I am impressed with Microsoft's free image stitching program, Microsoft ICE [Image Composite Editor].

It does not give the adjustability of AutoStitch, but the default settings are so good that I doubt very much that I could improve on the final results even using all the tweaks that AutoStitch makes available. The Microsoft ICE user interface is so clean and intuitive that I never had to look at the instructions.

Attached is a screenshot showing what ICE did with four rather poorly matched and overlapped pictures. When the end result comes out better than any one of the pictures, I have to think that maybe it's magic.

I make no claims of artistry or skill or even significance with the four original shots, they were done for a neighbor who just wanted a record of what his place looked like. These are possibly the worst of 106 pictures that I shot.

BTW: I use the ICE program as a poor-man's substitute for a wide-angle lens. The stitched picture is probably the equivalent of a 15mm lens (35mm equiv) with no barrel or pincushion distortion. Gotta love it.

tanstaafl.

I started using it earlier this year. It is very simple, but what I really liked was uploading to the Photosynth website and making 360 virtual views.

Here's one I created back in September after visiting Arches National Park. (Requires Silverlight...)

One interesting thing I notice about the photos, Doug, is that the ICE program had to really crank the brightness on some of those photos to get them all to match up.

You'll notice an area near the left-middle of the composite image that seems to be behind a grayish haze. That's the darkest of the pictures having to have its brightness increased to match the other photos so that they merge properly.

The ICE program did the best it could with the source material it was given, so it's pretty impressive. But for future panorama photos, assuming you're the guy taking the pictures, the best results will be obtained if you can exposure-lock the camera as you're taking the photos. That way all images will be the same exposure and the blending of the images will come out even better.

Some cameras come with a built-in panorama mode, and the exposure locking is one of the things that the panorama mode does.

That's the very thing that impressed me the most. In the second of the four pictures the patch of sunlight shining directly on the wall and the chair just happened to be in the spot-metered area when I made the exposure so the picture ended up about two stops underexposed. That ICE managed to compensate for that (and do a pretty good job of it) was amazing. Any stitch program can put pictures together, but to take four such badly matched pictures and make the results better than any one of them is a good trick.

tanstaafl.