In the preschool, a dead easy panorama for free..

[Fumesucker]

I did this panorama of my grandson's preschool classroom this afternoon, five separate portrait mode images put together with Autostitch, a free panorama program that is by far the easiest and best I have tried.

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html

[dbmk]

1. As free programs come, Autostitch is nothing short of spectacular.

Some of the non-free panorama tools are relatively better - but for uses like this, Autostitch is fantastic.

And a nice way of using it I might add. :)

[Celebration]

2. That looks great

I think I'm going to try it! Thanks.

[Fumesucker]

3. Thanks..

I printed out an 11x17 proof on some cover stock and I'm taking it with me to give to the class tomorrow.

The teacher that is reading the book in the pic is incredible, I told her a few days ago that she must be a Jedi because she has the mind control thing down dead cold, she never raises her voice but the kids listen and obey amazingly well. I would need a whip and a chair to control that many kids of any age, let alone little ones. ;)

These are not the droids you're looking for...

[kentauros]

4. That's a great panorama!

:)

I hadn't heard of Autostitch before, having used the one that came with my Canon instead. It's good, but I have found that Autostitch seems to have mroe features and options. I tried some of them and applied it to the following roughly 300-degree pan of the Houston Police Officers' Memorial. I was out late, doing some nighttime photography, mainly of the skyline, but wanted to try the stitching program at home, too. Autostitch simply did a little better job ;)

I'm not posting the actual image since even after cropping, it's still over 6000 pixels wide! :o

img19.imageshack.us/img19/3171/houstonatnightpanofulls.jpg

[Fumesucker]

5. Impressive shot..

Someone here on my Moon shot thread just said you were interested in nighttime photography..

I found Autostitch while looking for some info on Photostitch, the Canon utility. First thread I clicked on was someone recommending Autostitch to another person complaining about how Canon would not let him download Photostitch after his disk got damaged. Autostitch is significantly superior to Phototstitch, IMO.

I try out a lot of software and if something is free and looks interesting I'm going to give it a whirl.

[kentauros]

7. Thanks! :)

The person that mentioned I like to do nighttime photography would be Maeryanne, my gf :) She's quite the accomplished photographer. She has an image of the full moon that I still don't know how she did it. I can't seem to get anywhere near the quality with my year and a half-old Rebel Xti, so I'm quite jealous of her ability ;)

I have a few more of my nighttime images online, so I'll just make a thread for them instead of cluttering up this one with unrelated images. The panorama I posted above has taught me that next time I'll take way more images and use Autostitch to piece them all together.

I did try the Gamma correction feature though it didn't seem to do all that much. After I tried it, I noticed the middle frame in yours was slightly under-exposed from the sunlit windows. See if the gamma-correct function on Autostitch will improve that. I think the reason it didn't help mine was that the darkness is at the edges of the six images used and not over the whole image.

[Fumesucker]

8. That was with the gamma correct on..

But I haven't played with the settings.

The windows did make a big difference in the exposure on that shot, I'm used to panorama programs that don't like too much or too little overlap so I was concentrating more on where the camera was pointed than on the exposure. My pocket cam doesn't have a manual mode so I couldn't do it that way, I could have aimed the camera somewhere else and locked the exposure, but like I said, I was concentrating on aim point and that would have thrown me off.

The teacher liked the pic, everyone was amazed when I told them it was actually five pictures put together.

[kentauros]

9. I'm not sure what to change in the settings, either.

I guess just play around a few times. And aim-point is important, so you do what you can with what you have. I think you did quite well with that ;)

I just remembered I have a vertical pan of the lake at my parents' place (due to the drought, it's almost dried up.) I'll have to stitch that one, too, as I know at least one image has exposure issues.

Did they pin your image to the bulletin board? :)

[Fumesucker]

10. The whole room is a bulletin board..

I'll see this afternoon, I just left the pic and my grandson and departed.

I'm usually the first one there, turn on the lights and so forth. I take my two older granddaughters to grade school before my grandson to the preschool and the scheduling means I'm early there.

Next year they are all going to grade school so they will ride the bus to school together, since grandson has to be taken to preschool and the grade school is on the way I just take them all so the girls don't have to get up so early.

[Callalily]

6. Great picture, and thank

for the link. Something new to play with.