Freeware To Merge ( Stitch ) Two Or Four Files

[Ulysses Sam]

Dear Geeks,

Please be informed I have purchased Canon AIO MP 530 printer bundled with software MP Navigator v 2.2. The software can only stitch the scanned top left and right sections of a full page (36 cm x 58 cm ) of a newsprint.

I am not a photographer. Is there a reliable freeware to merge the scanned images of four sectors ( four files ) of the full page after being scanned by the printer? If there is, please let me know the website, the name and version of it.

Thanks and bye.

FROM: Ulysses Sam.

[mjc]

You want to combine the four portions of the scanned page back into a single image, right?

Any good image editing program should be able to do that...depending on what format you are scanning the pages into (TIFF, BMP, JPEG, etc).

All you would need to do is to open a "New" image and specify the size of the combined image, then paste the four images into it. Of course there would be no automatic alignment that you would get from using software specifically designed for that purpose (like the bundled software)

[Paul Komski]

You can use a combo of IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/) and MS's Paint. Irfanview because you can open all four bits in separate instances if you want to.

Open Paint and create a large new file (just drag its corners). Go to an open image in Irfanview and choose copy from the edit menu. Go to paint and paste and then immediately drag the "bit" to where you want it. Repeat with the second image but drag it so that it is stitched in place. Etc, etc.

Save the resulting image with any blank areas on the outside and then open in Irfanview where you can easily crop it to the exact size you want. You can cut from Paint but not do a direct crop - though, thinking about it, you could cut from Paint and then simply Paste into IrfanView.

A nice marriage methinks!

Hope you have lots of RAM.

;)

PS Perhaps the marriage isn't needed. I didn't think you could open multiple instances of Paint - but you can - so you could do everything in Paint - though Irfanview is fantastic freeware with a small footprint that is well worth having around for a number of other reasons.