Merging/stitching photos, scans - Microsoft Image Composite Editor

[JayUU]

Hello all,

I was recently scanning some family albums and one album in particular was causing me grief.
The pages were almost A3 in size so on my A4 scanner I had to scan the pages as at least 2 sections and at some point try and merge/stitch them into 1 image.

To do this, my original plan had been to use my camera's software has a panorama/stitch facility included. I found this rubbish to be honest.

Then I tried the free online Pixlr.com (similar to Photoshop). Far too complicated.

I then tried doing it manually in Microsoft Paint, and got great results, but found each page taking about 10 minutes to get exactly right.

I then found the FREE Microsoft's Image Composite Editor (ICE).
Here is a Youtube video about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEOjZTZb-28

The results are absolutely astonishing. Load in the images, click and you're done. I cannot praise it highly enough.

Here's the download page: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/

The only requirement to get good (great) results is that your images need to have some overlap.

Next time I'm doing a panorama on holiday, I know which software I'm using!

Cheers

John

[shanew147]

thanks for that,

I just used it to stitch together a series of map scans - much easier to do that the manual way I use, and the result is looking quite good. (the output image is much clearer than the preview in the program suggests)

[LizzieW]

I've never tried merging/stitching photos before, I didn't know how to do it, but that MICE looks brilliant.  I'm going to download it to my new laptop when it arrives later this week then it'll be set for my holiday photos later this year.

Thanks John

Lizzie

Modified - Just checked if it's compatible with Windows 8 and it seems something else has to be downloaded to make it work.  I guess I'll fathom it out when my new laptop is set up

[JayUU]

Hi Lizzie,

Yes, you need to install some Virtual C++ environment or some such (well for my Windows 7 laptop it was required). I just went ahead and did it.

Like I said, for it to work any images need some degree of overlap - the results will be MUCH better than any camera software for your holiday panoramas.

Be interested to know how you get on,

John

PS I do NOT work for Microsoft! :-)