Microsoft’s Image Composite Editor works like magic

Sometimes technology is so amazing that it seems like magic.
That’s the case with Microsoft’s Image Composite Editor, or ICE for short. It’s software that can automatically stitch together overlapping photos of a scene or image to create a single, seamless composite photo.
Like magic, it can assemble the puzzle pieces of a larger image and make a panoramic image or complete picture from separate shots.
For my post yesterday on music that isn’t making the transition to digital, I scanned three album covers on a small flatbed scanner. I had to take four images of each side of each album cover. Using the ICE software, I added the four images into the program and it figured out how they fit together. It was simple … and simply amazing.
Above is the cover of the “Little Robbers” LP album by The Motels, which I referenced yesterday. ICE created the image using four corner images of the cover.
Microsoft ICE is available as a free download from Microsoft Research. It works on computers running Microsoft’s Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems. Check it out here.