Joey’s Blog

313 S. Lowry Unit B (Upstairs unit in a duplex), Stillwater, OK will be available the first week of June 2009. This is an updated unit near the Oklahoma State University campus. This is a one bedroom, one bathroom house with a detached one car private garage. For more info see this page http://www.bowlesonline.com/stillwater-apartment-for-rent

Contact Joey or Gentry for more info:

918-809-4566

gentry@gentryfoto.com

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There are several ways to stitch together photographs to make stunning panoramas. One of the easiest ways is with Microsoft’s free photo organizer called Windows Live Photo Gallery (WLPG).  WLPG is a free download that works with XP, Vista, and now Windows 7.  For Vista users, this tool is an evolution of Vista’s Photo Gallery but unfortunately you cannot remove the old version. This is no big deal, you’ll just have both programs on your computer. While the stitching process is extremely simple, as a trade-off, the tool doesn’t offer many customization options. If you need more flexibility, then consider Photoshop or another free Microsoft tool called ICE – or Image Composite Editor.

Obviously you will need a series of photos from a single vantage point. You can have two photos up to as many as you like.
Here are some tips to remember when taking your photos:

• Make sure each photo in your series has a bit of overlap so the software will know where the stitching points are.  It is safer to have too much overlap than none at all.
• When taking the photos, try to keep your camera in the same position and at the same angle as you rotate. A tripod or monopod will help for larger shoots.
• If you have the know-how and a capable camera, set the exposure manually. Doing this will prevent different exposures on the various photos. If you don’t know what this means, then don’t worry about it – just shoot!

Let’s get started.
Open WLPG and find the photos you want to stitch together. Select these photos. As you can see in the screen shot below, I am using a series of seven photos from the interior of Boone Pickens Stadium. The photos were taken with a camera placed on my knee and span 180 degrees from end-zone to end-zone. (These are old photos from April, 2008 before construction was complete.)

 

From the menu, select MAKE > CREATE PANORAMIC PHOTO

This process could take a few seconds to a few minutes depending on how many photos you are trying to stitch together. After this process completes, you will be prompted to give your panorama a file type and name. This is the ONLY OPTION you have in the process.  The default file type is JPG which is sufficient for emailing, posting to Facebook, etc… However, if you wish to do serious editing or print this professionally you will need to save the image as a TIFF.  TIFF files are not compressed and are much larger than compressed JPG files. Typically, photo editing software gives you the option of how much compression to apply but for some reason it is a fixed level in this software. Remember, more compression equals more degradation of the original image.

That’s it!  Your image may have some strange edges as a result of the stiching processing compensating for the placement and angle of your camera. If you don’t like these edges then simply use WLPG or any other photo editor to crop it square.

What started as seven individual images from a camera balanced on my knee is now an end-zone to end-zone view of Boone Pickens Stadium.

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Check out this 10 photo panorama from the OSU campus. The sun was setting and the photos aren’t that great, but this is still cool. Using Silverlight’s Deep Zoom feature, you can zoom in, out, and all around. You can get close enough to see detail in these photos. I used the free Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) to stitch the individual photos together and export to Silverlight.

Click here to see the panorama.

Tips:

• You can zoom in and out very quickly using the scroll wheel on your mouse.
• Use your arrow keys or mouse to navigate around.
• Since this is a 360, you can pan one direction continusoly as if you are spinning in a circle.

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Click PLAY for an Orange Christmas Greeting.

http://osuaaweb.ad.okstate.edu/video/holidaycard/holidaycard.flv

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Way back in 2001-2002, Microsoft released a set of free utilities for XP called PowerToys. Theses were small, very useful programs. One of the best tools in the set was the Image Resizer. Once installed, you could right-click on any photo, click on Resize Image, then select one of the preset sizes or create a custom size. You could resize a single image or in batch within two quick clicks. Additionally, the utility would create copies of your images and not touch your originals. This was the perfect solution for posting photos to the web, sending emails, or any other time you didn’t need the full sized image out of the camera.

When Vista was released, this functionality was not included in the box, and Microsoft didn’t produce new PowerToys. Now, there is an open source clone of the Image Resizer PowerToy that works on Vista and Windows 7. It is identical in nearly every way. If you run Vista or Win7 and need a simple way to resize images check it out.  It doesn’t get easier or simpler than this:

http://www.codeplex.com/PhotoToysClone

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