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The challenge: I have two images that I wish to perfectly align over the top of each another. The images are largely identical (save for fine details and noise), but are not of perfectly equal proportion; so simply rotating one to match the other is not sufficient - further subtle manipulation/warping would be required to have them perfectly overlay.

With high resolution images, I can accomplish this goal using a traditional image editor (such as, but not limited to, Photoshop) - but achieving near-perfect alignment is a very time consuming and manual process.

Does anyone know of a way in which I could accomplish this very easily (ideally, in a largely automated fashion)? My concept of a perfect solution would be to tell an application which image was the 'template', and then to have it distort the second image to match the template as closely as possible.

Although I'm comfortable with Photoshop, I'm very happy to consider any other applications that might help me to accomplish this.

Assuming the question might be asked, the reason I'm trying to do this, is that I can create incredibly clean (and sharp) scans from matte paper pages by creating two scans of the same page at 90 degree rotations - and then isolating and removing almost all noise picked up from the paper texture using blend modes. Unfortunately, scanning the image in different orientations creates subtle distinctions in the proportions of each scan - such that the images will not match up through rotation alone.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

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    Not sure I understand. Could you not just highlight the layers in Photoshop and click the align buttons??
    – Scott
    Sep 22, 2016 at 0:55
  • Sorry if I've not explained this well - I'll try to add some images later to better clarify what I mean, as it is tricky to explain. Essentially, the images don't perfectly match up even if aligned and rotated. That is, if you align the top-left and bottom-right corners perfectly, you'd THINK that the rest of the image would match - but instead, portions of the middle, and the remaining corners do not perfectly overlay ... as though one image had been irregularly warped by being left in the sun. It's quite subtle - but when trying to preserve sharpness across the image, it's disastrous.
    – Hobbes
    Sep 22, 2016 at 1:09

3 Answers 3

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I believe the term you are looking for is Image Registration.

There is a Gimp Plugin that seems to do what you want:

Most likely you'll find plugins for other programs when googling the term. Best of luck!

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  • Very, very interesting. I need to look at this closely when I have a little more time - but at a glance, you could be onto something here. For the moment I've simply upvoted your answer, but I'll return to mark it as correct if you've nailed it. Many thanks for responding, either way.
    – Hobbes
    Nov 1, 2016 at 1:15
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If the template image is correct and your "warped" image is to be aligned but some dimensions/details are out of sync, you will have to work it. There is software out there that can do this manually, but you would have to put reference points on the template and then each warped image to align, which takes just as long if not longer than just manually adjusting the file. Either way you will end up having to do some work.

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Sorry for the absurdly late response, but I just stumbled on this through a google search and didn't see the answer I had just located on another site. I haven't experimented with this too much yet myself, but it would appear Photoshop can fully automate what you're talking about using its "Auto-Align Layers" command. See this how-to:

https://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/how-to-auto-align-and-composite-images-in-photoshop/

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  • Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.
    – PieBie ♦
    Jan 25, 2021 at 20:48

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