While I'm sitting here waiting for the Rangers to win the World Series, I wanted to share something with everyone reading this. Some of you may know about this, but if not, you may be interested.
Several months ago, Microsoft released a piece of software that I use quite a bit. It is called ICE,or Image Composite Editor. It is free software you can download here.
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/It will allow you to make panoramas from two or more pictures. It is extremely easy to use and will not only merge pictures in a horizontal plane, but will also merge multiple planes of pictures to make a panoramic view both horizontally and vertically.
You can export the panorama to a jpg image that you can view or edit as desired by any photo editing software you prefer. But, there is something even better about it. It works in conjunction with a web site that Microsoft created called PhotoSynth. If you like, you can publish your panorama to the PhotoSynth web site where it can be viewed in a 3D type viewer.
So if you stand in one spot and take overlapping photos as you keep the camera level, and rotate all the way around, you can create a 360 degree panorama in ICE and publish it to PhotoSynth. Then in PhotoSynth you can pan around and see essentially what it would look like if you were standing there where you took the pictures.
These published panos can be shared to the world or to only those to whom you want to give access. If you are interested in this, and don't mind downloading the software for PhotoSynth, here are the links to a couple of panos I took.
The first is the last pano I took right after the rain last weekend. It shows the settling pond to the right and if you pan to the far left you will see the repaired test dam in the fishing pond area. Here is the link.
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=ed07...0:0&t=False When clicked, it will take you to the website and ask you if you want to load the PhotoSynth software. It is a fairly small download. Once done, and you see the pano, zoom in so that the picture fills the viewing area before panning. It will look more realistic that way.
The second is a two level pano that is overlapped horizontally and vertically. It is the Palo Pinto Lake dam west of Ft. Woth, Texas. Make sure you zoom in a lot to get the real effect. Here is the link.
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=2921...0:0&t=FalseI thought these might be helpful to some of you when trying to explain problems or how you did something, etc. It's pretty awesome software, and totally free.
