Real-time preview for panoramic images

A computer readable medium having computer executable instructions for automatically generating real-time mosaic preview images, said computer executable instructions comprising:

• receiving a plurality of input images of a scene from an input camera;
• constructing a mosaic image in real-time from the input images as each image is received from the input camera and displaying the mosaic image on a display device coupled to the input camera;
• displaying a current view of the input camera in real-time as a mapped overlay on the displayed mosaic image;
• displaying an automatically sized cropping frame as a mapped overlay on the mosaic image, said cropping frame illustrating an area of the mosaic image that will remain following automatic cropping of the mosaic image;
• and
• wherein the cropping frame represents extents of a largest possible panorama that can be extracted from the mosaic image without allowing gaps of image data along any border of the cropping frame.

A system for generating mosaic images via an interactive viewfinder display comprising:

• providing a plurality of input images from a camera device to a computing device in real-time as the images are captured by the camera device, said images not having any predefined spatial relationships and said camera device having an arbitrary position with respect to each image;
• constructing a mosaic image in real-time from the input images as each image is received by the computing device from the camera device;
• displaying the mosaic image on a display device coupled to the computing device in real-time as the mosaic is constructed in real-time from the input images;
• displaying a viewfinder window showing a current view through a camera lens of the camera device, said viewfinder window being automatically mapped in real-time into a corresponding location on the mosaic image being displayed on the display device;
• and
• displaying an automatically sized cropping frame as a mapped overlay on the mosaic image, said cropping frame illustrating an area of the mosaic image that will remain following automatic cropping of the mosaic image.