US Patent 7499586 Photographing big things

The subject application provides an architecture that facilitates producing a single image that can visualize a scene too large to depict from any single perspective view. These images can be stitched together on a 2-dimensional picture surface to form a multi-perspective image of the entire extent of the scene depicted by the input images. Where the respective images overlap, an objective function can be employed to determine where to make a transition between one image and the next. The objective function can employ a data cost and a seam cost to make this determination.