Create panoramas from photos

Launch a web browser and then visit the Microsoft Research website. Click the yellow Download button for your version of Windows. If you’re not sure which one to choose, click the 32-bit or 64-bit link underneath – that will explain things. When the Image Composite Editor page loads, click the blue Download button. If you’re still not sure, choose the 32-bit version.

If the File Download Security Warning dialogue box appears, click Save and then choose a location for the downloaded file. Firefox users should select Save File to save the download to Firefox’s default download folder. Now locate and double-click the file just downloaded. Then follow the wizard’s prompts, accept the licence agreement. If a message appears asking you to install the Visual C++ Runtime Libraries, click Yes and when that page loads, click the Download button. Click Run and then Run again. Accept the licence terms and click Install and when it’s done, click Finish. Then go back and you will be able to install the Image Composite Editor. At the last dialogue box, keep the Launch Microsoft Image Composite Editor box ticked and then click Close to start the Image Composite Editor.

After a moment the program proper will start. Click File menu and choose New Panorama. Now navigate to the folder that stores the photos to be stitched together and then select them (either hold down the Shift key while you click to select pictures next to each other or use the Ctrl key to select non-sequential ones). When done, click the Open button.

A series of progress bars will be displayed in the middle of the screen as Image Composite Editor does its stuff. The beauty of this program is that it is able to work out for itself just how the photos should fit together – so you don’t have to select them in any particular order. However, this process can take a minute or two depending on the size and number of the photos it’s stitching together. When it’s finished, you’ll see the results in the centre of the screen.

See the border that has been placed around the photo? Although Image Composite Editor does its best to produce a finished picture, in the first instance the program is more concerned with lining up the internal elements of the photo rather than securing a neat rectangular border. Use the mouse pointer to drag and drop the eight handles in and out to resize the frame to your preference. Alternatively, click the Automatic crop button to have the job done for you. To start again, click the Reset crop button.

Use the slider above the photo to zoom in for a better view: Image Composite Editor usually does a good job of piecing the different photos together to form a whole. When happy with the crop, click the Export to disk button at the bottom right and then navigate to where the finished panorama file should be saved. Here we have saved the panorama to the Windows Desktop and then opened the result in an image-editing program, so you can see the end result.

As well as the default view, Image Composite Editor has a number of other preset ways to display a panorama. Switch back to the application and click the toolbar button labelled with a 3D wireframe cube. Now click the Projection button and pick one of the other views from the dropdown menu. Here, we are showing the Perspective view: this changes the visual ‘shape’ of the picture so it looks like it has been wrapped round a cylinder.

Open the File menu and choose Save to save the panorama - and that’s it for Windows XP and Vista users. However, Image Composite Editor has another trick up its sleeve for Windows 7 owners – video panoramas. Open the File menu and choose New Video Panorama, then navigate to where a video is stored, click on the file to highlight it and then choose Open. We used an iPhone to record a video that panned across a street scene, but we held the phone the wrong way. To fix the orientation, click one of the rotate buttons to have the video spin through 90°.

Click the Play button to preview the video. It is unlikely to start and end exactly where you would like the left and right-hand edges of the finished panorama to be, but that’s not a problem. Click and drag marker handles above the progress bar to specify where the video starts and finishes – this will set the left and right ends of the clip. If you need a bit more precision, click the controls either side of the Play button to move forwards or backwards a frame at a time. Finished? Click the OK button to continue.

And here’s the finished panorama, ready to be cropped and saved as we did in Steps 5 and 6. Panoramas produced using video clips tend not to be as crisp as those that use a series of still photos, not least because video resolution tends to be lower, but they’re still extremely effective. The resulting panoramas can be saved in a range of different popular file formats – just open the dropdown list in the Export box and make your choice.