OpenCV Center Homography - c++

Question

I am trying to create a stitching algorithm. I have been successful in creating it with a few tweaks needed. The photos below are examples of my stitching program so far. I am able to provide it with an unordered list of image (so long as image is in flight path or side by side it will work regardless of their orientation to one another.
The issue is if the images are reversed some of the image doesn't make it into the final product. Here is the code for the actual stitching. Assume that finding keypoints, matching, and homography is done correctly.
By altering this code is there a way to centre the first image to the destination blank image and still stitch to it. Also, I got this code on stack overflow (Opencv Image Stitching or Panorama ) and am not fully sure how it works and would love if someone could explain it.
Thanks for any help in advance!
Mat stitchMatches(Mat image1,Mat image2, Mat homography){
Mat result;
vector<Point2f> fourPoint;
//-Get the four corners of the first image (master)
fourPoint.push_back(Point2f (0,0));
fourPoint.push_back(Point2f (image1.size().width,0));
fourPoint.push_back(Point2f (0, image1.size().height));
fourPoint.push_back(Point2f (image1.size().width, image1.size().height));
Mat destination;
perspectiveTransform(Mat(fourPoint), destination, homography);
double min_x, min_y, tam_x, tam_y;
float min_x1, min_x2, min_y1, min_y2, max_x1, max_x2, max_y1, max_y2;
min_x1 = min(fourPoint.at(0).x, fourPoint.at(1).x);
min_x2 = min(fourPoint.at(2).x, fourPoint.at(3).x);
min_y1 = min(fourPoint.at(0).y, fourPoint.at(1).y);
min_y2 = min(fourPoint.at(2).y, fourPoint.at(3).y);
max_x1 = max(fourPoint.at(0).x, fourPoint.at(1).x);
max_x2 = max(fourPoint.at(2).x, fourPoint.at(3).x);
max_y1 = max(fourPoint.at(0).y, fourPoint.at(1).y);
max_y2 = max(fourPoint.at(2).y, fourPoint.at(3).y);
min_x = min(min_x1, min_x2);
min_y = min(min_y1, min_y2);
tam_x = max(max_x1, max_x2);
tam_y = max(max_y1, max_y2);
Mat Htr = Mat::eye(3,3,CV_64F);
if (min_x < 0){
tam_x = image2.size().width - min_x;
Htr.at<double>(0,2)= -min_x;
}
if (min_y < 0){
tam_y = image2.size().height - min_y;
Htr.at<double>(1,2)= -min_y;
}
result = Mat(Size(tam_x*2,tam_y*2), CV_32F);
warpPerspective(image2, result, Htr, result.size(), INTER_LINEAR, BORDER_CONSTANT, 0);
warpPerspective(image1, result, (Htr*homography), result.size(), INTER_LINEAR, BORDER_TRANSPARENT,0);
return result;`

Answer 1

It's normally easy to center an image; you simply create a bigger matrix padded with zeros (or whatever color you want), and define an ROI in the center with the same size of your image, and place it in there. However, you cannot in general do this with your two images. The problem is that if an image is shifted, or rotated, so that parts of it are outside your destination image bounds, then your returned warped image from warpPerspective is cut off at those bounds. What you need to do is create the padded image, insert the image that is not being warped wherever you like, and modify the transformation (homography, in this case) by adding in the translation to those pixels.
For example, if your centered image has it's top-left point at (400,500) in the padded image, then you need to add a translation of (400, 500) to your homography so the pixels get mapped to the correct space, and as long as your padded image is large enough, none of it will be cut off.
You will need to create a translational homography and compose it with your original homography to add the translation in. For example, suppose your anchor point for the non-warped image inside the padded image is at (x,y). Translation in an homography is given by the last two columns; if your homography is a 3x3 matrix H then (using normal mathematical indexing) H(1,3) is your translation in x and H(2,3) is the translation in y given by your homography. So we need to create a new identity homography H_t and add those translations in:
1 0 x
H_t = 0 1 y
0 0 1
Then you can compose this with your original homography H (using matrix multiplication): H_n = H_t * H. Using the new homography H_n we can warp the image into this padded space with that added translation to move it to the correct spot using warpPerspective as usual.
You can also automate this to pad the image precisely as much as it needs, so that you don't have excess padding and the padding will stretch only as needed. See my answer here for a detailed explanation of how to calculate that and warp your images into the padded space.