Scanned Images : Stitching.

I have a Map, "The Levant Mail Routes" 1913

Measures 14" x 12" (36 x 31 cm)
Is it possible to stitch individual scans together ? if so, is anyone able to do that? or do I take it to the City and seek a large scanner service ?

Thanks

Hi Rod,
If you want to email me the images I can stitch them for you.
Don

Wow! Thanks a bunch Don.
Shall do, I'll take scans at 200dpi, full platen.
You can crop as necessary.
..or advise how you wish them.

300 dpi is best but 200 dpi will work too.
jpg format

Bonus points if you can scan them perfectly straight! But I can work around this if needed.
Don

You can do basic stitching with Irfanview, but a better way is to overlay one scan over the top of the other & then align the top pic until they match up exactly, I use Corel Paintshop Pro for that. No need to scan straight but overlap is of course necessary. Give us a hoy if you need further help

I've been using Hugin for years to stitch photos together.

Slight learning curve, but it can handle anything you throw at it.

http://hugin.sourceforge.net

Image stitching is a royal PITA. I've had to do it for large documents. Getting the angles just right can be very time consuming. Additionally, no 2 scanner passes are ever truly identical with respect to brightness and color, due to the way light bounces, so background colors can be just a smidge different on the scans.

I have used Corel Photopaint for stitching both photos and scanned images. Panoramas one image high are easy but I have also done matrices of up to 6 images in a 2 by 3 grid with a fair amount of success.




First of all, there should be a reasonable overlap in the two images to be joined, so that you can taper the edge of one from fully opaque to fully transparent. With scanned images, the joint should then have no noticeable difference in colour or brightness.




With Photopaint, correcting this is quite easy. (Paint or Photoshop is probable very similar.

1. Position the upper image (the one with the transparent edge) over the lower image such that a single distinguishing feature merge together. In your case, Rod, this could be a dot showing the location of a town.

2. Move the point around which one of the images rotates so that it is directly over this feature.

3. Rotate that image until it matches the other image as seen though the transparent section.

I find this process works best if you take the image feature in step one at one end of the join and then rotate one image to match up points at the other end of the join.

(If you are working from photos rather than scans, you may also need to adjust the size of one image.)

Thanks guys, for all the response.
Obviously lots of knowledgeable people here.

I'll get them off to Don today, and see how things go.