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I must have missed it when this program first came out and I am a huge fan of panoramic scenery shots.  I currently use Windows Live Photo Gallery to create some pretty straight forward panoramic shots.

However, this software takes it to an entirely new level.

Microsoft Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. Given a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location, the application creates a high-resolution panorama that seamlessly combines the original images. The stitched panorama can be shared with friends and viewed in 3D by uploading it to the Photosynth web site. Or the panorama can be saved in a wide variety of image formats, from common formats like JPEG and TIFF to the multiresolution tiled format used by Silverlight’s Deep Zoom and by the HD View and HD View SL panorama viewers.

Microsoft Image Composite Editor works on 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

There are two versions you can download:

I just had to try this out myself so I took my camera and went in the backyard and snapped off 32 shots of various zoom levels, brightness, and views of the scene.

I then gave ICE the 32 shots and let it go to work.

microsofticesampleofbackyard

This is the JPEG version of the panoramic shot and it has been cropped automatically by ICE.

I also used the ICE software and Photosynth to create a synth of this scene which is very easy to do.  See it yourself – Backyard Garden Photosynth.

Or you can interact with it right here on the page:

I can definitely see the potential for lots of photos and scenes with these tools – I may need a bigger hard drive!