Photosynth Team Does It Again

STFS found an update to the Photosynth stories that we already ran. You might remember the amazing photo tourism demos. Well, this new version kicks things up several notches with paths and color correction to more smoothly transition between photos taken in different lighting conditions. As before, this stuff is worth your time. Check it out.

Comments

No sense to limit how many photos you take...

[Max Romantschuk]

And THIS is why I tend to take huge numbers of photos and never delete any... Technology like this will account for easy geotagging, date I already have in the EXIF data, whereas people can be tagged with face recognition soon enough.

That done, I'll be able to navigate my tens of thousands of photos by asking for things like photos taken of the kids while outside at the cottage when they were 3 years old.

Also, remember to backup! :)

Re:Wow

[ttapper04]

Microsoft had better not repeat google's slight miscalculation. The credits given to the flicker accounts tell that they must of had to opt in, unlike streetview. This photosynth system would be incredibly powerful if it used all flicker images or crawled the web. People are clearly visible everywhere in this system, and some may become upset.

Re:I'm confused by all this

[Anonymous Coward]

If this was an OSS project, your post would have been rated "flamebait".

Re:Generalized, or just well-known, static objects

[Minwee]

This is described in their SIGGRAPH paper, which was prominently linked from the article.

It's a bit dense and involves some cross references, but here's a part which may answer some of your questions. For more detail you oculd always read the paper yourself.

We use our previously developed structure from motion system to recover the camera parameters for each photograph along with a sparse point cloud [Snavely et al. 2006]. The system detects SIFT features in each of the input photos [Lowe 2004], matches features between all pairs of photos, and finally uses the matches to recover the camera positions, orientations, and focal lengths, along with a sparse set of 3D points. For efficiency, we run this system on a subset of the photos for each collection, then use pose estimation techniques to register the remainder of the photos. A more prin- cipled approach to reconstructing large image sets is described in [Snavely et al. 2008].

Re:Video original better?

[Max Romantschuk]

It looks like taking a video would be easier.

Depending on what you are trying to do... My original point was that technology like this will make it possible to navigate the swamps of data we're accumulating.

I like having a lot of family photos, but traditional albums won't do when we have literally thousands of them. Stuff like this can make it possible to easily call up photos based on suitable criteria. Like I said we need other parts to, like face recognition, but summing it all up we'll eventually have a feasible way to navigate a huge amount of photographic data.

Re:Microsoft stealing from Linux again...

[dave420]

Microsoft have turned Photo Tourism into something incredibly more powerful. But don't let that get you off your high horse. Some of us don't play the "them" and "us" game.

Re:Wow

[YrWrstNtmr]

Huh? Why not get out there, meet people from those countries, eat the food they eat, get drunk with them, and actually experience the world?

Of course! Because every familiy has the time and resources to visit every possible interesting place on the planet.

Re:Wow

[swillden]

Huh? Why not get out there, meet people from those countries, eat the food they eat, get drunk with them, and actually experience the world?

Ummm, because we can't afford it? Taking six people to Greece would consume our family vacation budget for 3-4 years. I'd rather stay closer to home and spend more time with my kids.