Microsoft reinvents the photo with Photosynth

The art of Photography is one that many of us at Bit-tech take seriously. In fact, between the staff and forums, there's probably far too much camera equipment to put any useful value on aside from 'a lot.' Which is why some of you might be interested in Microsoft's new joint project with the University of Washington - Photosynth.

Photosynth can best be described as a hodgepodge of digital imagery turned into depth perception. Much like your eyes use stereoscopic vision to develop depth through points of reference, Photosynth analyzes photos to develop the same depth - and translates the pictures into a three dimensional space. By looking for points of reference like doorway peaks, window frames, and other architectural points, the software takes multiple pictures from different points of view and wraps them into a 3d image. The images used for assembly can be any mix - all shot by you, or a conglomeration of hundreds of images from many people over many different conditions.

Currently, the project is under development by a couple members of Microsoft's Live Labs, and you can check out some pretty neat information along with a couple videos on their site.

Do you have a thought on the project? Would you be interested to see what this could do with some of your photos? Let us know in our forums.