Create 360 Degree Panoramas from your Pictures

Holiday season is coming closer and I thought it would be nice to publish some articles that may be useful for a lot of users who like the season. If you are using a digital camera to take pictures you may find the free software Autostitch worth a try.

Autostitch creates a panoramic image from all the images that you load into the image manipulation software. This works of course only if the images are related to each other. It creates a panorama using multiple photos that show the same scenery.

Best of all, the program handles the task automatically so that you can lean back and do not have to make complicated configuration decisions.

You simply choose the pictures from your hard drive and Autostitcher generates the new panoramic image. It is possible to change the settings before you load the images. You can raise the output quality of the panoramic image, select an output size or use the auto crop and auto straighten settings.

The results when you run the program with default settings look fine most of the time though. You should be aware that only visible parts can be joined. This means that some spaces on the final image may be black because Autostitcher could not find information about that part in any of the images that you selected for the creation.

Autostitch offers some test images that can be used to see how it works out. Just take a look below to see the process. Oh, and don't let the "demo version" confuse you. The program is free to use for non-commercial use and the demo will only expire if a new version becomes available. Just download the new version and use that from now on.

There is only one step that you need to undertake to use the program. Once you have started the portable version select File > Open and pick the images that you want to create the panoramic image from. Note that they need to reside in the same directory so make sure you have moved them all into one.

You may want to change the JPEG quality in the options as it is set to 75 which is not such a good quality level.

The program is still available for free for the Windows operating system. The author has created an app for Apple's iOS that you can use instead, but it is not free so keep that in mind. The program functionality has been integrated into several commercial programs recently for various operating systems. If you need more functionality, try the programs that are linked on the project's website.

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