I’ve taken the occasional set of panoramic photos, but I’ve never bothered stitching them together in Photoshop. The reason? I’m lazy. I can’t even imagine the hours that must go into doing such a thing and doing it well.
Yesterday, that all changed. I stumbled upon a little, free app called Autostitch, which promised to do all that difficult work for me. I doubted it’d work, but I had nothing to lose, seeing as though it was free. I tossed a set of 24 photos together that I took from the top level of a downtown parking garage, then let it render for 10 minutes or so. When it was finished, I was astonished at the results.
After a little manual cropping and level adjustments in Photoshop, I grabbed my camera and headed out to take a few more sets of photos. I’ve been kind of bored taking photos since it got cold out, but I was so excited about finally being able to render full panoramic shots, that I ignored the sub-freezing cold and snapped away. I have a feeling I’ll be doing a whole lot more of this over time.
Here’s a link to what I have so far (continually updated): http://www.flickr.com/photos/one9us/sets/72157612444342150/
If you’ve ever considered making your own panoramic photos, give Autostitch a try and go take photos in a whole new way.
Link: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html
p.s. By the way… a good tripod isn’t a must, but it’ll definitely make for better photos.
