How to Make a Panoramic Photo

I just recently was on a vacation and took in some breath taking views. Like many of you, I thought to myself: I wish I could capture this moment. While it can't take the place of the real thing, panoramic photos are a good start. Here's any easy way to make a panoramic photo on your computer with any digital camera. Some photo editors such as Ashampoo do a great job with creating these wide view images, but its not free. Here's the easy way to do it for free:

1. Using a digital camera, "paint" the view you want by taking many pictures of what you see. Keeping the camera level, take side by side pictures, overlapping them by about 1/3. Don't get stingy though, pictures are free, but if you miss a gap you will have to start over. I have made good pictures from just 3 pictures, and some from 20 snapshots, as seen below (for that I had to take pictures from side to side and up and down).
2.  Upload the pictures from your camera onto your computer. Download the free Window Live Photo Gallery.
3. On the top bar under the "make" menu scroll down to "panoramic". You will be asked to select your pictures, then click "go". In a couple seconds to a couple minutes, depending on the amount of pictures and megapixels of your camera, the software will stitch together the photo.
4. You now have a photo that has uneven edges due to the pictures not all being exactly in line. You just need to crop off the black edges. You can just use Microsoft paint or an editor such as Gimp (which is the best free editor out there).

As you can see, the end product is worth the time, and just makes you want to make more creative photos. Scenic photos like this go great in custom frames. Here is my latest attempt, with final dimension coming out to be 12834x3538!