Cropping and aligning images for time lapse

[Lakawak]

I have seen this question asked both here and many other sites but no actual answers as it seems that people always misunderstand the question.

I have taken a few dozen pictures of a snow pile slowly melting (and will continue to take one aday until it is gone) and want to make a time lapse out of it. I have stood in the same place each time, and used the same zoom, so the images are CLOSE to the same. However, as this is outside, I could not use a tripod that is always in the same place. As such, some pictures were angled slightly differently.

I was wondering if there is any software that will align these images and crop them so set points are as close to the same spot in each picture as possible.

I have seen lots of software that morphs images that use a similar technique. You click to put a colored dot in several reference points to tell the program what points on picture A you want to turn into on Picture B. So I am looking for something similar, but that will align the images rather than morph them.

I figure I can line up all my images based on the fence behind the snow pile, or the branch of a tree, or the top of a garage. (Or all three.) I know I can do this manually with layers and transparency to line them up, but this will take a long time.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[vsa]

There's a "load files into stack" under file -> scripts in Photoshop. This can load images to one document and auto align them. The photomerge can do pretty much the same thing, just uncheck boxes that suggest blending the layers together. I think there's one more layer aligning thing somewhere but can't remember where it was at the moment. After cropping you could automatically save each layer as new file. But obviously this will be very very painful for your computer if there's more than 10 frames....

So I guess one of the best ways would be After Effects. Load all the stills as a sequence and then you can do basic 2D motion tracking. Here's something to get you started: Adobe After Effects CS4 * Motion tracking overview and resources

I think you could do it with two tracking points so the pictures would also be rotated if your camera wasn't perfectly level. With one point the footage would only be corrected for "shake". I could be wrong so someone correct me if that is the case.

[OsmosisStudios]

I've never needed to. What kind of time lapses are you doing that require you to align and crop your images

[Lakawak]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

I've never needed to. What kind of time lapses are you doing that require you to align and crop your images

I mentioned it in my post. It is a one picture a day of 7 foot snow pile melting. But because it is outside, and in a public place, I could not fix a tripod in one spot to make the location of the camera exact every time. The one thing I know I didn't go well is the angle as from what I have seen, ther are pictures where the top of the fence is about 10% from the top of the shot, and others where it is 25% from the top. So I want something to easily match he fence up so that the only thing in the tipe lapse that is changing is the snow piile.


Thanks vsa...I'll look into that. I still have another month or so before the snow meltscompletely, but I wanted to see if there was an easy way now since if there wasn't, I was goingto work on doing it manually little by little, a few pictures per day.

[vsa]

These days manually doing anything starts to be too cumbersome.
Don't know if that's a good or a bad thing.