How do you stitch scanned layouts?

I am trying to scan my layouts and stitch them together and I'm not doing well. Please help!

You've left out the most important piece of info.

What software are you trying to stitch WITH?

No clue. I need recommendations. If you were gong to stitch, what is the easiest - most simple stitching software you know of?

I use Autostitch - I got a free download a while back. Since my scanner only scans 8.5 by 11, I have to scan my 12 x 12 layout in 4 sections. I find that if you line your layout against the corner of the scan window, you will not get the best result as the stitch program sometimes cut off the corners. To compensate, I move the edges of my layout about 1/2 inch from the corner of the scanner. Hope that makes sense. Most of my layouts are scanned in - I'm awful at taking pictures of my layouts.

My son found the free download and he had trouble because it came up in jpg when we scanned it and then the autostictch wouldn't convert it.

Is there a secret or trick to scanning them? Once you get them scanned how long does it take you to stitch it?

THe free download for autostitch is on my computer now but it looks to me like it is for mobile use for panaramas taken with the phone. I guess we will play with this one some more. Any advice you can give me on how to use this are greatly appreciated because I'm completely lost!

I have an old version Adobe PhotoDeluxe that came with my scanner.

The feature for stitching is called "panorama"
You select 2 or more images, click okay, and it merges the images in to one.

How long does it take? A couple of seconds.

I think you could also do it with the collage feature in Picasa.

My son is going to download the new version of photoshop in my computer (he bought it and you can load it in several computers). He says it has a good stitching program that I can use. Even though I'm not terribly literate, he has faith in me

I am scanning each page 4 times in sections because we found it cut some of it off if it goes to the edges of the scanner.

I have about 2,000 pages to scan so I will set a goal of 10 pages a day. That is the slow part - scanning but I can do other things while it scans.

I'm getting a good look at my earliest pages. That isn't scrapbooking! I'm really quite embarrassed and started to redo it and decided not to. I have plenty of current things I want to do. If I ever want to go back when I'm caught up I can but I don't think that day will ever come.

I'm putting each page in lots of files - "Mexico" "Joe" "Holidays General" "Halloween" "Before we were married" and dozens of others. They will go in all that apply to each layout.

Then if I want to make my daughter a printed book of just hers through Snapfish or one of the companies, the pages for hers are together. If I want to make a Christmas one to put out a Christmas season - the Christmas layouts will be in one file. I think it is going to work well.

But boy, it is going to be time consuming!

• Henri Jean Said:

Hmmm that's strange ... I wonder if you have a newer version?? The version I have is a demo copyrighted 2005 by University of British Columbia. The one I use can only stitch together images in jpeg format.

Here are the instructions from the readme file:

How to use this demo:

1. Run the program autostitch.exe.
2. Select File->Open and select a set of images to be stitched.
Currently, the input images must be in JPEG format.
3. The program will align the images, taking a few seconds per image.
4. The program outputs the file pano.jpg in the input directory. It also
attempts to open the output panorama using the default image viewer.

The only trick I found is to put the layout a little bit away from the corner of the scanning area, otherwise your image might get cut off during the scanning process. Scanning and stitching doesn't take long at all if you have a good computer. My old computer (10 years old) used to take up to a couple minutes to stitch, whereas now my new computer takes 15-20 seconds. Anyway, I wish I could be of more help .

This is fantastic. My son and I are going to play with this tomorrow. My computer is 2 years old and should do well with the software I hope. The tedius part is scanning them in! I now have 5 scanned. I'm doing each layout in 4 pieces and putting them about 1/4-1/2" from the edges.

Henri Jean, after reading your last post, I also find that if you scan 1/4" away, then do it for all 4 sections. Likewise, if you go with 1/2" then repeat for all. Try to remain as consistent as possible - I know, I'm super anal when it comes to stuff like this. But I find that consistency really helps to create a better stitch and less "excess white borders". You may need to crop your final stitched image to get rid of the excess white borders (not sure if it makes sense now, but it will once you finish your first stitched image). I use Picassa to crop to a perfect square.

One more thing, scanning works well with flatter pages. My layouts with bulkier embellishments usually end up a little fuzzier. Good luck and have fun

Uh oh - I have not been consistent with my placement of the pages - just 1/4 approx., maybe 1/2 on each side. I may go into the saved crops and see if I can fix it there!

Thanks!