will Photosynth revolutionize photography ?
Have you seen the new Microsoft image technology “Photosynth” yet? I first saw the demo of this product about a year ago. After viewing the initial demo I was honestly left speechless.
First, a quick explanation. Imagine walking around a building, any building, large or small, taking multiple, overlapping digital pictures as you go, kind of like a David Hockney Polaroid collage. Zoom in and zoom out, capturing both overall shots and fine details. Now load those 100 or so digital captures up to the now very live Photosynth website and let it do it’s work. Before long your images will be a stitched together collage that can be navigated and “walked through and around”, a pseudo 3D experience.
Now imagine the collective power of, say, the combined images of many photographers stitched together to create a fully navigable experience of any city in the world. Whoa. It’s a step further than even Google’s street view. Have you looked to see if there’s a 360 degree photographic panorama shot in front of your own home by going to Google maps, selecting Street View and zooming in? I’m a little old school…that’s a bit much for me but there it is.
Before trying to describe Photosynth any further I urge you to follow this link to a quick video demo. I’ll be here when you get back.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2UItGPsN1M
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So that’s Photosynth. For commercial work I think the implications are huge. Imagine showing a product, interior or exterior to prospective customers that can be viewed from any angle or magnification. That experience will be totally different from a still photograph or even a video. It will be like a video that is meant to be viewed frame by frame (sort of). It will be interesting to see how professional photographers are asked to meet the new challenges of this type of media / image delivery.
For now the technology isn’t available on Mac but they say they’re working on it. Time will tell. I gave it a go on my Windows machine and it failed on Firefox but worked on Internet Explorer. It was buggy and the controls were so foreign that I felt very clumsy with the navigation. It felt like a new, unknown technology (which it is). It also felt like a huge precursor to the future of how we will view and utilize photography.
Let me know if you give this a try, I’m happy to post a mention / link.
This could be the future for photography. Some were already saying that the end is near because we’re getting close to produce still images from video that match the quality of some photo cameras. This could very be the response to that.
Come to think of it, it’s a fresh new interface between the photographer and the viewer. I just hope this doesn’t all go into oblivion.
Best Regards.
For Mac users you’ll get:
“Unfortunately, we’re not cool enough to run on your OS yet. We really wish we had a version of Photosynth that worked cross platform, but for now it only runs on Windows.
Trust us, as soon as we have a Mac version ready, it will be up and available on our site.”
tss.. “not cool enough” haha
The youtube vid looks very nice. thanks
Ill check it out later
Wow. Let’s see, can anything else do that? Oh ya, Video.
The big difference I see with Photosynth is that video is limited to a resolution of, say, 1920 x 1080 for HD. If you “zoom in” on a section of video it will degrade in quality. It’s up to the person that made the video to take you where they want you to go and to focus on what they want you to see.
With a properly done Photosynth you can view a scene from a wide angle perspective and then choose to zoom in on the detail of a motorcycle or a shop sign or anything at all that catches your own interest. The Photosynth seems capable of holding way more digital information than even hours of video.
I tried to make a Photosynth of the photowalk this past weekend. It didn’t end up being very “synthy” as they call it. You really need to take a lot of overlapping photographs from many overlapping angles. Still, it could be a very power way to present lots of images together.
I definately thought that there were potential applications for architectural photographers. In many ways it could be easier than making Quicktime VR videos. The real power of this kind of technnology is going to come when they apply it to photo sharing sites like Flickr. When they do that, if even one of those images is geotagged, then they will be able to tie that synth to their on-line mapping service. Then if you want to see the Eifel Tower, you can pull up the synth from Live Maps, and see all of the photographs that people have taken of it in a 3D environment.
Last week they showed off some new features of it prior to the site going live. They have algorhythms to adjust the white balance between images on the the fly to make a smoother transition. They can “fix” a view on an object so that object stays in the same relative position with less “jerking” around as you change your view. They have even got it so you can sort by day or night images; i.e. it will recognize when photos were taken by the light levels and metadata.
There are a lot of ways that this sort of technology can change how we present photographic information. However, I don’t think that it will replace traditional methods either. I see it simply as a new presention device, that can enhance particular subjects in a better context than other presentation techniques.
By the way, my Photosynth attempt is at http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=fcaad810-af2a-43c1-b1b8-0dea9e863778&i=0:0:2&z=522.335463563472&g=0&p=0:0&m=false&c=-0.353798:-0.159497:-0.0118559&d=-1.26191:1.10492:1.11492 . The shots got broken up into several 3D groupings as well as several individual photographs it couldn’t merge. Taking photogs for this will be more involved at first than even say panoramas are although you won’t need a tripod for it at least.
He he – apparently it doesn’t run on Windows 98 either. Tried accessing from an old machine at work and got the Mac message.
I’ll have to try it on XP or Vista from home.
I remember seeing a video of this at the TED awards last year and being totally blown away by the concept. Need to shoot a wedding last minute and don’t have a clue where to set up the formals inside? Check it out online. Visiting Amsterdam and want to find a cool local cafe? Check it out online. This has the potential to be such an incredibly powerful and fascinating tool. I can see this becoming a good potential income for photographers. Not every building in the world has the umpteen dozen images of its exterior and interior needed to build a virtual version. I can definitely see businesses paying decent money to have every inch of thier premesis photographed to be used by photosynth. Sort of a new brand of “viral marketing.”
Won’t work for me either. I’m using an ancient Windows 2000 at work and Linux at home. Oh well. The video looks really cool.
I get the same message the Mac users get. I guess they figure noone’s using Windows 2000 or older versions of their OS anymore.
I think this is not going to replace still images. It just crazy talk people. By the time this software is ready for primetime the technology and market will have evolved and have gone down a different path than what we can envision today.
Replace still images? Definitely not. Take them in a new direction? Oh, yeah. But I agree, Jason, if you constantly spend your time chasing technology then sometimes all you end up doing is chasing. This is one worth keeping a very close eye on.
I saw that same demonstration (from TED), Noah, and had the same impression you did. The real estate usage you mention seems a perfect fit. It looks like they’ve rushed the technology out now for some reason, only about halfway ready for prime time.
Right on, Craig, you’re way ahead of the game. Unfortunately I’m at the studio with all my Macs and viewing your Photosynth will have to wait till the p.m. The link to your Photosynth is about a mile long, btw, it stretches all the way out of your comment box, out of my computer and off to points unknown!
My jaw is still on the floor.
The technology amazes me. But do I think it’s the future of photography? No. Like all art forms, I don’t think that it will replace photography, but perhaps extend it. I’m sure there were similar debates about whether the camera would replace paintings – and it clearly has not.
However…can you imagine all the other uses for such a technology? Imagine how much this would help a crime scene investigator, especially for cold case files. Or imagine how this would help designers to enhance a space?
I think of this more as a tool than anything else.
I made two that are just alright, here’s the better one: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=abca8a61-1f8a-4d57-8a20-37678eacb510
At an airshow this weekend I took a boatload of photos of an A10 with Photosynth in mind; trying to get enough common lines for it to be “synthy”. I used a fisheye lens for a good few, I wonder how Photosynth will handle that. Hopefully I’ll get them processed and up on Photosynth tonight.
Revolutionary! Can’t wait for the Mac version.
Here’s my A10 Photosynth:
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=6F6D85F8-13EC-4F4B-B8A7-D010943698DE
Pretty cool, but I wish there were a way to help it along in making connections. There are some (what seem to me) to be some obvious similarities in these photos it didn’t catch.
Very cool technology, so many interesting uses…
This is funny… just last night I was showing a friend my house using google maps’ street view and he was creeped out! If you think about it as a business, I bet Microsoft was pressuring it’s engineers and Phd to throw this technology out there in order to come back (or steal the thunder if you will) of other well established technologies like the street view of google. I know is not the same concept, but it does look like a half cooked technology that was rushed out.
I loved the demos they had up so when I got back from vacation this summer and saw I could upload my own images I jumped right in.
http://www.diyphotobits.com/2008/08/27/photosynth-your-holiday/
Didn’t work as I expected though — I don’t think any set of images that was not taken intentionally for this purpose are going to work that well.
As for where it stands within Photography — I think it stands separately, it is (potentially) a new art form. But doesn’t take away, nor add to really, photography.
That isn’t to say there won’t be lots of practical as well as fun applications for it. But with MS owning it right now you aren’t going to see people putting their own products into it.
But I can see people trying to sell their houses posting this sort of info! It might be “more real” — on the other hand when you are selling your house do you really want more real info or do you want the optimized image that a good real estate photographer can provide for you?
So, it seems as though there’s some randomness to this. Here’s a second A10 synth with exactly the same files. This one is 16% “synthy” rather than my first one’s 15%.
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=fcbeec8e-d7f2-4553-a457-c3ce5bbcd93b
no
not as long as microsoft tries to keep it in their world
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