Any Good Photo Stitching Programs?

[Daisy14'sDH]

Had a trip to Niagara Falls on the Weekend and I only used 2 lenses, my FA 28-200 and FA 50mm 1.4. I am still waiting for the 18-250 to save me the lens changinghassles, now with all that typed heres my problem

I used the 28 and it wasnt wide enough so I took quick shots in succession thinking that I would have a program that could stitch them like my older Canon program could. Well boy was I wrong, Pentax CU4 nope. LR 3.2 uhuh. My trial for Corel PSP11 is expired.Picassa nada. Photobucket dunno if I want to even find out.

What is out there that isnt all buggy and is free?

[Daisy14'sDH]

Here are the pics from Photobucket in case anyone wants to help out our Cub Scouts! :) We were on the Maid of the mist in between the American and Horseshoe falls when I realised that I could run up to the upper deck and get a cool group shot... I havent done any processing on them out of fear that it would mess them up before the sticth

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j150/thekurlyone/IMGP8187.jpg

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j150/thekurlyone/IMGP8186-1.jpg

[klmall]

Here's a very rough first attempt using old software; Photoshop Elements 5 (Panorama).

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e240/mallonek/Other/f7046f13.jpg

It needs a little cropping and the size is a bit small....

And no matter what I did the 2 young men in the center couldn't be merged; their 2 heads can be "edited" by hand which is fairly easy.

I'm sure someone with newer software can do a better job but if no one steps up I will attempt it again.

P.S. I'm a Scouter too!

[Daisy14'sDH]

Thats a good start! I took 3 sets of photos, I didnt realise how far off this one was. Tomorrow when I am more awake I'll take a closer look at them and see if there is a better set! As you can see I only needed a little wider of a lens, thank you very much for the attempt and the help Scouter Klmall!

[safetymom]

Panorama Maker by Arcsoft is very easy to use. Love the program. http://www.arcsoft.com/en-us/software_title.asp?ProductCode=PMK5PRO They have a trial you can download.

[zackiedawg]

Check out Autostitch as well...free demo, been around a long time, and couldn't be simpler - you don't need to put the photos in any kind of order, and it will stitch vertical, horizontal, or both as needed.

[disneyboy2003]

I tried my hand at this, too, using Photoshop CS5. After the 2 photos were automatically stitched together, there was some extra blank space at the top corners of the stitched photo. I used the new Content Aware Fill to fill in the extra space (extra water). Here's what I got:

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/873382810_9mpk7-O.jpg

All in all, it took me less than 5 minutes. Photoshop actually did all the work, and it took about 1 minute to stitch the 2 photos.

Hope that helps! :)

[Daisy14'sDH]

Thank you very much Disneyboy! And thanks to all for the links to the freebies. Now do any of those programs have any adverse effects on laptops? Bloatware and such...