ends of a line in a response file
always gets discarded.
wildcard
Glob using the wildcard characters ‘?’, ‘*’, ‘[’, and ‘]’.
The Win32 implementation only globs the filename part of a path, whereas
all other implementations perform wildcard expansion in all path compo-
nents. Also see glob(7)a).
none
Alias for literal.
shell
The shell globbing algorithm works as literal does. In addition, it
interprets the wildcard characters ‘{’, ‘@’, and ‘~’. This makes the expansion
process behave more like common UN*X shells.

sh
Alias for shell.
a) http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/glob.7.html

Table 4.7: Globbing algorithms for the use in response files.

4.5. LAYER SELECTIONC 44

layer-specification ::= ‘[’ selection-tuple ‘]’

selection-tuple ::= selection [ ‘:’ selection ]
selection ::= { singleton | range }
range ::= [ ‘reverse’ ] [ range-bound ] ‘..’ [ range-bound ]
range-bound ::= singleton | ‘_’
singleton ::= index | ‘-’ index
where index is an integral layer index starting at one.

Table 4.8: EBNF definition of the grammar of layer specifications. In addition

to the selection separator ‘:’ shown all usual numeric-option delimiters (‘h;:/i’)
apply. The keyword for range reversal, ‘hreversei’, can be abbreviated to any
length and is treated case-insensitively.

This syntactic comment affects the layer selection of all images listed after it
including those in included response files until another layer-selector overrides
it.

4.5 Layer Selectionc

Some image formats, like for example TIFF, allow for storing more than one
image in a single file, where all the contained images can have different sizes,
number of channels, resolutions, compression schemes, etc. The file there acts as
a container for an ordered set of images.
In the TIFF-documentation these are known as “multi-page” files and because
the image data in a TIFF-file is associated with a “directory”, the files sometimes
are also called “multi-directory” files. In this manual, multiple images in a file
are called “layers”.
The main advantage of multi-layer files over a set of single-layer ones is
a cleaner work area with less image-files and thus an easier handling of the
intermediate products which get created when generating a panorama or fused
image, and in particularly with regard to panoramas of fused images.
The difficulty in working with layers is their lack of a possibly mnemonic
naming scheme. They do not have telling names like taoth-vaclarush or valos-cor,
but only numbers.

4.5.1 Layer Selection Syntax

To give the user the same flexibility in specifying and ordering images as with
single-layer images, both Enblend and Enfuse offer a special syntax to select
layers in multi-page files by appending a layer-specification to the image file
name. Table 4.8 defines the grammar of layer-specifications.
Selecting a tuple of layers with a layer-specification overrides the active layer
selection algorithm. See also option --layer-selector, page 28 and Section 4.4
on page 39. Layer selection works at the command-line as well as in Response
Files; see Section 4.4.
4.5. LAYER SELECTIONC 45

The simplest layer-specification are the layer-indexes. The first layer gets
index 1, the second layer 2, and so on. Zero never is a valid index! For convenience
indexing backwards) is also possible. This means by prefixing an index with a
minus-sign (‘-’) counting will start with the last layer of the associated multi-page
image, such that the last layer always has index -1, the next to last index -2 and
so on. Out-of-range indexes are silently ignored whether forward or backward.
The single layer of a single-layer file always can be accessed either with
index ‘1’ or ‘-1’.
Select a contiguous range of indexes with the range operator ‘h..i’, where
the range-bounds are forward or backward indices. Leaving out a bound or
substituting the open-range indicator ‘h_i’ means a maximal range into the
respective direction.
Layer specifications ignore white space, but usual shells do not. This means
that at the command-line

$ enblend --output=out.tif --verbose multi-layer.tif[2:]

works, whereas spaced-out out phrase ‘multi-layer.tif [2 : ]’ must be

quoted

$ enblend --output=out.tif --verbose ’multi-layer.tif[2 : ]’

Quoting will also be required if Enblend’s delimiters have special meanings

to the shell.
Examples for an image with 8 layers.

[] The empty selection selects nothing and in that way works like the layer-
selector ‘no-layer’.

[2 : 4 : 5] Select only layers 2, 4, and 5 in this order.

[2 : -4 : -3] Like before, but with some backwards-counting indices.
[1 .. 4] Layers 1 to 4, this is 1, 2, 3, and 4 in this order.
[_ .. 4] Same as above in open-range notation.

[.. 4] Same as above in abbreviated, open-range notation.

[-2 .. _] The last two layers, which are 7 and 8 in our running example.
[_ .. _] All layers in their natural order.

[..] All layers in their natural order selected with the abbreviated notation.
[reverse _ .. _] All layers in reverse order. This yields 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2,
and 1.
) Samantha Carter: “There has to be a way to reverse the process. The answer has to

be here.”
4.5. LAYER SELECTIONC 46

[rev ..] All layers in reversed order as before selected with the abbreviated
notation.
[r -3 ..] The last three layers in reverse order, this is 8, 7 and 6 in our running
example.
Shell expansion will not work anymore with a file name terminated
by a layer specification expression (or anything else), because to the
shell it is not a file name anymore. Work around with, for example,
$ enblend ‘for x in image-??.tif; do echo $x[2]; done‘
or
$ enblend $(ls -1 image-??.tif | sed -e ’s/$/[2]/’)
The order of the indices determines the order of the layers, this is, the
images. An index can occur multiple times, which causes layer to be
considered again. Consequently, this will lead to an error with Enblend,
but may be desired with Enfuse in soft-mask mode to give the image
more weight by mentioning it more than once.

4.5.2 Tools for Multi-Page Files

Here are some tools that are particularly useful when working with multi-page
files. For more helpful utilities check out Appendix A on page 63.
• Hugin’s stitcher, nona produces multi-page TIFF file, when called with
the ‘-m TIFF multilayer’-option.
• The utility tiffcp of the TIFF-LibTIFF tool suite) merges several TIFF-
images into a single multi-page file.
• The sister program tiffsplit splits a multi-page file into a set of single-page
TIFF-images.
• Another utility of the same origin, tiffinfo, is very helpful when inquiring
the contents of single- or multi-page file TIFF-files.
• All tools of the ImageMagick)-suite, like, for example, convert and display
use a similar syntax) as Enblend to select layers (which in ImageMagick
parlance are called “frames”) in multi-page files. Please note that ImageMagick
tools start indexing at zero, whereas we start at one.
• Enblend and Enfuse by default apply the ‘hall-layersi’ selector (see op-
tion --layer-selector, page 28) to each of the input images.
Please bear in mind that some image-processing tools – none of the above
though – do not handle multi-page files correctly, where the most unfruitful ones
only take care of the first layer and silently ignore any further layers.
) http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/
) https://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php
) https://www.imagemagick.org/script/command-line-processing.php#input
Chapter 5

Seam Generators

This version of Enblend supports two main algorithms to generate seam lines.
Use option --primary-seam-generator=ALGORITHM to select one of the
generators.

Nearest Feature Transform (NFT)

ALGORITHM =nearest-feature-transform
The Nearest Feature Transform), also known as Distance Transform)
(DT), is a fast and efficient technique to produce a seam line route given
the geometries of multiple overlapping images.
NFT as implemented in this version of Enblend only takes into account
the shape of the overlap area. It completely ignore the images’ contents.
Graph-Cut (GC)
ALGORITHM =graph-cut
Graph-Cut) is a region-oriented way of segmenting images.
The generator is based on the idea of finding a minimum cost “cut” of a
graph created from a given image pair. A “cut” is where the seam line
appears. GC determines the cost from the overlapping images’ contents.

The most significant difference between the two algorithms is the output
mask gradation. NFT produces a coarse approximation of the seam, running
as far away from the overlap-region borders as possible. The resulting mask
could then be blended as-is, however, Enblend by default runs image-content
dependent optimizers to increase the mask gradation and for example omits
the regions where the images differ. The result is a finer seam line, which only
loosely follows the shape of NFT’s primary seam.
) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance_transform
) Muhammad H. Alsuwaiyel and Marina Gavrilova, “On the Distance Transform of
Binary Images”, Proceedings of the International Conference on Imaging Science, Systems,
and Technology, June 2000, Vols. I and II, pages 83–86.
) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_cuts_in_computer_vision

47
 48

Graph-Cut, on the other hand, is capable of producing the final mask in

one pass without the need of further optimizers. It looks for a seam line that
is globally optimal, taking into account feature frequency, as well as image
dissimilarity. This means, the seam is less likely to cross lines like for example
fences, lampposts, or road markings, where they would be visible.
The optimizers which run after NFT can also be run after GC. Nevertheless,
GC works best just with a fine mask (option --fine-mask); optimizers are
then automatically turned off to take full advantage of the detailed seam GC
produces.
GC requires more memory and computation time to complete than NFT.
Thus, it is best to prefer NFT where the images used are large and execution
time is crucial. If quality is the priority, using GC and fine mask usually produces
visually more pleasing results.
GC is currently limited to seams that begin and end on the images’ borders.
This means that the algorithm cannot run in cases where, for example, one
image is contained in another, resulting in a loop-like seam. In such cases,
though, Enblend automatically falls back to a NFT-generated seam, making its
application transparent to the user.
Chapter 6

Visualization Image

The visualization image shows the symmetric difference of the pixels in the
rectangular region where two images overlap. The larger the difference the
lighter shade of gray it appears in the visualization image. Enblend paints the
non-overlapping parts of the image pair – these are the regions where no blending
occurs – in hdark redi. Table 6.1 shows the meanings of all the colors that are
used in seam-line visualization images.
Figure 6.1 shows an example of a seam-line visualization. It was produced
with an Enblend run at all defaults plus passing options --fine-mask and --vi=
sualize.
The large hdark redi border is “off-limits” for Enblend, for the images do not
overlap there. The dark wedge inside the hdark redi frame is where the images
share a common region.
The initial seam-line (hdark yellowi) is almost straight with the exception of a
single bend on the left side of the image and the final seam-line (hbright yellowi)
meanders around it.

49
 50

hdark redi areas

Non-overlapping parts of image pair.

various shades of gray

Difference of the pixel values in the overlap region.
hdark bluei dot
Location of an optimizer sample.

hmedium greeni dot

First sample of a line segment.
hlight greeni dot
Any other but first sample of a line segment.

hbright cyani dot

State space sample inside the Dijkstra radius.
hbright magentai dot
Non-converged point.
hdark yellowi line
Initial seam line as generated by the primary seam generator.
hbright yellowi line
Final seam line.
hbright whitei hcrossi
Non-movable, or “frozen” endpoint of a seam-line segment that no optimizer
is allowed to move around.
hlight orangei hdiamondi
Movable endpoint of a seam-line segment, which seam-line optimizers can
move.

Table 6.1: Colors and symbols used in seam-line visualization images.

 51

Figure 6.1: Seam-line visualization of a simple overlap. The 853×238 pixel image
has been rescaled to fit the width of the current page.
Chapter 7

Color Spaces And Color

Profilesc

This chapter explains the connection of pixel data types, ICC)-color profiles,
blend color spaces in Enblend or Enfuse.
Here, we collectively speak of blending and do not distinguish fusing, for the
basic operations are the same. Furthermore, we assume the multi-resolution
P spline
algorithm has calculated a set of weights wi for i = 1, 2, . . . and wi = 1 for each
pixel that must be blended from the participating input pixels Pi , i = 1, 2, . . ..
In the simplest, non-trivial case we have to blend a pair of grayscale input
pixels. Given their luminances L1 , L2 and their weighting factor 0 ≤ w ≤ 1,
what luminance L is their “weighted average”? This is the heart of Enblend’s
and Enfuse’s pyramidal blending operations! We are in particular interested in
a weighted average that appears visually correct, this is, our eyes and brains
consider L convincing or at the very least credible.
Note that Enblend and Enfuse face different obstacles in their respective
domains of use.
Enblend
The overlapping areas usually are well matched both geometrically
and photometrically. The differences of the pixels that must be
blended are small.
Enfuse (using a Soft Mask))
The input images greatly differ in exposure, saturation, or contrast.
This is exactly why we want to fuse them. Thus, the luminance,
saturation, and hue differences to be handled by Enfuse are gener-
ally quite high.
The details of blending pixels and in particular color pixels is quite intricate,
which is why we start this chapter with a mathematical introduction.
) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile
) Fusing with a Hard Mask is different, because exactly one weight factor is unity and all
the others are zero. There is nothing to blend – just to copy.

52
7.1. MATHEMATICAL PRELIMINARIES 53

7.1 Mathematical Preliminaries

Let us first address grayscale images because they only require us to talk about
luminances. For a linear representation of luminances, we just blend for a given
t with
L = tL1 + (1 − t)L2 with 0 ≤ t ≤ 1, (7.1)
where the luminances Li , i = 1, 2, range from zero to their data-type dependent
maximum value Lmax , thereby defining a “luminance interval”. We can always
map this interval to (0, 1) by dividing the luminances by the maximum, which is
why we call the latter “normalized luminance interval”:

(0, Lmax ) → (0, 1) (7.2)

Obviously,
0 ≤ L̄ ≤ 1 (7.3)
holds for all values L̄ := L/Lmax in the normalized luminance interval.
Sometimes images are gamma-encoded with exponent γ and the blended
luminance becomes  γ
1/γ 1/γ
L0 = tL1 + (1 − t)L2 , (7.4)

which couples t and L0 in a non-linear way. See also Eric Brasseur’s explana-
tion of the gamma error in picture scaling).

Typical gamma values are γ = 2.2 for sRGB and AdobeRGB, 1.8
for AppleRGB, and ProPhotoRGB, 1.0 for Linear Rec709 RGB and
any others with “linear” in their names. For an extensive overview check
out Bruce Lindbloom’s Information on Working Color Spaces.)

The usual color-input images fed into Enblend are RGB-encoded, which
T
means each pixel comes as a triple of values (r, g, b) that represent the red,
green, and blue parts. We apply the normalization (7.2) to each of the three
primary colors and arrive at an “ RGB-cube” with unit edge length. The vectors
of primary colors span the cube
     
1 0 0
~r =  0  , ~g =  1  and ~b =  0  .
0 0 1

For each point inside – familiarly called pixel – the generalization of (7.3) holds
     
0 r 1
 0  ≤  g  ≤  1 . (7.5)
0 b 1
) http://www.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/gamma.html
) http://www.brucelindbloom.com/index.html?WorkingSpaceInfo.html
7.2. FLOATING-POINT IMAGES 54

Blending the pixels of color images is more complicated than blending plain
luminances. Although we can write down the naı̈ve blending equation, (7.1),
again for RGB-coded pixels
   
r1 r2
P1 :=  g1  and P2 :=  g2 
b1 b2

and trivially arrive at

     
r r1 r2
P :=  g  = t  g1  + (1 − t)  g2  with 0 ≤ t ≤ 1, (7.6)
b b1 b2

but this means

− we implicitly treat the color components ri , gi , bi as separate luminances,

which they are not and moreover
− we neglect the visual aspects, namely luminance, saturation, and hue of
the blended color pixel P .

7.2 Floating-Point Images

Floating-point images (EXR, floating-point TIFF, or VIFF) get a special
treatment. Their values L are first converted by the Log-transform.

1 + log(1 + L) for L ≥ 0 and
Log(L) := (7.7)
1/(1 − L) otherwise,
which is undone by the inverse transform after blending. Here, log(x) with
a lower-case initial denotes the natural logarithmic function (i.e. to base e).
Figure 7.1 shows the forward transform in the range from −20 to 100. Around
L = 0 function Log(L) has the series expansion

L2
Log(L) = 1 + L + + O(L3 ), for 0 ≤ L < 1.
2
This transform serves two purposes:

• During blending, even completely non-negative images can result in negative

pixels. A Log-transform followed by the inverse guarantees all-positive
output.
• For HDR data, the Log-transform puts the samples closer to a perceptual
space making the blending a little more pleasing.

In the current version of Enblend and Enfuse it is strongly recommended to

use blending inside the RGB-cube whenever the input data is in floating-point
format; this is the default, too.
7.2. FLOATING-POINT IMAGES 55

4
Log(L)

0
−20 0 20 40 60 80 100
L

Figure 7.1: Forward Log-transform shown for the range of −20 ≤ L ≤ 100. The
domain of Log(L) is the whole real axis.
7.3. COLOR PROFILES 56

7.3 Color Profiles

ICC-color profiles completely absorb gamma encodings (7.4) and ICC profile
aware software like Enblend and Enfuse decode and encode images automatically
respecting the gamma curves. Moreover color profiles define what is the darkest
representable black, so called black-point
T T
L=0 and (r, g, b) = (0, 0, 0)

and analogously what is the purest and brightest white, the white-point
T T
L=1 and (r, g, b) = (1, 1, 1) .

By default, Enblend and Enfuse expect that either

1. no input image has a color profile or

2. all images come with the same ICC profile.

Even black-and-white images benefit from having attached appropriate pro-

files!
In Case 1. the applications blend grayscale images in the normalized luminance
interval and color images inside the sRGB-cube. To override the default sRGB-
profile select the desired profile with option --fallback-profile, page 28.
In Case 2. the images first are by default transformed to CIELUV) color
space – respecting the input color profile – then they are blended or fused,
and finally the data get transformed back to RGB color space defined by the
profile of the input images. Consequently, the input profile is assigned to the
output image. Enforce a different blending color space than CIELUV with
option --blend-colorspace, page 20.
Mixing different ICC profiles or alternating between images with profiles and
without them generates warnings as it generally leads to unpredictable results.
Floating-Point images are an exception to the above rules. They are always
blended in the RGB cube by default. The next section describes their treatment
in detail.

7.4 Blending Color Spaces

Enblend and Enfuse offer to work inside the RGB-cube (7.5) or in several per-
ceptually uniform color spaces. To override the default select a particular
blending color space with option --blend-colorspace, page 20. Here are the
four available color spaces.

Identity Space / RGB-Color Cube

Calculate the blended pixel inside the luminance interval (7.1) for grayscale
images and inside the RGB-color cube as given in (7.6).
) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIECAM02
7.4. BLENDING COLOR SPACES 57

This is the fastest color space to do computations within, i.e. it consumes

by far the least computing power, because no transform to or from any of
the perceptually uniform color spaces is done.
L*a*b*)
Represent each pixel as lightness L∗ , red-green difference a∗ , and yellow-
blue difference b∗ . The L*a*b* color space encompasses all perceivable
colors. It is completely independent of any device characteristics, approxi-
mates human vision, and is perceptually uniform.
Enblend uses perceptual rendering intent and either the input profile’s
white-point or, if the ICC-profile lacks the cmsSigMediaWhitePointTag,
fall back to the D50 white-point (see, e.g. Standard illuminant)).
The conversions from and to L*a*b* are moderately fast to compute;
L*a*b* mode is two to three times slower than working within the RGB-
color cube.
CIEL*u*v*)
Represent each pixel as lightness L∗ and two color differences u∗ and v ∗ .
Formulas of each are too complicated to show them here.
The L*u*v* tries to be perceptually uniform in lightness as well as in
color.
The applications use the same rendering intent and white-point as with
L*a*b*.
The conversions from and to L*u*v* are almost as fast to compute as
L*a*b*.
CIECAM02)
Represent each pixel as lightness J, chroma C (“colorfulness”), and hue
angle h.

Internally, the polar coordinates (C, h) are translated to Carte-

sian coordinates for the pyramids.

The transformations to CIECAM02 color space and back use perceptual

rendering intent, the D50 white point (see, e.g. Standard illuminant)),
500 lumen surrounding light (“average” in CIECAM02 parlance), and
assume complete adaption.
Both CIELUV and CIELAB only model the color information generated
for small and isolated color samples. They cannot model the contextual
effects of color perception. However, CIECAM02 can represent luminance
adaptation, chromatic contrast and chromatic assimilation that arise in
) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_color_space
) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_illuminant
) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIELUV_color_space
) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIECAM02
) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_illuminant
7.5. PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS 58

real world viewing conditions with heterogeneous, strongly contrasted, or

three dimensional color sources.
Computationally, CIECAM02 is the most expensive blend color space.
If an appreciable number of pixels need additional refinement steps the
speed of the transformation further drops. Expect CIECAM02 mode to
be 8–800 times slower than blending within the RGB-color cube.

Surprisingly often blending “inside the RGB-cube” works, although perceptu-

ally uniform color spaces, which represent luminance, saturation, and hue are
preferable for blending and fusing operations.

7.5 Practical Considerations

• For small projects stick with the default blend colorspaces.

• For large projects switch on blending in the RGB color cube to speed up
the assembly of the images. When satisfied with all other parameters use
one of the computationally more expensive, but perceptually uniform color
spaces.

• Banding is best fought by input images with a high bit depth (≥ 16 bits
per channel). A cheap and mostly vain trick is to force a large output
bit depth with option --depth, page 22. No blend color space can avoid
banding if parts of the input images are almost “monochrome”.

• Enblend only. No color space can fix a seam-line gone haywire! First re-
run Enblend with ‘--visualize’, page 27 to inspect the seam-lines, then
try one or more of the following

– Reorder the input images.

– Force blending with the full-resolution masks, using option --fine-
mask, page 25.
– Generate the initial seam with the simpler and more robust nearest-
feature transform (NFT) by employing option --primary-seam-ge=
nerator=nearest-feature-transform, page 34. See also Chapter 5
on page 47.
– Disable the seam-line optimizer with ‘--no-optimize’, page 26.
Chapter 8

Understanding Masksc

A binary mask indicates for every pixel of an image if this pixel must be
considered in further processing, or ignored. For a weight mask, the value of
the mask determines how much the pixel contributes, zero again meaning “no
contribution”.
Masks arise in two places: as part of the input files and as separate files,
showing the actual pixel weights prior to image blending or fusion. We shall
explore both occurrences in the next sections.

8.1 Masks In Input Files

Each of the input files for Enblend and Enfuse can contain its own mask. Both
applications interpret them as binary masks no matter how many bits per image
pixel they contain.
Use ImageMagick’s identify (see Example 8.1) or, for TIFF files only, tiff info
(see Example 8.2) to inquire quickly whether a file contains a mask. Appendix A
on page 63 shows where to find these programs on the web.
The “Matte” part of the image class and the “Extra Samples” line tell us that
the file features a mask. Also, many interactive image manipulation programs
show the mask as a separate channel, sometimes called “alpha”. There, the
white (high mask value) parts of the mask enable pixels and black (low mask
value) parts suppress them.
The multitude of terms all describing the concept of a mask is confusing.

Mask
A mask defines a selection of pixels. A value of zero represents an unselected
pixel. The maximum value (“white”) represents a selected pixel and the
values between zero and the maximum are partially selected pixels. See
Gimp-Savy.)
) http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/index.html?node42.html

59
8.2. WEIGHT MASK FILES 60

$ identify -version
Version: ImageMagick 6.7.7-10 2014-03-08 Q16
http://www.imagemagick.org
Copyright: Copyright (C) 1999-2012 ImageMagick Studio LLC
Features: OpenMP

$ identify -format "%f %m %wx%h %r %q-bit" image-0000.tif

image-0000.tif TIFF 917x1187 DirectClass sRGB Matte 16-bit
^^^^^
mask

Example 8.1: Using identify to find out about the mask in image-0000.tif. ‘Matte’
indicates the existence of a mask.

Alpha Channel
The alpha channel stores the transparency value for each pixel, typically in
the range from zero to one. A value of zero means the pixel is completely
transparent, thus does not contribute to the image. A value of one on the
other hand means the pixel is completely opaque.
Matte
The notion “matte” as used by ImageMagick refers to an inverted alpha
channel, more precisely: 1 − alpha. See ImageMagick) for further explana-
tions.

Enblend and Enfuse only consider pixels that have an associated mask value
other than zero. If an input image does not have an alpha channel, Enblend
warns and assumes a mask of all non-zero values, that is, it will use every pixel
of the input image for fusion.
Stitchers like nona add a mask to their output images.
Sometimes it is helpful to manually modify a mask before fusion. For example
to suppress unwanted objects (insects and cars come into mind) that moved
across the scene during the exposures. If the masks of all input images are black
at a certain position, the output image will have a hole in that position.

8.2 Weight Mask Files

FIX Show some weight masks and explain them. ME

) https://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/transform/
8.2. WEIGHT MASK FILES 61

$ tiffinfo
LIBTIFF, Version 4.0.2
Copyright (c) 1988-1996 Sam Leffler
Copyright (c) 1991-1996 Silicon Graphics, Inc.
...

$ tiffinfo image-0000.tif
TIFF Directory at off set 0x3a8182 (3834242)
Subfile Type: (0 = 0x0)
Image Width: 917 Image Length: 1187
Resolution: 150, 150 pixels/inch
Position: 0, 0
Bits/Sample: 8
Sample Format: unsigned integer
Compression Scheme: PackBits
Photometric Interpretation: RGB color
Extra Samples: 1<unassoc-alpha> mask
Orientation: row 0 top, col 0 lhs
Samples/Pixel: 4 R, G, B, and mask
Rows/Strip: 285
Planar Configuration: single image plane
ImageFullWidth: 3000
ImageFullLength: 1187

Example 8.2: Using tiff info to find out about the mask in image-0000.tif. Here the
line ‘Extra Samples’ indicates one extra sample per pixel, which is interpreted
as an unassociated alpha-channel; Enblend and Enfuse interpret this as mask.
The second hint tiff info gives is in ‘Samples/Pixel’, where – for a RGB-image –
the 4 = 3 + 1 tells about the extra channel.
8.2. WEIGHT MASK FILES 62

You have your answer, Daniel Jackson. I suggest you act on it. –
Morgan le Fay (Ganos Lal)
Appendix A

Helpful Programs And

Librariesc

Several programs and libraries have proven helpful when working with Enblend
or Enfuse.

A.1 Raw Image Conversion

• Darktable) is an open-source photography workflow application and raw-
image developer.
• DCRaw) is a universal raw-converter written by David Coffin.
• RawTherapee) is powerful open-source raw converter for Win∗, MacOS
and Linux.
• UFRaw) is a raw-converter written by Udi Fuchs and based on DCRaw
(see above). It adds a GUI (ufraw), versatile batch processing (ufraw-
batch), and some additional features such as cropping, noise reduction with
wavelets, and automatic lens-error correction.

A.2 Image Alignment and Rendering

• Hugin) is a GUI that aligns and stitches images.
It comes with several command-line tools, like for example nona to stitch
panorama images, align image stack to align overlapping images for HDR
or create focus stacks, and fulla to correct lens errors.
) http://www.darktable.org/
) http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/
) http://www.rawtherapee.com/
) http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/
) http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

63
A.3. IMAGE MANIPULATION 64

• PanoTools) the successor of Helmut Dersch’s original PanoTools)

offers a set of command-line driven applications to create panoramas. Most
notable are PTOptimizer for control point optimization and PTmender, an
image stitcher.

A.3 Image Manipulation

• CinePaint) is a branch of an early Gimp forked off at version 1.0.4. It
sports much less features than the current Gimp, but offers 8 bit, 16 bit
and 32 bit color channels, HDR (for example floating-point TIFF, and
OpenEXR), and a tightly integrated color management system.

• The Gimp) is a general purpose image manipulation program. At the time

of this writing it is still limited to images with only 8 bits per channel.
• G’Mic) is an open and full-featured framework for image processing,
providing several different user interfaces to convert, manipulate, filter,
and visualize generic image datasets.

• Both ImageMagick) and GraphicsMagick) are general-purpose command-

line controlled image-manipulation programs, for example, convert, display,
identify, and montage. GraphicsMagick bundles most ImageMagick invoca-
tions in the single dispatcher call to gm.

A.4 High Dynamic Range

• OpenEXR) offers libraries and some programs to work with the EXR
HDR-format, for example the EXR display utility exrdisplay.
• PFSTools) read, write, modify, and tonemap high-dynamic range (HDR)
images.

A.5 Major Libraries

• LibJPEG) is a library for handling the JPEG (JFIF) image format.
) http://panotools.sourceforge.net/
) http://webuser.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/
) http://www.cinepaint.org/
) http://www.gimp.org/
) http://gmic.sourceforge.net/
) https://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php
) http://www.graphicsmagick.org/
) http://www.openexr.com/
) http://pfstools.sourceforge.net/
) http://www.ijg.org/
A.6. META-DATA HANDLING 65

• LibPNG) is a library that handles the Portable Network Graphics (PNG)

image format.
• LibTIFF) offers a library and utility programs to manipulate the ubiqui-
tous Tagged Image File Format, TIFF.
The nifty tiffinfo command in the LibTIFF distribution quickly inquires
the most important properties of TIFF files.

A.6 Meta-Data Handling

• EXIFTool) reads and writes EXIF meta-data. In particular it copies
meta-data from one image to another.
• LittleCMS) is the color-management library used by Hugin, DCRaw,
UFRaw, Enblend, and Enfuse. It supplies some binaries, too. tificc, an ICC
color profile applier, is of particular interest.

A.7 Camera Firmware Extension

• Magic Lantern) is a software add-on that runs from the SD (Secure
Digital) or CF (Compact Flash) card and adds new features to cameras of
a certain Japanese brand of cameras as for example

– Dual-ISO (more precisely: simultaneous dual sensor speed); this

operation mode may in fact obviate the need for Enfuse.
– Focus stacking
– HDR-bracketing

) http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
) http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/
) http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/ phil/exiftool/
~
) http://www.littlecms.com/
) http://www.magiclantern.fm/index.html
Appendix B

Bug Reportsc

Most of this appendix was taken from the Octave) documentation.

Bug reports play an important role in making Enblend and Enfuse reliable
and enjoyable.
When you encounter a problem, the first thing to do is to see if it is already
known. To this end, visit the package’s LaunchPad) bug database). Search it
for your particular problem. If it is not known, please report it.
In order for a bug report to serve its purpose, you must include the information
that makes it possible to fix the bug.

B.1 Have You Really Found a Bug?

If you are not sure whether you have found a bug, here are some guidelines:

• If Enblend or Enfuse get a fatal signal, for any options or input images,
that is a bug.

• If Enblend or Enfuse produce incorrect results, for any input whatever, that
is a bug.
• If Enblend or Enfuse produce an error message for valid input, that is a
bug.

• If Enblend or Enfuse do not produce an error message for invalid input,

that is a bug.
) http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/
) https://launchpad.net/
) hhttps://bugs.launchpad.net/enblendi

66
B.2. HOW TO REPORT BUGS 67

B.2 How to Report Bugs

The fundamental principle of reporting bugs usefully is this: report all the
facts. If you are not sure whether to state a fact or leave it out, state it. Often
people omit facts because they think they know what causes the problem and
they conclude that some details do not matter. Play it safe and give a specific,
complete example.
Keep in mind that the purpose of a bug report is to enable someone to fix
the bug if it is not known. Always write your bug reports on the assumption
that the bug is not known.
Try to make your bug report self-contained. If we have to ask you for more
information, it is best if you include all the previous information in your response,
as well as the information that was missing.
To enable someone to investigate the bug, you should include all these things:

• The exact version and configuration of Enblend. You can get the data by
running enblend with the options --version and --verbose together. See
also Section 3.3.1 on page 8 on how to find out the exact configuration of
your binary.
• A complete set of input images that will reproduce the bug. Strive for a
minimal set of small images, where images up to 1500×1000 pixels qualify
as small.

• The type of machine you are using, and the operating system name and
its version number.
• A complete list of any modifications you have made to the source. Be
precise about these changes. Show a delta generated with diff for them.

• Details of any other deviations from the standard procedure for installing
Enblend and Enfuse.
• The exact command line you use to call Enblend or Enfuse, which then
triggers the bug.
Examples:

$ ~/local/bin/enblend -v \
--fine-mask \
--optimizer-weights=3:2 \
--mask-vectorize=12.5% \
image-1.png image-2.png

or:

$ /local/bin/enfuse \
--verbose \
B.3. SENDING PATCHES 68

--exposure-weight=0 --saturation-weight=0
--entropy-weight=1 \
--gray-projector=l-star \
--entropy-cutoff=1.667% \
layer-01.ppm layer-02.ppm layer-03.ppm

If you call Enblend or Enfuse from within a GUI like, for example, Hugin)
or ImageFuser) by Harry van der Wolf, copy&paste or write down
the command line that launches Enblend or Enfuse.
• A description of what behavior you observe that you believe is incorrect.
For example, “The application gets a fatal signal,” or, “The output image
contains black holes.”
Of course, if the bug is that the application gets a fatal signal, then one
cannot miss it. But if the bug is incorrect output, we might not notice
unless it is glaringly wrong.

B.3 Sending Patches for Enblend or Enfuse

If you would like to write bug fixes or improvements for Enblend or Enfuse, that
is very helpful. When you send your changes, please follow these guidelines to
avoid causing extra work for us in studying the patches. If you do not follow
these guidelines, your information might still be useful, but using it will take
extra work.

• Send an explanation with your changes of what problem they fix or what
improvement they bring about. For a bug fix, just include a copy of the
bug report, and explain why the change fixes the bug.
• Always include a proper bug report for the problem you think you have
fixed. We need to convince ourselves that the change is right before
installing it. Even if it is right, we might have trouble judging it if we do
not have a way to reproduce the problem.
• Include all the comments that are appropriate to help people reading the
source in the future understand why this change was needed.
• Do not mix together changes made for different reasons. Send them
individually.
If you make two changes for separate reasons, then we might not want to
install them both. We might want to install just one.
• Use the version control system to make your diffs. Prefer the unified diff)
format: hg diff --unified 4.
) http://hugin.sourceforge.net/
) http://imagefuser.sourceforge.net/onlinemanual/
) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff#Unified_format
B.3. SENDING PATCHES 69

• You can increase the probability that your patch gets applied by basing it
on a recent revision of the sources.
Appendix C

Authorsc

Andrew Mihal ([email protected]) has written Enblend and

Enfuse.

Contributors (in alphabetical order)

• Pablo d’Angelo ([email protected]) added the con-
trast criteria.
• Joe Beda: Win32 porting up to version 3.2.
• Kornel Benko, [email protected]: CMake support
for version 4.0.
• Roger Goodman: Proofreading of the manuals.
• Mikolaj Leszczyński, [email protected]: GraphCut
algorithm in Enblend.
• Max Lyons.
• Mark aka ‘mjz’: Win32 porting up to version 3.2.
• Thomas Modes, [email protected]: continuous Win32
porting and permanent CMake support.
• Ryan Sleevi, [email protected]: Win32 porting of
version 4.0.
• Christoph Spiel ([email protected]) added the gray pro-
jectors, the LoG-based edge detection, an O(n)-algorithm for the calcula-
tion of local contrast, entropy weighting, and various other features.
• Brent Townshend, [email protected]: HDR sup-
port.
Thanks to Simon Andriot and Pablo Joubert for suggesting the Mertens-
Kautz-Van Reeth technique and the name “Enfuse”.

70
Appendix D

The FreeGNU
Documentation Licensec

Version 1.2, November 2002

Copyright c 2000, 2001, 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110–1301, USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of
this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

0. PREAMBLE
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other
functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure
everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without
modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this
License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their
work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by
others.
This License is a kind of “copyleft”, which means that derivative works of
the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements
the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for
free software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free
software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program
should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software
does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for
any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published
as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose
purpose is instruction or reference.
1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
This License applies to any manual or other work, in any medium, that

71
 72

contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed

under the terms of this License. Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-
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Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as “you”. You
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A “Modified Version” of the Document means any work containing the
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 74

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It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the
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You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the
conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified
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role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the
Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must
do these things in the Modified Version:

A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from
that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which
should, if there were any, be listed in the History section of the
Document). You may use the same title as a previous version if the
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B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities
responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version,
together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document
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C. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified
Version, as the publisher.
D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.
 75

E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent

to the other copyright notices.
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J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for
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If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices

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 76

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In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled “History” in
the various original documents, forming one section Entitled “History”;
likewise combine any sections Entitled “Acknowledgements”, and any
sections Entitled “Dedications”. You must delete all sections Entitled
“Endorsements.”
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You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents
released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License
in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection,
provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of
each of the documents in all other respects.
You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it
individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License
 77

into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects
regarding verbatim copying of that document.
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and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or
distribution medium, is called an “aggregate” if the copyright resulting
from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation’s
users beyond what the individual works permit. When the Document is
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the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of
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Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections.
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in the Document, and any Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you also
include the original English version of this License and the original versions
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tions”, or “History”, the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title
(section 1) will typically require changing the actual title.
9. TERMINATION
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except
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10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE

The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the
GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions
 78

will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to
address new problems or concerns. See GNU Copyleft).
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the
Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License “or
any later version” applies to it, you have the option of following the terms
and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that
has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If
the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may
choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software
Foundation.

) http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/
Syntactic Comment Index

enblend-response-file, 41
enfuse-response-file, 41
filename-globbing, 42
globbing, 42
glob, 42
layer-selector, 42
response-file, 41

79
Program/Application Index

If a program belongs to a larger package, it has its association mentioned in

parenthesis.

CinePaint, 64 tificc (LittleCMS), 65

Cinepaint, 24 ufraw-batch, 63
Darktable, 63 ufraw, 6, 63
Gimp, 6, 24, 64
GraphicsMagick, 64
Hugin, 1, 6, 46, 63, 68
ImageFuser, 68
ImageMagick, 64
LittleCMS, 65
Magic Lantern, 65
Mercurial, 11
PanoTools, 1, 6, 63
RawTherapee, 63
UFRaw, 63
PFSTools, 64
PTOptimizer (PanoTools), 63
PTmender (PanoTools), 63
align image stack (Hugin), 63
convert (ImageMagick), 46, 64
dcraw, 6, 63
display (ImageMagick), 46, 64
exiftool, 65
exrdisplay (OpenEXR), 64
fulla (Hugin), 63
gm (GraphicsMagick), 64
gmic, 64
identify (ImageMagick), 59, 64
montage (ImageMagick), 64
nona (Hugin), 24, 46, 60, 63
tiffcp (LibTIFF), 46
tiffinfo (LibTIFF), 46
tiffinfo (libtiff), 59, 65
tiffsplit (LibTIFF), 46

80
Option Index

Locations marked like 12 indicate the place of the option’s genuine descrip-
tion.

--anneal, 30 --wrap, 4, 24
--blend-colorspace, 20 -V (long: --version), 35
--ciecam, 22 -a (long: --pre-assemble), 30
--coarse-mask, 25 -c (long: --ciecam), 22
--compression, 18 -d (long: --depth), 22
--depth, 22 -f, 24
--dijkstra, 31 -g, 24
--fallback-profile, 28 -h (long: --help), 34
--fine-mask, 25 -l (long: --levels), 19
--help, 34 -o (long: --output), 20
--image-difference, 31 -v (long: --verbose), 20
--layer-selector, 28 -w (long: --wrap), 24
--levels, 19 -x, 30
--load-masks, 8, 26
--mask-vectorize, 32
--no-ciecam, 22
--no-optimize, 26
--no-parameter, 30
--no-pre-assemble, 30
--optimizer-weights, 33
--optimize, 26
--output, 8, 20
--parameter, 28
--pre-assemble, 30
--primary-seam-generator, 34
--save-masks, 8, 26
--show-globbing-algorithms, 34
--show-image-formats, 12, 34
--show-signature, 13, 35
--show-software-components, 13,
35
--verbose, 11, 20
--version, 10, 11, 35
--visualize, 27

81
General Index

Locations marked like 12 indicate the location where a term gets introduced
or defined. Tables, lists, etc. that summarize material are indicated like 34.

Symbols B
#(response file comment), 40 BigTIFF, 3
@ (response file prefix), 39 binary mask, see mask, binary
binary version, see software, ver-
Numbers sion
360◦ bit depth, see bits per channel
horizontal panorama, see pa- bits per channel, 13, 22
norama, 360◦ black-and-white image, see image,
vertical panorama, see pano- black-and-white
rama, 360◦ black-point, 56
blend colorspace, see colorspace,
A blend
Adelson, Edward H., 1 blending
advanced options, 20–25 sequential, 3, 30
affine transformation, see transfor- blending color space, see colorspace,
mation, affine for blending and fusing
algorithm, see globbing algorithm blending pixels, see pixels, blend-
globbing, 34 ing
algorithms Born, Max, 24
globbing, 43 bracketing
alignment HDR, 65
photometric, 7 branches of Enblend/Enfuse
alpha, 59 development, 10
alpha channel Brasseur, Eric, 53
associated, 24 bug
Alsuwaiyel, Muhammad H., 47 database at LaunchPad, 66
anneal parameters, see optimize, reports, 66–69
anneal parameters how to, 67
arithmetic JPEG compression, see identification of bugs, 66
compression sending patches, 68
assemble, see preassemble builder, 13
associated alpha channel, see alpha Burt, Peter J., 1
channel, associated Burt-Adelson, 1
authors, 70

82
 83

C common options, 18–20

Carter, Samantha, 45 compiled-in features, see features
channel compiler, 13
alpha, 1, 7, 13, 59 compression, 18
depth, 22 JPEG, 18
width, see channel, depth JPEG of TIFF, 19
checkpoint results, 30 LZW, 19
chrominance weight, see weight, arithmetic JPEG, 19
chrominance deflate, 19
CIECAM02 colorspace, see col- packbits, 19
orspace, CIECAM02, see console messages, 14
colorspace, CIECAM02 conventions
CIEL*a*b* colorspace, see col- typographic, see notation
orspace, CIEL*a*b* conversion
CIEL*u*v* colorspace, see col- raw, 5
orspace, CIEL*u*v*, see
colorspace, CIEL*u*v* D
CILK NWORKERS, see environment D50 white-point, see white-point,
variable, CILK NWORKERS D50
coarse mask, see mask, coarse default layer selection, 42
code, default output filename, see file-
see also return code, 14 name, output, default
code repository, see public reposi- deflate compression, see compres-
tory sion
color appearance model, 20 delimiters,
color cube see also options, delimiters, 37
RGB, 21, 56 delta-E, 32
sRGB, 56 detailed configuration, 8
RGB, 21 development branch, see branches,
color profile, 52, 56 development
color profiles difference image, 31
math, 53 Dijkstra radius, see radius, Di-
colors jkstra, see radius, Dijk-
visualization image, see seam- stra
line, visualization image distance transform, 47
colors double precision float (IEEE754),
colorspace, 52–58 see IEEE754, double
CIECAM02, 22, 57 precision float
CIEL*a*b*, 21 DT, see distance transform
CIEL*u*v*, 21, 57 dual-ISO, 65
L*a*b*, 32, 57 dynamic-library environment, 35
blend, 20
CIELUV, 21 E
for blending and fusing, 56 environment,
practical considerations, 58 see also environment variable, 16
command-line, 17 environment variable, 16, 16
 84

CILK NWORKERS, 16 GC, see graph-cut algorithm

OMP DYNAMIC, 16 generator
OMP NUM THREADS, 16 seam, 34
TMPDIR, 16 glob, 43
EXIF, 65 globbing algorithm, 42
expert mask generation options, literal, 42, 43
30–34 none, 43
expert options, 28–30 shell, 43
EXR, 64 sh, 43
EXR image, see image, EXR wildcard, 42, 43
external mask, 7 globbing algorithms, see algorithm,
extra features, see features globbing, 43
extra samples, 59 GNU FDL, see GNU Free Docu-
mentation License
F GNU Free Documentation License,
fallback profile, see profile, fallback 71
FDL, see GNU Free Documenta- grammar
tion License response file, see response file,
feathering, 1 grammar
features, 11 syntactic comment, 42
file graph-cut (GC), 34
multi-page, 44 graph-cut algorithm, 47
response, 17, 39 graphcut
filename details, 47
literal, 17 limitations, 48
output, 20
default, 20 H
fine mask, see mask, fine half precision float (OpenEXR),
floating-point TIFF image, see im- see OpenEXR, half preci-
age, floating-point TIFF sion float
floating-point VIFF image, see im- HDR, 64
age, floating-point VIFF HDR-bracketing, see bracketing,
floating-point image, see image, HDR
floating-point header files, 35
flow, see program flow help, 34
format helpful libraries, 64
image, 34 helpful programs, 63–65,
format of response file, see re- see also Program/Application In-
sponse file format dex, 80
frozen seam-line endpoint, see HDR, 64
seam-line, endpoint, frozen camera firmware, 65
fusing pixels, see pixels, fusing High Dynamic Range, 64
image alignment, 63
G image manipulation, 64
Ganos Lal, see Morgan le Fay image rendering, 63
Gavrilova, Marina, 47 libraries, 64
 85

meta-data handling, 65 J
raw image conversion, 63 Jackson, Daniel, 19, 30, 62
hue-luminance maximum, 31 JFIF, see JPEG
JPEG, 64
I JPEG compression, see compres-
ICC, 65 sion
ICC profile, see profile, ICC, see JPEG quality level, see compres-
profile, ICC sion
ICC profile black-point, see black-
point K
ICC profile white-point, see white- von Kármán, Theodore, 24
point known limitations, 3–4
ICC profile, see profile, ICC
IEEE754 L
double precision float, 23 L*a*b* colorspace, see colorspace,
single precision float, 23 L*a*b*
image LaunchPad
EXR, 54 bug database, see bug, database
black-and-white, 56 at LaunchPad
directory, 44 layer
floating-point, 54 image, 44
floating-point TIFF, 54 selection, 44–46
floating-point VIFF, 54 layer selection, 28
frame, 46 all layers, 28
seam-line, see seam-line, visu- default, 42
alization first layer, 28
image difference, 31 largest-layer, 28
image formats, 12, 13, see format, last layer, 28
image no layer, 28
JPEG, 12 layer selection syntax, 44
OpenEXR, 13 lens distortion
PNG, 12 correction of, 7
TIFF, 13 level
image match quality, see quality, verbosity, 20
match levels
image processing order, see order pyramid, 19
of image processing LibJPEG, 64
image requirements, 17 LibPNG, 64
information libraries, 13
on software components, 35 LibTiff, 65
information options, 34–35 Lindbloom, Bruce, 53
input mask, see mask, input files literal filename, see filename, lit-
interaction with Enblend, 8–16 eral
invocation, 17–46 load mask, see mask, load
log-transform, see transform, log
 86

loops in seam line, see seam line, info, 15

loops note, 15
luminance, 52 timing, 15
luminance interval, 53 warning, 14
normalized, 53 console, 14
trivial, 21, 28 debug, 15
luminance weight, see weight, lumi- foreign sources, 15
nance “should never happen”, 15
luminance-hue maximum, 31 Morgan le Fay, 62
LZW compression, see compres- movable seam-line endpoint, see
sion seam-line, endpoint, mov-
able
M multi-page file,
mask, 59 see also layer, 44, see file, multi-
binary, 59 page
coarse, 25 tools, 46
external, 7 multi-resolution spline, 1
fine, 25
generation, 26 N
input files, 59 name of builder, 13
load, 26 nearest feature transform, 47
optimization visualization, 27 nearest feature transform (NFT),
save, 26 34
template character, 29 nearest-feature transform (NFT),
‘%’, 29 26
‘B’, 29 NFT, see nearest feature trans-
‘b’, 29 form
‘D’, 29 notation, viii
‘d’, 29
‘E’, 29 O
‘e’, 29 O’Neill, Jack, 30
‘F’, 29 OMP DYNAMIC, see environment vari-
‘f’, 29 able, OMP DYNAMIC
‘i’, 29 OMP NUM THREADS, see environ-
‘n’, 29 ment variable, OMP NUM -
‘P’, 29 THREADS
‘p’, 29 only save mask, see save mask,
vectorization distance, 32 only
weight, 59, 60 OpenEXR, 64
mask generation options, 25–28 data format, 23
match quality, see quality, match half precision float, 23
matte, 59, 60 OpenMP, 14, 16
maximum hue-luminance, 31 optimize
message anneal parameters, 30
category, 14 seam, 26
error, 14 strategy, 27
 87

optimizer fusing, 52
seam-line, 22 PNG, 64
simulated annealing, 30 preassemble, 30
optimizer weights, see weight, opti- primary seam generator, see seam,
mizer primary generator
option delimiters, see options, de- problem reports, see bug reports
limiters profile
options, 18–37 fallback, 28
advanced, 20 ICC, 13, 21, 52
common, 18 program flow, 35–37
delimiters, 37 internal, 35
filename arguments, 37 public repository, 11
numeric arguments, 37 pyramid levels, see levels, pyramid
expert, 28
information, 34 Q
mask generation, 25 quality
mask generation for experts, match, 32
30 query
program flow, 35 compiler, 13
order features, 11
of image processing, 39 image formats, 12
output libraries, 13
file compression, 18 name of builder, 13
output filename, see filename, out- query version, see version, query
put
default, see filename, output, R
default radius
output image Dijkstra, 31
set size, 24 Dijkstra, 50
overview, 1–2 raw conversion, see conversion, raw
rendering intent
P perceptual, 57
packbits compression, see compres- requantization, 22
sion requirements
panorama image, 17
360◦ response file, see file, response
horizontal, 25 comment (‘#’), see ‘#’
vertical, 25 force recognition of, 41
parallax error, 7 format, 40
perceptual rendering intent, see grammar, 40
rendering intent syntactic comment, 41
photographic workflow, 5–16 response file prefix
photometric alignment, see align- ‘@’, see ‘@’
ment, photometric response files, 39–44
pixels result
blending, 52 checkpoint, 30
 88

return code, 14 spline, see multi-resolution spline

RGB color cube, see color cube, sRGB, 21
RGB, see color cube, sRGB color cube, see color cube,
RGB sRGB
RGB-cube, 28 standard workflow, see workflow,
standard
S syntactic comment
save mask, see mask, save grammar, 42
only, 27 response file, see response file,
seam syntactic comment
primary generator, 34 syntax
seam generation, 47, 47–48 layer selection, 44
details, 47 grammar, 44
seam line
loops, 33 T
seam optimization, see optimize, TIFF, 65
seam, 33 TMPDIR, see environment variable,
seam-line TMPDIR
endpoint transform
frozen, 50 floating-point images, 54
movable, 50 log, 54, 55
visualization, 49 transformation
visualization example, 49 affine, 7
visualization image colors, 50 typographic conventions, see nota-
sequential blending, see blending, tion
sequential, see blending,
sequential
U
unassociated alpha channel, see
signature, 13, 35
alpha channel, associated
signed binary, see signature
understanding masks, 59–60
simulated annealing optimizer,
see optimizer, simulated V
annealing variable, see environment variable
single precision float (IEEE754), vectorization distance, see mask,
see IEEE754, single pre- vectorization distance
cision float verbosity level, see level, verbosity
size version, see software, version
canvas, 24 query, 10
software software, 10
components, see information, VIFF floating-point image, see im-
on software components age, floating-point VIFF
version, 35 virtual reality, 24
software version, see version, soft- visualization image, see seam-line,
ware visualization
source code repository, see public visualization image colors, see
repository seam-line, visualization
SourceForge, 2 image colors
 89

visualization image example, see

seam-line, visualization
example
visualization of mask, see mask,
optimization visualization
VR, see virtual reality

W
weight
chrominance, 31
luminance, 31
mask, see mask, weight
optimizer, 33
weighting factor, 52
white-point, 56
D50, 57
workflow, see photographic work-
flow
Enblend, 6
Enfuse, 6
external mask, 9
standard, 5
wrap around, 24