World Showcase panorama, from the archives

This was taken approximately 4 years ago, with my old Sony 717 camera...I had just learned about pano software and was having lots of fun with it:

 

Very nice shot Justin! I like pano shots

 

The one that I got hooked on back then (and still use to this day) is Autostitch. It was offered as a demo freeware years ago, but AFAIK it's still available free and I've reloaded it a few times since.

It is to me the most simple, seamless, and accurate stitching software I've come across, even compared to pay versions. You set the output size desired (expressed as % size - such as 90% of original in height x whatever the length comes to), choose all the photos to be stitched (you don't even have to pick them in order), and click OK. That's it - it goes to work, and when done, spits out a blended, stitched photo, usually even matching the sky tones if different and working to best fade unmatched objects out. As long as you give each shot a small amount of overlap, the stitch software should be able to grab it and stitch it.

For example, here's a stitched shot what wasn't even taken intentionally as a pano...I had just taken 2 or 3 shots from the train station balcony, and realized when playing around that there was some common overlap. The metering was totally different, skies different, etc. Yet when I loaded the shots into Autostitch, it was able to come up with a match and give me a 'wide' shot when I didn't have a wide camera:



I still use the software with my DSLR shots for any panos.

 

Thanks for the info, I will have to go and download this myself.

 

I'll second the nomination for Autostitch. Just give it the pictures and it does the rest. The only problem is that, as Justin says, it's a demo version that expires, so you have to periodically download a new version. Fortunately, there's no installation involved, just unzip it and run. Get it from http://www.autostitch.net/.

Just for grins, here is a three-shot panorama of Spaceship Earth. You can see the seams at the top:

 

Exactly as Dennis showed - the final output will show the seam areas and black areas around the frame from where the photos had to be moved, turned, or slanted to match up...and when the final output is given, you simply crop it using whatever editing software you happen to have, to get rid of the black spaces.

Here's another pano done with the software:

Boardwalk:

 

I really like the ability of the pano shot to give you that wide angle without actually having a wide angle lens. Another great shot, Justin! Thanks for posting.

 

Thank you!