In last month's Roxio email newsletter,* Creator user Rod Sellers answered our call for stories about how you are using Roxio products in your digital life, and won an iPod Nano for his efforts! Here’s what he had to say:

“I’ve used Creator to make slideshows of trips to China, Russia and Europe, complete with local music. But what I enjoy most is being able to create panoramic shots of interesting sites with PhotoSuite’s stitching feature. In June, we took a family trip to Germany for my father-in-law’s 80th birthday. My wife and I took over 1,700 pictures, and our two sons took a couple hundred more!”

Many of these were panoramas. Rod says he and his wife staged several scenes so that the family appears multiple times: once in each picture that forms part of the panorama, as in the below scene from Trier.

You can see his group at the left, middle and right of the picture. Imagine the fun your kids could have with this idea, putting themselves in various locations in a panorama of Disneyland's Main Street, for example, or hanging out every window of your house at the same time.

Below are a couple more of Rod's panoramas from the trip, all stitched together using PhotoSuite:

Want to make your own travel or landscape photos more exciting? Or simply provide more compelling pictures of your house for sale? Here's how to create perfect panoramas:

• Use a tripod to keep the horizontal planes level, and to make it easy to turn the camera on one spot. Or find a handy rock or table to rest it on. For pro results, a special panorama head can eliminate parallax.
• Start taking pictures at one side of the scene, and gradually turn the camera so that each picture overlaps about 30 to 50 percent with the previous one. The more overlap, the better.
• Make sure you are not positioned too close to any large object that would fill the frame as you turn toward it. Also keep the main subject off-center, so it doesn’t focus your eye on the middle.
• You can stop whenever you want, anywhere up to 360 degrees, although circular panoramas work best with special viewing software.
• Panoguide.com has more great tips, and examples of great panoramas.

Want to win your own iPod? Tell us how your family uses Roxio software. Just email your story to userstory@roxio.com by midnight, Sept. 15, 2008. Include a picture or video clip from your production as an attachment or Web link. Click here for official rules and entry guidelines. No purchase necessary to win.

* In case you're not yet receiving the newsletter, which contains all sorts of handy tips and articles on getting more out of your Roxio software, just sign in to your account, then click the link at the bottom of the page to edit your email subscription preferences.