Entries tagged with photography - Channel 10

How to Photosynth a Car

Larry Larsen — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 04:12:00 GMT

The North American International Auto Show started this week, and one of the things I'm sure we'd all like to see is incredible Photosynths of cars. But Photosynthing cars is one of the more difficult things to do. The lines and the details on the shape of the car that Photosynth would normally use for edge detection are often changed visually because of the gloss of the finish. Next time you're looking at a shiny car, notice how as you move around it the surface of the car almost morphs through colors and reflections.

The Photosynth team has put together a blog post to give you some tips on how best to shoot a car for a synth, inside and out. The quick answer is lots of photos and to focus around areas of detail like rims, grills, and decals if the car happens to have them. Full tips can be found here.

Seadragon.com Goes Live

Larry Larsen — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:47:00 GMT

Huge images on the web just haven't been fun in the past. Between the downloading, the snapping from scaled to full-size, and navigating around, it's just not the experience that high def images should have. Well that's about to change. Using Seadragon, you can now point the web service to your massive image (hosted on your site or any number of services) and it will be create a Deep Zoom image that you can then share through email, Twitter, Facebook, or embed on a site.

Keep in mind you can use the Deep Zoom Composer to make your own Deep Zoom images locally if that's how you roll. Or you can use DeepZoomPix.com (until December 31st 2009) if you want a place to host your Deep Zoom images. You can also upload your big pictures to PhotoSynth, which will turn them into Deep Zoom images (and try to connect them, so not the preferred way to manage disparate images). But for large images that are already online, Seadragon.com is the perfect tool for creating a window to the larger image.

Fly Me To the Moon

Larry Larsen — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:11:00 GMT

40 years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin Jr. set down on the surface of the moon (with Michael Collins waiting up top) achieving the dream of billions of humans who came before them. Neil was the shutterbug of the mission and took a number great pictures despite the brutal conditions (moon dust is like talcum powder, try getting that off your lens with your thickest gloves on.)

What happens when you take some of the best images from the Apollo program and feed them into Photosynth? That's what I wanted to find out. Here is a Photosynth from images taken off from the Apollo 17 Command Module's 28th Revolution around the moon. After it loads, hold the 'CTRL' key to see the point cloud, Photosynth has created a 3D model from the images. If you press the 'a' key you can see the arc of the orbit from the side. These images are very high res so use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

Now for Apollo 11. Before looking at these synths increase the Photosynth interface size ('f' key), you might want to put on some Major Tom or Dark Side of the Moon too. I spent hours looking at this synth after making it. It's an amazing way to explore man's greatest destination. I created some highlights to help you navigate around the really cool stuff. The first is a particularly synthy set of images. Next is the iconic footprint image, you can click on it to toggle to the before picture. Until I synthed these photos I didn't even know there was a picture of the surface where the first footprint would be. The next highlight is a view looking out of Eagle at the flag, and then Eagle from the outside. I highlighted an image that didn't map to any others that when zoomed in looks like a folded pair of sequined socks, no doubt part of the Moonwalker conspiracy theory.

I also made an Apollo 11 synth that is just 3D anaglyph images, you'll need some Red/Blue glasses. It's best viewed with grid view. Here are the 3D images from Apollo 12.

Apollo 17, the last manned mission to the moon, has the best pictures. By 17, mission planners have image stitching on the mind, there are hundreds of overlapping photos. For this synth I used 1022 images, a mixture of black and white and color. My machine crunched this synth all night long and by morning gave me this amazing collection.

Scroll down for a list of Photosynth keyboard shortcuts.

Apollo 11 Campsite

Apollo 12 Campsite

Apollo 17 Campsite

Apollo 11 3D Images

Apollo 12 3D Images

Apollo 17 - 28th Revolution

Photosynth Viewer Keyboard Shortcuts

Zooming and Neighbors

Scroll wheel	Scrolling the mouse wheel zooms you in or out. The zooming is centered around your current mouse position.
+ or -	Zoom in or out around the center of the window.
← or →	Move left or right to a neighboring photo, when one is available.
↑ or ↓	Move inwards or outwards to a neighboring photo, when one is available.
u or j	Move up or down to a neighboring photo, when one is available.
Tours and History

Spacebar	Go to next photo in the spatial tour.
Shift-spacebar	Go to next photo in alphabetical order by filename. (Depending on your camera, this is usually shooting order.)
. (period)	Go to next photo in alphabetical order by filename. (Depending on your camera, this is usually shooting order.)
, (comma)	Go to previous photo in alphabetical order by filename.
Z	Go to the last image you were on. (Like Back in a Web browser.)
Z	Undo z. (Like Forward in a Web browser.)
Fun with the Point Cloud

Ctrl	Holding the control key down temporarily hides all photos allowing you to see the point cloud in all its glory. Dragging a halo with the control button down lets you spin around the entire point cloud. Try it!
P	Switches among three modes: points, images, both.
Useful Shortcuts

Enter	Center the current image
F	Toggle full-screen
~	Toggle between 2D and 3D
M	Go to the next 3D group in the synth
Y	Toggles world-up verses image-up. This is useful when Photosynth has trouble working out which way is up.
Free Navigation (Only in 3D view)

A	Strafe left
D	Strafe right
W	Move forward
S	Move backward
E	Move up
C	Move down
L	Rotate left
‘	Rotate right
[	Rotate up
;	Rotate down

New Photosynth Features in June Update

Larry Larsen — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:27:00 GMT

The Photosynth team released their June update and it's looking better than ever. The site has had a design tweak, you'll now see a featured synth on the home page. The search results are much improved and you can sort your result set by popularity, date, author, and even synthy-ness.

One of the coolest updates is the ability to "highlight" the photos you want. In the image for this post, you can see the grouping of photos that make up this statue. A previous update made it so you can hover over the object and get arrows that allow you to dolly around the object. But what if there's a few really good pictures you want to point out? By highlighting these photos you'll see they show up on a right side rail. Try it out here, or here.

You can go back and choose highlight photos on any of your old synths. Just log in, browse to your synth, click the new "Edit Synth and Highlights" button. Now you can browse your synth, when you get to a picture you want to highlight, click the Add Highlight button. You can put in a title, caption, and change order of the highlights.

Microsoft's 92 Megapixel Camera

Larry Larsen — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:07:00 GMT

Today we announced a new larger format 92 megapixel camera for aerial photography. You may not have even known that Microsoft makes cameras, but this is how we get the really good quality from the Bird's Eye view on Live Maps. Stemming from an acquisition of Vexcel several years ago, the UltraCamLp is the latest in aerial photography. Whereas the previous UltraCamL was 64 megapixel, the UltraCamLp at 92 megapixels takes photos that are natively 11,704 x 7,920 pixels, making it the largest footprint medium format camera system for small aircraft.

Wait, you say, medium format? Does that mean there is a large format camera? Why yes, that would be the UltraCamXp coming in at a whopping 196 megapixels. The UltraCamLp will be in service in flying season 2010.

Advanced Image Editing in Windows Live Photo Gallery

Sarah Perez — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:18:00 GMT

The Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) is a tool created by Microsoft Research which can be used to create panoramic images. It’s essentially the same technology that Windows Live Photo Gallery uses “under the hood” when you create panoramic photos in the software (just like Alexa does in the latest commercial – and lest you think these kids are far more tech savvy than you – I can assure you that the process is dead simple).

But unlike the panoramic technology that runs in WLPG, the ICE software provides a few extra features, too. The most important one is the orientation tool. With this, you can change the orientation of a photo to give the impression that a tilt/shift lens was used. For example:

You could also use a perspective projection instead of a cylindrical one with the tool. Example:

Or you could set the mid-point of a 360-degree panorama:

ICE also adds a variety of export options including Deep Zoom and HD View. Use ICE to export to either of these two options and it will generate a web page that handles viewing these images in a much more efficient manner (they tend to be very large images by default). For Deep Zoom photos, the web page will use Silverlight to allow for interactivity with the image. HD View is like Deep Zoom but also adds some extra affects – it can rewarp the panorama on the fly using a fish-eye lens, auto-exposure adjust for looking into those deep shadows of the panorama, and it will support wide-color-gamut monitors. HD View is still more experimental technology and will require a special plugin. You can get it here.

Add to Photo Gallery!

Now you can take this advanced ICE photo manipulation technology and integrate it into Windows Live Photo Gallery. Just download it and install it. You’ll then see a new menu item in the WLPG “Extras” menu:

To use ICE, simply select a group of images and then launch it using the new menu item.

(via Windows Live Photo & Video Blog)

Seadragon + GigaPan

Sarah Perez — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:22:00 GMT

You probably heard about GigaPan recently – maybe for the first time, if you weren’t already a photo enthusiast – thanks to this widely shared and discussed image from the Obama inauguration. The GigaPan technology creates high-res gigapixel panoramic images which can then be zoomed in and out on and explored. Recently, some folks have begun doing even more interesting things with the GigaPan technology – they’ve been combining it with Microsoft Seadragon.

Take, for example, Jason of Odyssey Expeditions, who created this Seadragon Ajax viewer for GigaPan images. It’s still being worked on, but it’s pretty cool. There’s also Daniel Gasienica’s pipeline for loading up GigaPan images into the new Seadragon Mobile iPhone app. Just enter http://gigapan-mobile.appspot.com/feed/ as an RSS feed in the Seadragon Mobile app to see his GigaPan images – one being David Bergman’s Obama inauguration photo, of course.

(via dragonosticism)

CES 2009: Keep your digital photo frame fresh with Windows Live FrameIt

Nic Fillingham — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:42:00 GMT

Last Christmas Santa Claus brought me a digital photo frame. It was one of the models that displays photos from an SD card that you slot into the base of the frame. I had a spare SD card lying around so I put it into my PC and transferred some photos over from a recent holiday and then put the frame on a bookshelf.
12 months later and the frame still has the same photos repeating on an endless loop... sure I could pull out the SD card and put some new photos on there but it would be MUCH easier if I could just log into a web service and tell the frame to pull photos from my Flickr account, Windows Live Photo Gallery and Live Mesh,.. maybe even display the latest weather or news headlines? Imagine that,....
...Enter Windows Live FrameIt

Polaroid Lives on in Windows Live Writer

Sarah Perez — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:17:00 GMT

A lot of people were sad to hear that Polaroid planned to stop manufacturing their instant film this year. Now, as we’re only months away from the final retail stocks being completely sold out, we have to accept that we’ve finally reached the end of an era in photography. For folks like myself and others born before 1980 (and even some born since), Polaroid pictures were a big part of the family photo opps. They covered my corkboard bulletin boards in the 80’s and 90’s and even made their way into the family photo album on many occasions. But since the debut of digital camera, sales of Polaroid’s instant film slowed down to the point that it no longer made financial sense for the company to continue to manufacture the film. Well, at least the Polaroid can live on in a way, thanks to Windows Live Writer. When you insert a photo into Live Writer, you can choose “Instant Photo” from the border options available. That gives the photo the appearance of a Polaroid picture. No, you can’t shake it…but it’s all we’ve got left. Long live our blogged Polaroids!

Photokina 2008 - Drew Gardner shows us the 60MP P 65+

Nic Fillingham — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:30:00 GMT

Renowned British photographer Drew Gardner was at Photokina 2008 this year helping demonstrate the 60.5 mega pixel, Phase One P 65+ digital back.
Phase One is a Danish company that specializes in high-end, medium format cameras, digital backs and RAW processing software.
For those of you (like me) unfamiliar with the term digital back, Wikipedia tells us that it is "a device which attaches to the back of a camera in place of a film holder and contains an electronic image sensor. This lets cameras which were designed to use film take digital photographs".
The sensor on the P 65+ is absolutely mammoth, and comes with a price tag to match, but as Drew explains (and shows us) the results are both spectacular and well worth it.

Photokina 2008 - Seitz 6x17 Digital, 160 Million Pixel Camera

Nic Fillingham — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:11:00 GMT

One second,... That's the time it takes for the Seitz 6x17 Digital camera to capture 160 Million Pixels!

We checked out the Seitz booth at Photokina 2008 and got the man himself to give us a demo of this monster slit-scan panoramic camera, the largest and fastest in its class.

If you like the idea of medium format panoramic photography but don't have a spare 25,000 Euros you might want to check out Microsoft Image Composite Editor.

Photokina 2008 - Minox Spy Cameras

Nic Fillingham — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:33:00 GMT

The Channel 10 cameras were in Cologne, Germany last month for Photokina 2008 and on display was the latest and greatest in digital photography and imaging products and technologies.
One of the companies that caught my eye was Minox - manufacturer of the original miniature spy camera - who had a new line of covert picture taking devices that look like they've come straight out of Q's laboratory.
Check out Minox.com for more info

Straighten Up Your Photos With Live Photo Gallery

Sarah Perez — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:52:00 GMT

If you’ve ever taken a snapshot in a hurry, then you know that those pictures can occasionally end up blurry, uncentered, and crooked. A good camera can help you take clearer, crisper action shots and a little cropping action can fixed the un-entered shots, but what about those photos that end up crooked? Even cropping a slightly sideways pic won’t fix that problem. However, with the new beta version of Windows Live Photo Gallery, there is a solution for crooked photos.

The new Live Photo Gallery actually has a built-in “Straighten Photo” feature. To use this feature, select your photo and click on the “Fix” button in the top toolbar. Then, just click the “Straighten Photo” option. Your picture will automatically straighten itself out! And if you need to fine-tune the adjustment, you can optionally use the slider to adjust the angle. Just move the slider to the right to rotate the picture clockwise and move it to the left for counter-clockwise. The grid that appears can help you align your photo perfectly.

Here’s an example of both the before and after (see below).

BEFORE:

AFTER:

(Thanks to Arwa Tyebkhan for this tip…and example photos!)

Photosynth + Windows Live Photo Gallery

Sarah Perez — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:55:00 GMT

Martha Rotter recently discovered a nifty feature in the new version of Windows Live Photo Gallery. Apparently, if you have the Photosynth software installed on your PC, the first option under the new “Extras” menu in Photo Gallery will be “Create a Photosynth.” Once selected, you can then just navigate through your photo collections within Photo Gallery to locate and select the photos you want to be a part of the synth. After you have all the photos selected, you can just create a photosynth from right there in Photo Gallery. That’s some nice integration!

If you haven’t tried Photosynth yet, give it a shot! This amazing application lets you stitch your pics together to create panoramic images like you wouldn’t believe. Laura has a great instructional video to help you get started: check it out.

Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor) Released (for FREE!)

Nic Fillingham — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:50:00 GMT

Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE), released today is an advanced, stand alone version of the panoramic image stitching feature found in Windows Live Photo Gallery.

From the ICE web site:
"...shoot a set of overlapping photographs of a scene from a single location, and Image Composite Editor creates a high-resolution panorama incorporating all your images at full resolution. Then save your stitched panorama in a wide variety of formats,... like JPEG and TIFF to multi-resolution tiled formats like HD View and Silverlight Deep Zoom"

More info here: HDView Blog
Download: http://research.microsoft.com/ivm/ice.html

Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2.0 Released

Nic Fillingham — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

From the Pro Photo Blog:

Microsoft Pro Photo Tools provides a set of tools for photographers allowing them to perform various tasks with their images—including RAW captures. The current version enables you to quickly geotag your photos, edit metadata, and organize your images by leveraging the power of Microsoft Live Local.

New features include:

Support for reading & writing XMP side car metadata enabling interoperability with Adobe products.
Viewing actual RAW images, in addition to thumbnails
Conversion of RAW files to JPEG, TIFF, and HD Photo using “As Shot” camera settings.
The ability to resize RAW images.
Support for 64-bit Windows
Support for geotagging international locales
Improved functionality for geotagging images.

More info: http://blogs.msdn.com/prophoto/archive/2008/09/17/new-version-of-pro-photo-tools-released.aspx

Download here: http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/tools.aspx

PPS08: David Riecks on Metadata

Nic Fillingham — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:54:00 GMT

David Riecks presented findings from the Stock Artists Alliance Photo Metadata Project at the 2008 Pro Photo Summit. The project looked at how stock agencies ensure that their digital assets have the right kind of metadata so that they can accurately search through (and find stuff) in their massive libraries of images.

Apologies for my crazy British pronunciations... you'll get used to it ;-)

PPS08: Skip Cohen on Marketing for Photographers

Nic Fillingham — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:48:00 GMT

Skip Cohen, president of Rangefinder Publishing and WPPI was at the 2008 Pro Photo Summit and spoke about the ever-changing marketing challenges facing professional photographers (which Skip defines as anyone paid for any level of photographic services - including enthusiasts).
Skip talks about how photographers can generate future business opportunities by maintaining long term relationships with clients and how smart photographers are building their own brand awareness by partnering with community groups and charities.

PPS08: Natalie Dybisz (aka Miss Aniela)

Nic Fillingham — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:57:00 GMT

Natalie Dybisz - also known as Miss Aniela - is part of a new breed of photographers circumventing the traditional path to success in the world of fine art photography by utilizing photo sharing/social networking sites like flickr to build a fan base, launch a portfolio and get noticed.

Natalie's images - many of them self portraits - are unique in that they aren't shot with high-end equipment or studio lighting and often include multiple instances of herself in the same image (via some photoshop-magic).

Natalie presented at the 2008 Pro Photo Summit on her style of photography and how her flickr site turned into millions of views, thousands of fans and (real world) gallery shows in the UK and Spain.

PPS08: Frans Lanting - Life: A Journey Through Time

Nic Fillingham — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:49:00 GMT

Seven years ago, world renowned nature photographer Frans Lanting took a photograph of horseshoe crabs coming out of the ocean on the east coast of the USA and remarked to himself that the scene he had just captured probably looked the same as it did millions and millions of years ago. He then wondered whether there were other examples of life on earth that could be captured today as they were when they first appeared on the planet...

Thus began the Life: A Journey Through Time project incorporating books, multimedia orchestral performances (composed by Philip Glass), a traveling photographic exhibition and interactive web site: LifeThroughTime.com

Frans spoke about his experiences working on the Life: A Journey Through Time project as part of his keynote address at the 2008 Pro Photo Summit.

PPS08: Kostas Mallios - Why the Pro Photo Summit?

Nic Fillingham — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:08:00 GMT

Kostas Mallios, General Manager of the Microsoft Rich Media Group, chats with me about the 2008 Pro Photo Summit. We discuss the importance of photography in the technology space, why Microsoft hosts the summit each year, who attends the summit, what do they talk about and "where does all this talking take place?".

AutoCollage: A New Tool From Microsoft Research

Sarah Perez — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:12:00 GMT

AutoCollage is a new photo mashup tool from Microsoft Research Cambridge which allows you to automatically create collages from a collection of your photos. The software cuts out interesting parts of the photos in your collection and pieces them together following natural features as boundaries between images. The photos are then blended together using sophisticated computer vision technology as well as other software which does face detection, object recognition, image blending, and other graphic techniques. The end result is a collage created from your very own photos.

Although the software is doing pretty complex stuff on the back end, the front end is surprisingly easy to use. You just point it to a folder containing your photos and click a button - that's it! AutoCollage will then goes to work. When the collage is complete - a process that only takes a few seconds - your resulting image can be printed, emailed, or set as your desktop wallpaper.

For great results, it's suggested that you use 7-30 photos for the best performance, but the software defaults to 12. AutoCollage works on both Vista and XP SP2+ and is available as a free download from here.

How To Use Photosynth In 4 Easy Steps

Sarah Perez — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:01:00 GMT

So now that you’ve heard the big news about Photosynth, you’re probably dying to get started with your first synth. Well, get your camera ready, because here’s all you need to know as to how to use this new technology

STEP 1: TAKE PICTURES

When you’re creating your first synth, remember the rule of “3” – each part of the scene you shoot should appear in at least 3 separate photos from different locations. Try for at least 50% overlap when taking the pictures. Take a panamora shot and then move around – the wider the shot, the better.

STEP 2: EDITS

Photographers usually want to do all kinds of tweaking to pics, but with Photosnyth, there are things you don’t want to do, such as the following:

don’t crop
don’t do any geometric transformations like flips and perspective transforms
don’t use artistic filters (de-noise may be safe, though)
don’t use watermarks (Photosynth provides something for this itself)

You can, however, adjust color and contrast without any worries.

STEP 3: SYNTH IT

If you haven’t already, download the free software from http://photosynth.com. The software works alongside the web site, also a free service. From the Photosynth site, click on “Create” and pick the pictures you want to use. Give your creation a name and click on “Synth.” Photosynth automatically creates and uploads your synth which can then be accessed from any XP or Vista PC.

STEP 4: SHARE IT

Your finished synth can be embedded on web sites, blogs, social networks, or any other page where HTML can be edited. You can see other people’s synths that they’ve created and leave comments, too.

PhotoSynth- Learn how to do it

Laura Foy — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:48:00 GMT

We all love taking digital photos but with Photosynth you can take them to the next level.

I'm sure you've all heard of this amazing new application that allows you to digitally stitch your pics together to create new 3D panoramic environments. In this piece you'll learn exactly how to make the most of Microsoft's new toy for photogs and then check out this video to see the behind the scenes action of how it was made.

And then go here for a bit of it's history.

ShutterSpeed EP04 - The Photosynth Team

Nic Fillingham — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT

By now most of you have probably heard of Photosynth. The cool new technology from Microsoft that allows you to explore collections of full resolution photos by relationship in an amazing, interactive 3D space.

From today (9PM PST) Photosynth is being released to the public which means anyone with access to a digital camera, PC and internet connection can create their own Photosynth collections. Just visit photosynth.net, download the app (approx 8MB) and start synthing.

To coincide with the release of Photosynth to the masses we thought it might be fun to sit down with 1/5th of the development team behind the technology to learn some more about how Photosynth works and how best to go about creating collections of photos specifically for synthing.

Joining me for this episode of ShutterSpeed is Live Labs and Photosynth Architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas (who you might recognize from this infamous TED presentation), Scientist Drew Steedley and Program Manager Scott Fynn.

Check out Max's interview with Rick Szeliski and Noah Snavely over on Channel 8 for more on the genesis (and genius!) of Photosynth. And for those of you about to grab your camera and go shoot some photos for a little synth action make sure you first watch Laura's how-to-synth video for tips and tricks.