Note: This guide Uses Windows Live Photo Gallery available as a free download ^[1] from Microsoft.

Taking the Pictures

In order for Windows Live Photo Gallery to create a panoramic picture this is what you have to remember when taking the pictures.

Overlapping Pictures

Let’s say you want to create a panoramic picture of a sunset. You would take a total of 3 pictures while holding your camera vertically. The first picture would be left of the sun itself, the second would be of the sun in the middle, and the third would be to the right of the sun. Make sure that every picture overlaps each other so that Windows Live Photo Gallery can stitch them together.

You could take two pictures while holding your camera horizontally while keeping the sun on the right side of the left picture and on the left side of the right picture also.

You’ll have to test each series of pictures out and see which works best.

Don’t Overlap Too Many Pictures

I’ve noticed if you take more pictures of a scene (like five in the example above) the panoramic picture will have a sort of fish eye affect.

The fish eye affect can be compensated for by not taking the entire picture from the same spot. Let’s say you’re taking a picture of a large building. Instead of taking all the pictures from left to right while standing in front of the center of the building, take the first picture while standing in front of the left side of the building and then walk to your right and take each picture while standing directly in front of that section.

Stitching the Pictures

So now you’ve installed Windows Live Photo Gallery ^[1], taken the photos, and uploaded them ^[2] to your computer. Here’s how you stitch them together to create a panoramic picture.

1. Open Windows Live Photo Gallery in the Start Menu.
2. Select each picture you want to stitch together in Windows Live Photo Gallery by hovering over them with your mouse and then check off the boxes that appears on the left of each picture.

   ^[3]

3. Click the down arrow to the right of Make at the top of Windows Live Photo Gallery and then select Create panoramic photo.
4. Windows Live Photo Gallery will go to work stitching the photos together for you.

   ^[4]

5. When it’s finished it’ll ask you where to save the new photo. It saves the photo in the same location as the original pictures with the name of the first picture and stitch behind it.

Here’s the photo after it’s been stitched.

^[5]

The edges of the panoramic photo will look distorted. Follow the next section to learn how to clean up around the edges.

Cleanup the New Panoramic Picture

To clean up around the edge of the photo you need to crop it. Follow my cropping guide ^[6] to remove the distorted edges of the picture.

Here’s the final product after cropping it in Windows Photo Gallery.

^[7]

Pretty neat hu?