A method for determining preferred routes for steering mosaic cut line to form an output mosaic image included the steps of generating a ground confidence map of a geographic area by analyzing overlapping portions of digital source images of the geographic area with such digital source images captured from different vantage points with respect to the geographic area, certain pixels of the ground confidence map indicating a statistical probability that a same geographic area in at least two of the overlapping source images represent the ground; indentifying contiguous pixels in the ground confidence map indicating that the same geographic area in at least two of the overlapping source images represent the ground; and determining preferred routes for steering mosaic cut lines utilizing the identified contiguous pixels in the ground confidence map.