Remember the Photoshop merging of 105 or so QX5 images (at 640X480 resolution) to make a composite of the dead Batch I filefish?
The raw images were actual files like this...
Well, that took HOURS, and I still botched it, this was what HOURS of aligning images in photoshop did (and of course, because of the order I shot them in, it was not always easy to figure out which image went where). This was the best I did before I "Gave up".
So today, after seeing a commercial of a 7 year old girl taking pictures of her "fort" and stitching them together on a PC
, I tried Windows Live Photo Gallery - http://download.live.com/photogallery
I simply selected all 105 raw images (in no particular order at all) and said "make panorama". Within 2-3 minutes, I got this (mind you, the actual file I got was at full resolution, this is scaled substantialy for the web.)
(the original file is 4370 X 1557 - show here at 800 X 285)
I'll tell you now, creating ultra-hi-rez composit shots of microscopic subjects just became truly EASY (and FREE!!!!). You can save them out as TIF, which is lossless, and ideal for bringing in uber-hi-rez images for print. Here's a couple more iterations of that image, just to quickly clean it up a bit.
I'm sold! Bill Gates (and honestly, the entire time at Microsoft who came up with this FREEKIN awesome free software), I owe ya one!
Matt
