Another extremely useful feature of digital photography is the ease with which different images can be "stitched" together, or merged into a single picture using photo editing programs like Adobe Photoshop and Autopano Pro. This process requires the photographs to be captured in a "stitching-friendly" manner by leveling the tripod, overlapping each frame by at least 25%, and using the same focus and exposure settings for each image. Unlike panoramic film formats like the popular 6x17 cm size (seen here), digitally stitched panoramas can be made at virtually any size. This allows photographers the freedom to compose panoramic images according to their vision, rather than fitting their vision into the fixed size and aspect ratio dictated by the panoramic camera. This advantage is nicely illustrated by this 15-photograph stitched image of Oxbow Bend in Grand Teton National Park. When printed at its native size, this photograph is 2 feet tall and 10 feet wide!

Photo © copyright by Brett Deacon.