Assembling Panoramic Photos: A Designer's Notebook

8.3. Stage 3

8.3.1. Stitching the horizontal row

Stitcher's interface is fairly basic: there's a toolbar below the main menu; most of the screen is filled by the Stitching Window, where the photographs are assembled; a picture gallery called the Image Strip runs along the bottom.

When you launch Stitcher for the first time, set the various preferences (Edit → Preferences) for memory allocated to the program, thumbnail size, and display quality.

As my photographs were imported (File→Load Images), they appeared as thumbnails in the Image Strip. To place the first photograph, I dragged it into the Stitching Window; the photo automatically appeared centered in the window, with a green border.

Main menu

Toolbar

Stitching window

Image strip

As with any program, it's often easier and faster to use keyboard shortcuts. Here are Stitcher's main (Windows) shortcuts: Alt-rightclick to rotate the workspace; Shift-right-click to rotate a picture; Alt-click to move the workspace; Alt-Ctrl-click to zoom in and out.

I proceeded to position the second photograph the same way, carefully placing it ontop of the first, making the overlap area as clear as possible. I then launched Calibration (Tools → High Distortion→Calibrate), and Stitcher corrected the optical distortion for the entire group of pictures being placed.

The first two pictures arranged in the Stitching Window are especially important. For Stitcher's calibration to work optimally, choose two photographs with as much information as ...