Great free panorama software

In the past, the bulk of a photographer's expenses came from the purchase of cameras, lenses and film. The cost of processing film and producing prints could also amount to a good chunk of change. The digital era changed all of that, but while we no longer have to contend with the cost of film and processing, we now have the added expense of computers, software and software updates.

Keeping your arsenal of software up-to-date can be a budget breaker. However, staying current can not only make the difference between being able to offer special services and products to clients, but also allow you to offer them in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

In most cases you'll get what you pay for, but sometimes you can actually find a real gem of a program at a five-finger discount.

If you're into producing panorama pictures, that's exactly what you'll get with the Microsoft Image Composite Editor aka ICE.

This program will take a series of images and automatically stitch them together into a single image. Amazingly enough, ICE does all this with the drag-and-drop ease that Apple users will argue can only be found on a Mac.

Here, you'll see that I have combined three images into one by dragging them into ICE from Windows Explorer:

The results are simply stunning.

What's more, ICE will also output the combined image into tiled formats such as Microsoft HD View or a Silverlight Deep Zoom web page. I've posted a few samples here.

There are 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the program available. ICE seems to work well on even the most modest of computers running Windows XP or newer Microsoft operating systems. ICE is available for download here.