Photosynth turns your photos into a “360-degree experience”
Microsoft Live Labs has released Photosynth, a program designed to take regular digital photographs and turn them into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience. Created from a collaboration between Microsoft and the University of Washington, the site is available to use now.
Microsoft describes the site as, “Anybody who sees your synth is put right in your shoes, sharing in your experience, with detail, clarity and scope impossible to achieve in conventional photos or videos. Synths constitute an entirely new visual medium. Photosynth analyzes each photo for similarities to the others, and uses that data to build a model of where the photos were taken. It then re-creates the environment and uses that as a canvas on which to display the photos.”
To use the program you have to first install it onto your computer. Installation requires you to have a web browser for browsing through your synths and the actual application “Photosynth” to create the synths in the first place.
The program relies heavily on your graphics software to operate and also requires you to be using a Windows XP or Vista machine as well as Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, or Firefox 3.
You have to install Photosynth on your machine in order to browse through any of the synths currently on the site. The idea behind this however is pretty cool. You can essentially take a group of pictures of a certain area, and then map them together to create a 360 degree viewing experience.
The application kind of takes the idea of panoramic picture taking to a whole new level. Instead of showing grandma one side on the Grand canyon, you can show he what it looked like from every angle where you were standing, including behind you…pretty cool.
Have any of you download Photosynth yet? What do you think of it?
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