Creating photo panoramas with Windows Live Photo Gallery

With Windows Live Photo Gallery, your images are no longer limited to what you can squeeze into one photo. Photo Gallery can automatically "stitch" together several photos in a series to create a larger, more interesting composition.

In the past, taking panoramic photos required a special camera or the ability to use complicated camera features. The only other option was to paste photos together by hand. Photo Gallery makes creating panoramic photos much easier—and much more fun.

To install Windows Live Photo Gallery, go to the Windows Live website. Click Get Windows Live, select Windows Live Photo Gallery, and click Install. In the dialog box that appears, click Run and follow the instructions on your screen.

Getting started

Take a series of photos that overlap a little. Here is an example using photos of Amsterdam.

Picture of four photos used to create a panorama
The four photos used to create the panorama

After you import the photos into Photo Gallery, select them by holding down the CTRL key while you click each photo.

Click Make, and then click Create a panoramic photo.

Photo Gallery analyzes and adjusts the photos so they fit together smoothly.

Select a name and folder location for the panoramic photo.

Picture of Photo Gallery displaying the stitched photos
Photo Gallery stitches the photos together

The quality of the panoramic photo depends on the amount of overlap in the photos and the similarity of the lighting between the photos. Experiment with it a few times until you get a good feel for the type of photo scenes that stitch together best from your particular camera.

After the photos are stitched together, you can clean up the rough edges by cropping the photo. Click Fix, and then click Crop photo.

Picture of the Crop photo feature
You can crop your panoramic photo to clean up the edges and create a good composition

Select the section of the photo you want to keep and click Apply.

Picture of the Apply crop feature
You can apply the changes to your panoramic photo

When you're finished editing your new panoramic photo, click Back to gallery to return to the gallery. Photo Gallery automatically saves the photo for you.

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