Manually align images for time lapse

Question

I've been taking a picture of myself everyday for a few months now. I haven't used a tripod, so the images are not aligned at all. I'm looking for some type of software that will allow me to manually resize, rotate, and crop these images to I line up in all of them. I'm hoping for something where I can have one reference image that is a bit transparent and then I can edit every other image to match that one. Does any software like this exist?

Answer 1

With Gimp there is a script for this: ofn-layer-aligner. You create two pairs of points, one on the reference layer and one on the target layer, and it rotates/scales/moves the target layer so that the two points marked on it are above the two points on the reference. In your case I would:

• Open the first picture, create the first two points (in the center of the pupils)
• Then for each of the other pictures
  • File>Open as layers to add it as a new layer in the current image
  • Add (or move) the two target points over the pupils (you don't even need to see the reference image as long as you don't move the reference points)
  • Call the script
• Crop the image when you are done (this crops all layers to the same size)
• If needed export all layers as individual images (manually but there are also scripts for this), but you can also play it as an animation (Filters>Animation>Playback)