How to adjust and combine multiple lower quality photos into one better using FOSS?

Question

I have multiple noisy photos (caputed without tripod) that needs to be adjusted (moved/rotated) and averaged.

How it's better to do it in Linux with FOSS console-based programs?

Current way is something like:

mplayer mf://*.JPG -vo yuv4mpeg:file=qqq.yuv
transcode -i qqq.yuv -y null -J stabilize=maxshift=500:fieldsize=100:fieldnum=6:stepsize=50:shakiness=10
transcode -i qqq.yuv -J transform=smoothing=100000:sharpen=0:optzoom=0 -y raw -o www.yuv
mplayer www.yuv -vo pnm
gm convert -average 0*.ppm q.ppm

i.e.:

1. Convert photos to video
2. Apply Transcode's "Stabilize" filter
3. Convert the video back to images
4. Average the images.

It works, but bad: photos still not perfectly adjusted and the whole sequence is very slow.

What is better way of doing it?

Update: Experimented with "Hugin". It only distorted all photos according some "projection" and refused to merge them: enblend: excessive overlap detected; remove one of the images. Of course "excessive" - they're all almost in the same place. No averaging? /* and images are not actually aligned */.

Proceeding to experiments with enblend/panorama_tools/ale.

Answer 1

You might want to have a look at Panorama Tools and Enblend.

However I have to disclaim any experience with those, I just know those tools exist.

Answer 2

ALE - Anti-Lameness Engine - just feed it frames and get better one.

ale *.JPG out.ppm

Seems to be the tool for the job - mets all requirements, configurable and have other features as well.

Disadvantage: default mode is slowly slowly slow (even slower than original transcode hack), (good point that progress indication is good).

Answer 3

Enblend is a tool for stitching photographs into panoramas. What you are looking for is a combination of "align_image_stack" and "enfuse". The first application takes care of the shifting, the second application takes care of the actual merging and averaging. Quite a few parameters available for both steps as well.