Image Composite Editor
freeware
Image Composite Editor was an advanced panoramic image stitcher made by the Microsoft Research division of Microsoft Corporation.
Overview
The application took a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location and created a high-resolution panorama incorporating all the source images at full resolution. The stitched panorama could be saved in a wide variety of file formats, from common formats like JPEG and TIFF to multi-resolution tiled formats like HD View and Deep Zoom, as well as allowing multi-resolution upload to the (now defunct) Microsoft Photosynth site. Uploads could also be saved to a web page with a zoomable viewer using a third-party template.
In 2021 the Image Composite Editor project was retired and the software was no longer available for download from Microsoft though it can be found on various other sources such as Internet Archive.
Features
Stitching algorithms automatically place source images and determine panorama type
Advanced orientation adjustment view allows planar, cylindrical, and spherical projections
Support for different types of camera motion
Panorama stitching from video
Automatic lens vignette removal
Automatic cropping to maximum image area
Optional automatic completion of missing image parts (helpful for sky, clouds, grass, gravel etc.)
No image size limitation – stitch Gigapixel images
Constrained assembly of image sets taken on a known regular grid, e.g. with a Gigapan head
Native support for 64-bit operating systems
Support for exporting the results to HD View, Deep Zoom, TIFF, JPEG, PNG and layered Photoshop file formats
Panorama publishing to Microsoft Photosynth
However, Microsoft ICE did not provide any anti-ghosting mechanism, like other panorama stitching programmes do, e.g. the open source programme Hugin (software) and various commercial applications.
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