After a snowstorm late January, 2003, my brother took a couple of pictures out the front door of my parents' home in Lafayette, Indiana. My father sent them to me via email, and asked if I'd put them together. There were two shots of his street, one to the left and one to the right. There were none of the homes in the middle. I couldn't really build a panorama with it, so I decided to have some fun with it, and produced the following.

 

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A couple of weeks later, we were there, so I went out on the porch (I believe it had snowed, again), and took four (4) shots, starting at the left. I did the best I could to keep the camera as level as I could, and make sure I had a little "overlap" on each. After I got home, I downloaded them, and put together the picture my father wanted to send his "warm-weather" friends.

Step #1 - The Pictures

What I should have done was take at least two shots, if not more, of each, just to cover possible lighting differences. (Oh, well...) Here are the four pictures that make up the final panorama from my father's front door.

 

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Step #2 - Arrangement

If you had real photos without those white margins on them, you could just lay them, one on top of the other, and match things up. Well, you basically do the same thing here, except by just using a click or two, changing angles on a couple (if necessary) and you can put the one underneath on top, choosing which looks best, and making sure you're in the right position. Using the points of EVERYTHING (in this case, the pillar on the porch and the side of the house across the street, the yellow house and blue car as well as the limbs of the trees, and the house on the corner as well as the cars in the street), position the pictures so they line up correctly. Notice that even while careful, I apparently, didn't keep the camera level. (I didn't have a tripod, so think I did pretty well), and I may even have moved a little to one side or the other between shots. Even so, I got a pretty good combination, though it almost looks like it was taken with a wide-angle lens, curving the structure a little.

A little playing around, switching back and forth to chose which should be on top, matching all the landmarks, and here's the final of this step. Notice that in this case, there were colors that did not match very well. So, there is plenty of cleanup to do though.

Click the picture for the full-size image in a scrolling <div>. It will open in a new window. Just close it to return here. You will be able to see where the pictures overlaid, and see what needs cleaned. Be Warned, though... The "full-size" image is 1623 pixels wide by 400 pixels high, and almost 100K.

 

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Step #3 - Crop & Clean

Now a simple crop to cut the "bad" parts of the picture out (where it's obvious they were overlaid), and center the picture a little better, both vertically and horizontally. (I apparently did the cropping and cleaning in the same step, as I don't have an example of the simple crop.)

I then copied pixels from beside certain areas to fix some of the picture, and to "smooth out" some of the color differences. (I should have played a little more with the coloring, but this wasn't for a business, just for fun.)

Click the picture for the full-size image in a scrolling <div>. It will open in a new window. Just close it to return here. You can see where some of the pictures lay, by the date (bottom right of the originals) and some discoloration. Again, this was more for fun than publication. Be Warned, though... The "full-size" picture 1951 pixels wide by 410 pixels high, and about 100K.

 

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By the way: The original pictures were taken using the same camera within seconds of each other (no real lighting change), and were 1280 x 960, and around 400K each. I would ALWAYS recommend making edits on the highest resolution possible, then shrinking the whole thing when done.

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