Happy equinox day Ray... a fitting one for a walk in a park. You live in a great place to get source material for such panoramas.

Great picture quality John, I must check it out this new tool.
I've been using Arcsoft's PanoramaMaker on several occasions (e.g. vimeo.com/1658566) but forgot to mention it.
But this one is certainly as good and I guess it's freeware rigth?

Yes, it's freeware... still in beta at the moment but I've not had any issues with it on XP or Vista... or Windows 7.

Had some trouble finding it but at last ... are you referring to Microsoft's "Image Composite Editor"
I found that some time age after a hint by Jan about Microsoft's HD View. I had not much time then but now I really tested it with a few examples and it is indeed:
- very easy to use
- exported picture quality is indeed very high

I think it's different... I put the link to Windows Live Photo Gallery in the description of the video... it's:

download.live.com/photogallery

if you select multiple pictures and do a right click, there will be an option to create a panorama. I'll add a picture of the option to my website.

I added a new 'panoramic pictures' section to my website...

papajohn.org/PS3-ImportPix.html

...page. I'm impressed with how well my first test sideways camcorder clip morphed into a panoramic picture. I envision lots of uses for this technique.

Hi John, as I do not use Windows Live it took me some time to register etc. but finally I think I know what you are refering to. If you click the "extra" button on top of the screen you will see that ICE is more or less the same program, but with more options.
quote:
Image Composite Editor - from Microsoft Research. Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. While Photo Gallery includes the same stitching "engine", this application provides a lot more fine control. The stitched panorama can be saved in a wide variety of formats, from common formats like JPEG and TIFF to multi-resolution tiled formats like HD View and Silverlight Deep Zoom.

Thanks John... I havn't explored those extras, but will now.... tomorrow.

I have it now John... looks like Photo Story panoramic features are multi-faceted. Lots of good stuff for the PS3 buff.

I added some more info to my website page.

Here's one more John, I just discovered it by accident while browsing in those Microsoft Research website pages:
research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/autocollage/
It is a demo software package (not free - resulting picture with a company watermark at the bottom) that can automatically make a gigantic autocollage with a few dozen photos you import. You have no control but the result is rather nice. I did a little testing and can you imagine how much fun it is to zoom and pan "a gogo" in a 7000 x 7000 pixel photocollage (only stay away from the bottom of course)

I saw that option last night but didn't check it beyond watching the demo. The 30 day trial should give you enough time to fill a hard drive or two with collages.

On today's walk I turned my camcorder on its side again to take some more panoramic pix... this time in snapshot mode with the quality raised to the 2 megapixel option.

I just finished uploading a little photo-video created wih PS3 to test this Autocollage software, see
vimeo.com/3812783
One has no control over the output but it is so easy ... that ... even Ray could do it