So far we have imported our photo’s into Live Photo Gallery, edited them, tagged them and published them to various photo hosting sites, including our own Windows Live. What else can we do in Windows Live Gallery? Well there a lots of cool things that we can do with our photos so now lets work through them all shall we? I am going to begin with the first one in the list under the MAKE tab in the Taskbar. It’s CREATE A PANORAMIC PICTURE.
When would you use this feature and how do you prepare your photographs for using it? Well, remember all the times that you have seen a view or landscape, or just wished that you could include more of the scene in your shot? That is really where making a Panoramic Photo comes into its own. Now you can include ALL of that sweeping and spectacular Vista or scene! Here’s how.
1. When you take your picture or scene where you want to include the whole thing, begin by taking the scene from either the left or right hand side of the subject.
2. After you have taken the first shot, move your camera to the right or left taking care to keep it on the same level or plane as the previous shot and also making sure that part of the previous shot is included in the next so that the objects overlap the ones in the previous shot. (see the individual photo’s below demonstrating this.)
(click on each one to enlarge) NOTE. Notice how each one overlaps the other. This is important for the stitching process to work.
3. You need to take at least two or three shots of your subject, the more the better I usually find.
4. Import them into Windows Live Photo Gallery.
5. After editing them (brightening them up for example) click on each one so that they are selected, then click on the MAKE tab, followed by CREATE A PANORAMIC PHOTO.
6. The program will then stitch (combine) your photographs together and then once that is completed, it will invite you to give your Panoramic picture a name. Following that it will be saved and you can now view it and edit it. Hmm, there are some unattractive black shapes around it! They need removing! So next you will need to CROP those out to neaten the edges of the PANORAMIC photo.
7. Just click on the FIX tab and then CROP PHOTO to be presented with the cropping area. Just click onto the middle small squares on each side to move the sides to where the black areas will be excluded from the final Panoramic picture then click on APPLY once you are satisfied. If you make a mess or didn’t cut out the black areas correctly then just click on UNDO to bring your picture back to its original state where you can begin to CROP it again. And here is the finished photograph!
I take lot’s of shots now with my camera (not an expensive one either!) that are destined for the PANORAMIC PHOTO treatment in WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY, as a matter of fact I don’t know now how I used to manage without it! To see some of my other Panoramic photographs including those I took when I visited Scotland last year and others taken on our day trips and around where we live just visit my PHOTO’s page HERE.
TG 
