There have been a lot of image tools coming out of Microsoft recently, so I figured it would be helpful for a lot of people to present all of these options in a single place.

 

Image Composite Editor – from Microsoft Research

image Let’s start with Microsoft Image Composite Editor.  This is the most recent tool that I have learned about.  It comes out of Microsoft Research’s Interactive Visual Media Group and offers some of the most complex and accurate stitching algorithms to put multiple pictures, all taken from a single point of view, into a single image.  Now what’s really neat is that the tool can output the resulting full-resolution image into JPEG, TIFF, PNG, or even into tiled formats like HD View and Silverlight Deep Zoom (more on those in a minute).  Very simple tool to use, and very cool.

Download Microsoft Image Composite Editor

 

HD View – from Microsoft Research

image Next up, another tool from Microsoft Research’s Interactive Visual Media Group.  HD View breaks up a picture into tiles at various resolutions, and then allows you to view ENORMOUS high resolution pictures without having to download the whole thing.  One of the examples on the HD View site shows a 13 Gigapixel panorama that was created by combining 2045 12 Megapixel photographs.  It’s very cool.  The tools offered on the HD View site are very primitive at this point (i.e. command-line tools).  But fortunately, if you were paying attention above you know that you can use Microsoft Image Composite Editor to create these monsters.

Learn more about Microsoft HD View

 

AutoCollage – from Microsoft Research

image Now on to yet another tool out of Microsoft Research, but this one is out of Microsoft Research Cambridge.  Another big difference is that this tool is NOT free (gasp!).  At US$19.95, it’s not that pricey.  The reason that Microsoft is charging is because they want to see if they can create cool tools at Microsoft Research and then directly market them to consumers and make the project self-sustaining.  I personally hope the model works, because I’d love to see more neat tools like this.  So the idea with AutoCollage is that you import a bunch of pictures, then AutoCollage analyzes the images and creates a neat collage of the images.  But this is more than just pasting a bunch of images with sharp borders.  It analyzes the shapes in images and find really neat ways to crop objects, combine images, etc.  It’s difficult to explain, so my advice would be to go look at the samples.

Learn more about (or buy) Microsoft Research AutoCollage

 

Silverlight 2 Deep Zoom

image One of the new features enabled by Microsoft Silverlight is Deep Zoom.  It’s similar in concept to HD View, except that the idea here is that you have a very large canvas that you can zoom deeper into, and some areas of the canvas may have more detail than others.  One other big difference is that HD View requires a separate browser plug-in, while Deep Zoom uses Silverlight 2, which many people already have, as it was used by the 2008 Olympics website and has been increasingly adopted by even more sites.  In time, the hope is that the Silverlight plug-in will be as ubiquitous as Flash.  Another great aspect with Silverlight is that it works on PC, Mac, and (soon) Linux.

Another difference between Deep Zoom and HD View is that Deep Zoom has great tools (the Deep Zoom Composer or Image Composite Editor) to help you create your masterpieces.

The quintessential sample for Deep Zoom is the Hard Rock Memorabilia collection.  It’s a great big canvas that contains all of the memorabilia in The Hard Rock Cafe’s collection.  Now the neat thing is that you can pick an area of the canvas and zoom in.  As you zoom in, you see that other little scenes are embedded within the large scenes.  And you can keep digging deeper in.

It is additively fun, especially like when you zoom in on someone’s eye and then find a full scene is actually hidden inside, and then inside that scene there is something like a television which, when you zoom in, has a whole bunch of other high detail pictures in it.

 

Photosynth

image I saved my favorite for last — Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth.  Similar to HD View, you have to download a browser plug-in to view Photosynths.

From the Photosynth site, “Imagine being able to share the places and things you love using the cinematic quality of a movie, the control of a video game, and the mind-blowing detail of the real world. With nothing more than a bunch of photos, Photosynth creates an amazing new experience.”

So to create a synth, you upload all of your pictures to the online service, and it processes them, determining the pictures’ 3-dimensional relationship to each other.  The resulting synth can then be explored as a 3-dimensional space where, as you drag around and explore, your pictures are overlaid.  Again, additively fun.

If you want to create your own synths, be sure to watch the downloadable video that explains the process.  Also there is a great Photosynth Photography Guide available that is an invaluable resource for learning how to take pictures that can nicely merge into a synth.

Learn more about PhotoSynth and give it a try

 

So there you have it, some fun tools to try out!  Have fun!