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The program is based on the photographer taking a series of photos of a landscape from one location in any sequence you wish. It doesn't matter if the camera is set on automatic, as the program will automatically adjust for changes to light, scale, orientation, exposure and aperture settings of the different photos. Photos without any overlap are conveniently ignored. Autostitch even works with photos scanned from film.
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Additionally, I recommend altering a few options (under Edit > Options tab) as follows:
- set the width of the panorama (or scale) noting that making this much larger considerably slows the program;
- consider enabling gain compensation which modifies the darkness or lightness of the various photos to make them consistent;
- set the JPEG option in the bottom right to 90 or 95 to improve the quality of the final panorama (less compression).
With most of the options being indecipherable (terms like theta max and psi orientation abound) to all but the most astute mathematician, I'd suggest leaving them alone. Indeed, Autostitch does a great job without altering any options at all. If mathematics and image gymnastics is your thing, a detailed conference paper on the science behind the technology is available. A forum entry details the best description of all the options (scroll down a little).
Finally, note that the program is only available as a trial so it will eventually expire (after a year or more) and will need to be downloaded again. The technology has been incorporated into a number of commercial photo editting programs as shown on the Autostitch website.
Download a copy of Autostitch and start building your own painless panoramas.