By Jack Riley
Amateur photographers have long mourned the lack of decent software for stitching their images together to make the kind of panoramas beloved of glossy publications everywhere, and today Microsoft might just have answered their prayers with new site photosynth.net.
This video, from Techcrunch, shows blogger John Biggs getting shown around the new application at the Microsoft offices in Smith Tower in Seattle. The panoramas, or "synths", which the site allows you to create and view are composites of a number of images which make it possible to spin around objects as well as rotate the viewpoint itself.
So far the National Geographic team's efforts are the best (they were involved in the production of the software after all), but users are encouraged to upload their own and the results are very impressive.
Most Canon digis now come with really good stitching software which can be used with any digital file. If you're using a Canon camera it automatically records the focal length and stitches accordingly. If you're stitching photos from a different camera you just need to type in the focal length (50mm onwards works best, if you shoot on a wide angle the stitch will be warped at the sides).
Also make sure all the frames have the same exposure, otherwise you'll have lines where the photos meet.
Posted by: Sam | Thursday, 21 August 2008 at 06:13 PM
My cheap Olympus digital has an option to shoot and stitch panorama pix. Just fine, as well - so what's the big deal?
Posted by: Jeremy Poynton | Monday, 25 August 2008 at 06:48 AM